Kyle Thomas

The Website of Kyle Thomas (KyleWith)

Going Joint Venture

Nothing is set in stone yet and I don’t even know what I’m going to be approached about, but I know that it may be something about making YkOnline.ca a joint venture. YkOnline.ca is my local or hyperlocal blog that I started almost a year ago. It is my pride and joy and I truly see the potential within it and the need for it in the community.

That being said, I want nothing more than for it to succeed. That is why I am torn about the possible opportunity of making YkOnline a joint venture. Losing something that you built from the ground up is hard, especially something you’re passionate about. That is not to say I would loss the site completely, but going into a joint venture I would loss a certain percentage of control. I’m personally worried that once another person comes along I would fold to any idea they offer. In some areas I’m not very good at standing up for myself, which is a self-confidence issue.

Part of my reasoning for being a little paranoid about a JV is because I don’t understand what it is. I’m obviously looking for help with the site; it is hard for me to keep it up-to-date with current information on a daily base. What I was hoping for in a partnership was someone who shares the passion of the community rather than someone with a journalism background. That’s not to say that wouldn’t be great, but as someone with out any journalism background I would feel intimidated and feel as though I didn’t have the smarts or any good ideas for that matter to contribute.

Then we run into the question of money. I have put countless hours into YkOnline.ca over the last year where I have made no money, then add in the cost of running the site. There is no way I could give up 49% of the site with out getting a good deal in someway or another.  The site currently makes no money but come the end of April I will start to push getting advertisers and try to generate revenue through ads. If YkOnline.ca were to split between more than me, how would we split the revenue? Considering I would probably sell the ads, invoice, and do all the dirty work, what does that entitle me to. Many of these questions will be answered upon meeting the possible partner, but I’m just putting them out there so I have an idea.

Now you know the situation, so my question is how would you go about this if it were about your blog, or hyperlocal site? What you even consider it? What would you want out of it? What is your general opinion of Joint Venturing a site like YkOnlineca?

Is it worth it?

Ugh. Having a conversation about reality stinks. I hate thinking about whether it is worth it or not, blogging and podcasting I am mean. I think about all the people who graduate high school and just jump in to lifeless jobs, just doing it to fund there nothingness. It bothers me because I’m actually trying something here. I work a job in the morning that I find rewarding, because I’m good at it and because people appreciate me. Then in the afternoon, I try and peruse my passion for Blogging about Yellowknife and Podcasting. I wholeheartedly believe that it will work in the North and I have some many ideas. This may be the down side, is that I have all the idea and can’t seem to manage my time properly to attempt them all. As you can see I have been slacking off on blogging on YkOnline this week, although I blame that on the fact the holiday season is over and I haven’t gotten back into a routine of doing it.

All of this makes me wonder if it is worth it. I know I haven’t put to much into it yet and I haven’t really done any hard work, but part of me says hold on, is it actually worth the time and effort. Will the result be worthwhile enough to get by.

So thinking about all these things got me to come down to 1 or rather 2 questions. I would love to know what your answers are to them!

  1. How would you make money from Blogging on a local blog?
  2. How would you make money from a Podcast?

Hearing others responses to these question my rekindle my passion and get me going away. Reality sucks.

“Never look back, keep moving forward”

What is it I do

Some may know, some may not. I will tell you a bit anyway. I do have my own business called With Media, William Thomas, which is the company behind YkOnline. It is classed as a media Internet company or something like that. When I applied for the business license it was difficult to describe to them then, what it would fall under, but anyways… I am about to apply for the SEED and BDIC funding from the GNWT. Which I may or may not get. In the application process one of the things I have to do, is describe what it is I do and whether or not it can generate enough revenue. This is kind of a funny coincidence because it seems to be a topic among some of us in the blogging realm. I will basically need to describe what blogging – YkOnline – is as well as Podcasting – I have plans to get into this more – and then some multimedia/website building stuff. Thanks to Megan I will use her blog post about explaining these things in plain english.

Either way this goes, it will be good to experience because for the first time since starting all these things, business, podcasting, blogging, I will actually have it down on paper what I do. Not only will it give others the knowledge of what I want to do, but it might give me the clarity and a new perspective of how I want to go about doing it.

Over the next couple day I will start writing all this up for the application and may share some of it here on this blog. To finish off I will leave you with this video, Podcasting in Plain English.

Sitting By the Fire

Okay we are going to try this new thing, were instead of ranting about stuff, I will point out positive stuff.

Quick side note, I am hoping over the next few days to reorganize this blog a little better. I would like to re do all the categories and start blogging a lot more about day to day stuff as well as more of what I am constantly doing online.

Anyways on to what I started this for. Do you have a fire place or wood stove in your house? I do and I love it and here is why. It creates a relaxing atmosphere for me. Even though a furnace may heat your home, a fire takes the chill out of the air. There is just something comforting about sitting in the same room and feeling its heat coming at you. I always find it is when I am able to write the best, because everything just seems to escape me and my mind is, for once, clear and focused.

Is there something that just relaxes you to the point where all your thoughts just go away and your mind is clear and refreshed feeling.

Yes I know the post is short and not as descriptive as I originally planned. I had to leave the room with wood stove to stock up the wood pile and then got distracted. Go Figure.