Focus is the Key to Success

At this time last year Yahoo! seemed to have it all: visitors by the millions, advertising dollars and enough good press to make any CEO feel on top of the world. But now that the bubble's burst, Yahoo's stock is in the toilet and top execs are fleeing the company like rats deserting a sinking ship. What happened? According to internet.com CEO Alan Meckler, the man who gave birth to Internet World, Yahoo! forgot the crucial element that makes or breaks any media property - focus. In trying to be all things to all web users, Yahoo! didn't focus enough on just one market.

"The key is that advertising works only for media or publications or businesses that focus," says Meckler. "That's clearly what the Internet's all about. The Internet, more than any other medium in history, requires focus because there are so many choices. You have to be focused to be successful. The broader you are, there's a greater likelihood of failure and that's why Yahoo! is now coming back down to earth." Bad news for Yahoo! - but great news for you because almost any site or service can be successful if you focus intensely on serving one niche market with rich vertical information.

Find a Niche and Serve it Well

Meckler himself is a perfect example of applied focus. He put his hand to various publishing projects from 1971-1993 and failed financially all along. He didn't find his financial legs until he found his focus by creating a publication for IT professionals.

"I think if I could ever give a lesson to anybody, it's focus, focus, focus. It's absolutely the key, whether you're selling products or you have a service or you're a publisher. Focus. Focus. Focus," he says. Sites have to focus on just one niche, serving it to the fullest. "Nobody wants to go to a portal site if they're really a professional and/or they have very serious hobby interests. They're going to migrate to what are being created everyday now, the serious sites that are one subject oriented, much like the history of print," he says. "The only way a professional person or someone who's very much into some hobby or specialty can keep up is through those sites that are totally focused on one subject so the reader really gets right to the point of what they want," says Meckler. "That's where the advertisers, when advertising comes back, will be flocking to place their ads. You can just look at history to show you that's the only way it works. There's no magazine today in the world that's successful that covers more than one category, one subject."

Make Branding Your Finishing Touch

An awful lot of money was spent over the last few years by businesses that thought branding was a key to success. But as Meckler puts it, that money is better spent creating the best content. Branding will come from that content focus. "Brand is only important when it's sort of the caboose on the train. But when it becomes the engine, which is what so many companies have done, you have a situation where you just waste your money. You can be found on the Internet without having to advertise for brand. Brand doesn't mean anything if you don't have good information and good content," he says.

That good content will be the attraction for your niche audience. "If you don't have good content, you won't be successful. You have to make the investment in the editorial because if you're targeting a niche, that means that you're going to attract people who really know the topic. If you don't have good content, they won't come back," he says. But if you do have content, you'll have traffic - and the kind of focused traffic that sells ads. Advertisers who choose to run ads with internet.com come to them for their tightly focused audience.

"We have a focused community that buys hubs and routers and consulting services for Internet and IT professionals. So we have a specific readership, not a general readership," he says. "They're not advertising on our site for brand, they're advertising to make sales."

Anyone who tells you a site can't succeed is just passing along sour grapes. Sites CAN succeed - if they leverage compelling content that draws and retains a niche audience attractive to advertisers. The key is not spending millions on branding, nor on pulling in millions of eyeballs. The key is a tight, cohesive focus.

"The Internet is Darwinian. Publishing has been Darwinian. Opening up a store has been Darwinian. Creating a movie is Darwinian. Only the best do well. That's the beauty of America - entrepreneurship. There's always room for another one if you can do it a better way," says Meckler. He did Internet business publishing in a better way and turned an idea into a million-dollar enterprise. You can do the same.