I generally don’t like to write odds-and-ends style posts, but from time to time, they are necessary. As you might have guessed, today represents one such time. There’s a lot going on at Geneva Lakefront Realty, and the current object of my most intense desire is a magazine. More specifically, my magazine. This magazine may be a pictorial of me jumping the shark, but I have high hopes for it in terms of targeted effectiveness. This blog, which I’ve failed to consistently call a column because it sounds too pretentious even for me, has been extremely successful. I’ve been blessed to have an increase in traffic quarter over quarter since the inception in 2008, and I’m on track in 2010 to register a 50% increase over the very flattering 2009 visitor totals. Sometime in February I had a thought: if what I write works online, perhaps it would work in a magazine. As with most things in my life, that thought turned into a tangible product, and an incarnation of my blog will be available in print hopefully by this weekend.
The magazine is titled “Summer Homes For City People”, which, for those of you playing at home, is a title I borrowed (with proper credit) from the real estate brochure printed in 1898 that I talked about here earlier this year. The magazine should be pretty darn nice, although I’ve already thought of a hundred ways to make it even better next year. For now, the first issue will have to do, and it’ll be quite familiar reading (or skimming) to those of you who are kind enough to read this blog regularly. The magazine will essentially read as a “best of the blog”, with all of the content being comprised of stories that originally were written for this blog. The idea is to drive more traffic to this site, so hopefully the magazine will work. Outside of the acquired context of daily reading, the magazine may do a great job at making me look like a moron.
I’ve been very busy with the magazine idea over the past couple of months, and since I sold incredibly cheap advertising to hand picked area businesses, I now know how arduous magazine sales can be. A warm yet vindictive note to those advertisers who so quickly dismissed my idea- the rate will be considerably higher next year… With 5000 copies of the magazine circulating Lake Geneva this summer, hopefully you’ll pick one or two up to give to your friends who might find this sort of gibberish entertaining. I must admit I’m tentative about the outcome, but my goal is simple. If 5000 people read the magazine and 4998 of those people think I’m an idiot and just two buy a Lake Geneva vacation home from me, then it’s a resounding success. Stay tuned as I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes. Oh, and if you can think of someone who might carry the magazine in their store or waiting room in the suburbs, please let me know and I’ll be sure to send them a couple copies.
This week is a busy week for me, with an unfortunate doctors appointment scheduled for today, and a shortened work week due to a mini “vacation” at a friends’ cabin up north. I plan on writing during my two days at this cabin (Thursday and Friday night, returning Saturday to happily show you vacation homes), and will provide you embedded style reporting as to the goings on at this northern retreat. I have a picture in my mind that finds me alone, in a small corner of the cabin with a sheet over my head and computer, feverishly pounding away at the keys in that sort of creepy darkness that one can only find in the northwoods, while I try not to think of that movie where Johnny Damon is up at that cabin in the woods and a bunch of people get killed. I’ll write to give you a little insight into the vacationing (mis)adventures of someone who chose the wrong lake to vacation on. It should be interesting, and I’m only hoping that my gracious hosts don’t stumble on my snarky commentary. I’ll leave the name of the lake out of the post to protect the identity of the “innocent”. Now, forgive me for sounding a little like Daniel Gross, but I hope there’s an internet connection available somewhere up there…