Check out the amzing success story of DailyCandy http://www.inc.com/magazine/20040201/howididit.html

My suggestion is that you should try to hangout in Yelp or Facebook–seems like that’s where the young, male hipsters are hanging out nowadays…

Best of luck

How to build the brand? Once you’ve got your core columns, it’s easy to expand through experimentation. Try a cigar section. If no one likes it, drop it. If it takes off, expand it. Listening to what your readers like and don’t like will be crucial, but that’s what the interwebs for.

As for the branded vices like wines and cruises, that’s a really interesting spin. It reminds me of Playboy in a way, only you can get away with being a bigger household name if your brand isn’t synonymous with porn. Telling your mom you’ve gone on a cruise sponsored by The Fuego is a lot easier than telling her the cruise was sponsored by Playboy. However, starting up a magazine, branding yourself as an expert, and attracting readers is going to be a big job. Also learning how to create your own branded line of merlot is going to be a lot to add to that plate. You can cheat though. Rather than selling your own wine, sell your opinion. You can start by creating a list of your favorites in each category: The Fuego’s top cigar pick, our wine of the year, THE cruise for young, classy guys. This way you get the credit without the sweat. You can even make up a logo and hand them out to people awards style. This isn’t necessarily better, but it’s a lot easier and it actually creates content for the core zine rather than drawing your time away from it. Once you’ve got your audience, people value your opinion about wine, AND you’ve automated the magazine to the point where it doesn’t totally absorb your life, only then would I consider starting my own wine label.

One question I have is on the archives: I think a big problem is demonstrating knowledge in a field and having the past to prove it. The WSJ gets around this online because they’ve been around for a 100 years or so —

do you mean having some sample content, showcasing that, then charging an access fee to the rest? And doing more featurey things to hype up the “what you’re missing” factor beyond just the free stuff?

I’ve had a lot of people ask me about the weekly email, too. I like your approach with the 3x a week.

Secondly the thing I foresee becoming an issue is that if you’re a vendor as well as a reviewer you’re going to face questions of legitimacy over your brands. Which means that if you’re going to recommend fuego cigars over others, they better be the better choice.

My first piece of advice: exclusivity. If you want to appeal to this crowd, put the silk rope into effect and keep people out. Don’t make your archives public, keep it exclusive and controlled.

Where to start seems like a tough thing to answer. Find something that fits the bill of what you’re trying to offer, get the rights, smack a fuego label on it, and send it out. Probably easiest, depending on where you are, is to find a brewery or winery and start putting out Fuego products.

Becoming an expert is a fairly easy process. Mostly because there are no experts about experts. To be an expert you just have to know more than your reader. To do so: hit Amazon, search for books in the area, get the top 5 rated books plus the intro ones (if needed) and there you go, you’re more educated than the reader usually. If someone finds a mistake, be gracious and open about it. Hiding mistakes online doesn’t work so well.

And stay with guys. If you want to begin hitting the female consumers, open a sister company or brand.

Those are my thoughts folks.
– Trick