What a great night at the Sway last week! Thanks to all those that came along, especially the speakers – and those brave enough to pipe up during The Sway debates.
The fact that it fell on the same day as the Shiny Media going belly up  wasn’t ideal, but I honestly believe that there is still plenty of  opportunity for small publishers to make a living from their websites.
As Alfie from Moblog said, you can be Small and Mighty even if you only have a reasonably small community. Moblog’s understanding of how to run profitable sponsorship campaigns while keeping the company lean and  responsive shows that it is possible to make the internet work for you -  and remember, Moblog was one of the few Web 2.0 businesses not to take funding back when we were all doing it.
Meanwhile, Rob’s 7 Rules for starting a new blog were invaluable for anyone  who finds it easier to sit behind a monitor than to engage with humanity – as well as some brilliant advice about getting traffic and keeping  your house style intact.
The Sway debates were especially interesting this time around, with a  debate on Voucher Codes and their place in independent editorial being discussed. The conclusion seemed to be that people are happy to use voucher codes for products that they would have written about anyway. So long as you know your readers and know what they’d like, most people felt confident that using them is fine.
One point that especially resonated was how you can use information from affliate response and voucher code uptakes to speak directly to brands about advertising. Once you’ve got to know your audience (through meet ups, surveys and comments) you can approach advertisers knowing that even if your readership is small, merchants and brands are likely to get a good response from any campaign on your site.