Palate Press: The Online Wine Magazine by Bloggers

Editor’s Note: Palate Press is an online magazine that features wine writers from all walks of life. From citizen bloggers to big wig writers, it’s packed with stories from wines across the globe. What’s unique about PP is its editorial process. Bloggers are an independent bunch and tend to stay clear from someone telling them what stays or goes before publication. Therefore, the mere hint of an editor is typically shunned before the 3 syllables escape one’s lips. Yet PP has thrived with its editorial review, allowing any writer to submit their article as long as they’re open to editorial criticism.

We want to congratulate founder, David Honig, and his crew for putting in the hard work, sweat and elbow grease it’s taken to get this project successfully up and running!! Below is an interview we conducted with David last week. If you have any further questions for him, please don’t hesitate to place them in the comments below.

Why did you think you could create what it turns out is quite an ambitious project?

In retrospect, an interesting question. I think the simple answers are (a) I didn’t think “I” could, but thought perhaps “we” could, and (b) I had no idea it would be as big as it is, so “ambitious” is only apparent looking back. But that’s too simple, so in a bit greater depth…

Palate Press: The online wine magazine, in retrospect seems quite ambitious, but I don’t think anybody anticipated it would be what it is as quite so quickly. Instead, we, and I must emphasize “we,” for it was from the beginning a group effort, really had no idea if it would work. We approached it, not as a project, but as an experiment in the next generation of wine blogging. We looked around and saw just how much great content there was out there, how hard it was to separate the wheat from the chaff, and wondered if there were a way to turn the best of it into something valuable.

I only began to suspect it might work when amazing people, people like WR Tish, Jeff Lefevere, Gabriella Opaz, and others said “yes, I’ll give it a shot.” It was always the team of people, as writers and as editors, that made success possible.

What have you learned in doing it?

I was an infant, and now I feel like a wobbly toddler. Walking and talking are tremendous achievements, but running and conversing are skills to be honed. I could barely begin to list all the things I have learned, but I will offer the first ones that come to mind, that I struggle with or enjoy daily:

For every ten people who enthusiastically volunteer to work on a project without compensation, one will actually do the work, and for every ten that actually do the work, only one will do so consistently and over an extended period of time.

People will ALWAYS surprise you. They will surprise you in good ways and bad. They will surprise you with their lack of follow-through or with their amazing dedication. They will surprise you with the quality of their writing, from poorer than you expected to astounding talent. The lesson to take from this, when dealing with a large group of people, is to be careful not to rely on your assumptions about them, but to let their personalities play out over long periods of time, until each individual settles comfortably into their own role, rather than trying to force them into the role you expect them to play.

It doesn’t hurt to ask. The question I got more than any other in the first few months of Palate Press was, “how did you convince Tish to join?” The answer was, “I asked.” I never expected him to say yes, but it cost little more than free email and we had the cornerstone of our launch.

It doesn’t hurt to beg, either. That is really a subset of “it doesn’t hurt to ask,” but really means “don’t take no for an answer.” Several of our greatest talents said “no” when first approached. They lacked time. They had their own website and did not see why they should cannibalize their writing for another. They did not see where the project was going. I suspect a few just didn’t like me, and that’s okay, too. So I begged. I became so annoying, for those I deemed essential to success, that it eventually became easier to just say yes (this is the same method I used to persuade my wife to marry me, by the way). Some saw the project as a success and stuck around. It was worth the effort.

Great content is not enough. I truly believe Palate Press has the best content about wine anywhere, but that means nothing if nobody saw it. It took press releases, cross-posting, Twitter, Facebook, and a constant effort to say “HERE WE ARE, LOOK AT US!” for people to notice.

Social media is the beginning, not the end. Wine blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Open Wine Consortium, etc., are a great way to jump-start an idea, but not the end. Eventually, you capture the few thousand people actively participating and just talking to each other. Success online will only come when you break out of that limited circle into the internet in general. That, in turn, means you have to think outside the blogger’s “what will make other bloggers think I’m great” mindset, and into “what do wine lovers want to read”? It also means formatting content for the general public, not other bloggers.

