Building a Five-Publication Technology Network

I started Online Tech Tips in March 2007 while working in IT. It grew fast, and a single general-interest desk soon couldn’t serve everyone well. Windows troubleshooters, Mac switchers, working sysadmins and gamers want different depth, different vocabulary and different promises. Folding them into one site would have blurred the voice and made the archive harder to manage.

• Launched Help Desk Geek in 2009, then Switching to Mac, The Back Room Tech and Xbox Advisor, each with its own audience and scope, including what it would not cover.
• Ran the network full time through AK Internet Consulting from May 2010 as Founder & Head of Digital Publishing and Content Operations.
• Kept one shared quality bar and editing approach across all five, so standards didn’t depend on which site a reader landed on.
• Tied editorial calendars to search intent and real reader problems instead of chasing keywords for their own sake.
• Treated the archive as a product: updated, consolidated or retired pages instead of only adding new URLs.

• Five technology publications, all still active
• About 7–8 million monthly pageviews across the network at peak
• 6,000+ articles across the network, including 3,000+ I wrote myself
• Up to 35 writers/editors at peak

I started publishing technology guides in 2007 while working in IT. The first site, Online Tech Tips, grew quickly enough that a single general-interest desk could not serve every reader well.

A consumer troubleshooting audience, Apple users, working IT readers, and later Xbox players do not want the same stories, voice, or calendar. Folding everything into one site would have diluted the point of view. Treating each new topic as a random post would have made the library unmanageable.

Founder responsible for positioning, editorial strategy, operations, technology, and business outcomes across the portfolio.

• Give each publication a defined audience and a clear statement of what it will not cover.
• Keep a shared quality bar — usefulness, accuracy, and readable structure — while letting voice and depth vary by desk.
• Use search intent and reader problems to plan calendars, without turning the sites into keyword factories.
• Connect publishing decisions to audience growth, advertising, affiliate programs, and the cost of maintaining a large library.

• Launched Online Tech Tips in 2007, then added Help Desk Geek, Switching to Mac, The Back Room Tech, and later Xbox Advisor.
• Wrote heavily in the early years, then shifted toward recruiting contributors and building editorial systems as volume grew.
• Operated the work full time from 2010 through AK Internet Consulting.
• Maintained WordPress infrastructure capable of supporting high-traffic publishing.

• Per-publication positioning and topic boundaries
• Shared briefing, editing, and quality-control patterns
• Content inventory and internal-linking practices across a large archive
• Analytics review to decide what to expand, update, or stop

• Audience-specific positioning is an editorial decision, not a branding exercise.
• A large archive is an asset only if someone is accountable for quality, updates, and what no longer belongs.
• Founder work in publishing includes people, systems, and business results — not only bylines.