By May 2005, I had managed to build an online portal dedicated to a very specific topic: municipal wireless broadband networks. Without any investment other than my time and web hosting costs, the site became the authority on the subject of citywide Wi-Fi. Cities and counties that were thinking of deploying these networks came to Muniwireless.com as did journalists from The Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, and other mainstream publications.

Some vendors and municipal officials claim that I jump-started the phenomenon of citywide Wi-Fi but that is an exaggeration. I happened to see the potential of Wi-Fi technology and simply made it easy for people to find information about setting up large Wi-Fi networks. Perhaps by making information easily available, I decreased the perceived risk of deploying these networks and shortened the decision-making process.

What did people like about Muniwireless?

- It’s very personal. I write the articles with my own peculiar style, which is sometimes very catty and sarcastic. I have offended a number of incumbent operators (Swisscom, for their terrible Eurospot service) with my opinionated pieces.

- It’s passionate about wireless open neutral networks.

- It’s focused on one subject and does not bother people with extraneous information.

In addition to writing with a distinctive voice, I networked a lot. I did not just sit in my pajamas writing articles. I was on Skype often talking to vendors, service providers, and city officials. I attended conferences in the US and Europe. I read everything I could find about citywide Wi-Fi and talked to many journalists and experts covering this field.

Traditional journalists asked me how I kept my objectivity since I ran the editorial department and the sales/advertising department (a company of one). I told them about my Ninth Circle of Hell and added that I just did not have the luxury of hiring employees.

Lesson 7: A distinctive style, a strong voice and targeted content always attract readers. If you are writing about technology, try not to sound like so many of the articles that appear in today’s mainstream tech publications, which seem to have been written by a machine fed by a PR bureau.

Lesson 8: You still have to network.

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