Editing makes everybody better. At first, we had a lot of push-back against editors, each blogger used to publishing their own content with the push of a button. Some stayed away, or left, because of it. But the ones who stayed all said the same thing, “editing made me better.” Of course it did. Yes, we have made errors as editors, but overall, and certainly in the long run, editors make writers better. Additionally, we have seen an interesting phenomenon. When people send stories to Palate Press, they send their very best. Almost universally, what people send in has obviously been more carefully written, and re-written, than something they would post on their own site. Whether it is the knowledge they would be edited or understanding that we have multiple stories to choose from, we get everybody’s best work. One interesting question is whether they go back and put similar effort into their own sites and if Palate Press helps increase the quality of content across the whole wine blogosphere.

What is the reception you’ve had to the ad network?

Shock and excitement. People inside the blogosphere forget how small a minority we are. People outside the blogosphere are just starting to figure out how the internet works. It is a revelation to a local wine store owner to learn that the local wine blogger might get 80% of his page views from thousands of miles away, but that through geo-targeting he can focus on-line advertising. Bigger advertisers appreciate the ability to focus on such a tight niche, wine, with such great economic demographics. Right now on-line advertising is down across the board, but as advertisers pull out of the doldrums they are looking for ways to believe on-line advertising can work, and a very large niche-network seems to be a model they are willing to try.

From the bloggers, it has been equally enthusiastic. Until now, most wine bloggers either did not bother with advertising or just took a few pennies from Google advertising. No single blog was ever big enough to justify a sales force. By collecting so many blogs together, now we can justify a sales force.

Perhaps most interesting, the bloggers in the Ad Network are also enthusiastically buying into the concept behind the magazine, understanding not just that the ads they run fuel the magazine, but that the magazine anchors the network. They also see, and I think are excited, that the magazine provides a venue where they can be professional writers, selling their content if they produce the very best. Our advertising partners have become a source of many of our new stories.

Where do you hope to be one year from now as a site and an ad network?

As a site, we would like to continue to grow in readership. I regularly hear we have the best wine content anywhere, and we need to work hard to keep that impression with those who have it, and give it to those who don’t have it yet. One big change we hope to put into effect by the end of the year is to be able to pay for every story we run, to truly turn into the site where everybody everywhere writing about wine turns to publish their work. We have been watching what is happening to newspapers, where wine columnist are losing their jobs. We want to hire everybody, one story at a time, and publish the best available content every day.

For the network, we want to be the place anybody advertising about wine turns. We want to be the place bloggers turn to if they want to “monetize” their blog. We want to reach the point where a person who googles “wine” sees our ads within three clicks. If we can do that, the advertisers and the bloggers will come to us.

Finally how can bloggers get involved? Can they submit stories, to Palate Press? How do they sign up for the ad network? Any restrictions?

We accept story submissions from anybody, anywhere, any time. Send a story idea, just title, lead, and a sentence or two of explanation, to submissions@palatepress.com. We review every story individually. Ideally, every time a blogger says to themselves, “I have a great one this time,” their next thought will be “this is something I should send to Palate Press.” Our only restrictions on stories are that we ask for an exclusive on stories we run, that they be original, and that they not expose us to potential litigation (no defamation or copyright violations).

Anybody with a wine or food site can apply to be part of the ad network. Just send a note that says you’re interested to dhonig@palatepress.com. We will accept anybody with a wine or food site with a reasonable amount of traffic, assuming there is not something obviously offensive about the site. We are thrilled to add “WhatIDrankLastNight.com,” but have not interest in “Porn&Wine.com.” We have network members with just a few hundred page views a month, and some with hundreds of thousands of page views a month. We also have sites in other languages and want more. We can create geo-targeted ad campaigns anywhere in the world and are not restricted to English ads.

Thanks again David, and again, please don’t hesitate to put your questions in the comments below!!