Can blogs serve as bootstrap incubators?

Filed in archive Bootstrapping Trends on June 29, 2008

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Danielle Davey


Not long ago I posted about Jason Coulls' plan to make a million dollars through his Becoming a Millionaire with Adsense blog.

I mentioned at the time that, far from being a get rich quick scheme, the idea of a niche blog as a bootstrap business startup generating revenue via CrispAd, Google Adsense, BidVertiser, AdBright or other monetizing options is perfectly reasonable.

And it didn't take long for another entrepreneur to contact me saying he would be following the same example.

It made me start to wonder about the potential of blogs or other on line communities as a kind of bootstrapped incubator for small startups.

Just as they do with small businesses, blogs can:
• Draw a larger audience than conventional websites because they provide fresh content that is constantly being updated and picked up by Google and other search engines
• Utilize hypertext to provide readers with on going listings of constantly updated links on related topics
• Create archive lists and generate syndicated feeds (RSS) providing visitors with both a record of posts containing past hyperlinks potentially grouped by category and a real time list of new posts and links as they appear on the site

Imagine a blog dedicated to introducing new Web 2.0 apps and other on line business startups creating a growing database of links to the newest developments on the Internet.

And the price? Nothing but the time to maintain it. The perfect bootstrap opportunity!