It’s hard to give a panoramic view of anything you’re deeply inside of every single day. When your webzine is the first thing you attend to in the morning and the last thing before you go to sleep, it’s also difficult to be objective about it. Or even to think clearly, after a long workday.
Yesterday was another long workday – we don’t have weekends in the webzine and blog field. And today will be, as well. But it’s been two years since we published our first article, when LeipGlo was still my personal blog. So I feel like I should pause and say something about it.
Over the past year, our webzine has grown from 1,000 to nearly 3,000 followers on Facebook, our main promotion avenue.
Our Leipzig-related pages have become the most popular feature of our site: Jobs, Events, Movies OmU, English-Speaking Doctors. Sometimes we get evidence that our articles, too, are being read far and wide. It still surprises me to hear from people we’ve never met, based in different parts of the world.
So far, our webzine has mostly grown organically. The same can be said for most articles on our platform, and likes and shares on social media: Readers like you identify with what we do and want to contribute somehow, or show their appreciation.
Thank you so much, by the way! Your love and support, in any way you’ve felt inclined to show it, have made us relevant as a Leipzig-based platform with an international edge.
We’re not what you’d call a business yet. But we realize that at some point, we need to become one if we are to survive. Though we’re dreamers, we need to get practical. Food. Rent. Travel to see, or rescue or repair, the pieces of our lives we have scattered across the world.
Money needs to come in, so we can dedicate ourselves even more to our project, while being able to attend to life’s essentials. And also wrap up most of the other jobs we need to do to survive. Even more practically speaking, we need to at least keep afloat to be able to continue providing useful information to the (g)local community, as well as a platform for diverse voices and issues we care about.
But money also complicates things. It tends to make things less spontaneous. One has to be more selective when there’s pay involved. A pesky thing called fiscal responsibility has to come in.
Capital – can’t live with it, can’t live without it.
So part of 2017 will probably go into shaping LeipGlo as a business. We plan to bring in some ads and paid listings, as long as they are relevant to our readership; we’ve avoided putting in flashing banners and random sponsored posts and links for a reason.
We’ve had a good start on that by connecting with folks and startups such as TiMMi Transport, Cafe HomeLE, and the ladies behind the most beautiful Leipzig guide I’ve seen (they also rock the Designers’ Open). Recently, the new hotel Innside Leipzig invited me for food, drinks and a tour, along with other Leipzig-based bloggers. I saw this as a recognition of our relevance to the community. It was fun also to meet the German bloggers – I felt welcome into their midst as probably the only foreigner there that night.
On Thursday, 16 March, it’s time to have some more fun – and share a toast with our dear friends and readers.
We hope you’ll join us in celebrating our two years of life as LeipGlo and the beginning of a new friendship of ours. We’re co-hosting a party at Beyerhaus with CoraSon Latino, a group promoting cultural exchange among internationals and locals, and supporting the enterprises and other aspirations of Latinos in Leipzig (such as LeipGlo, which includes some Latin Americans).
We’ll be mingling, chatting, talking about LeipGlo some more, dancing – with perhaps some surprises in store, too. It’s all going to be very informal and probably also improvised. Let’s see what the beauty of the random brings us this time.
Thursday, we meet Noches Latinas.
Our birthday party starts at 10 p.m. in the super cool basement of Beyerhaus, located at Ernst-Schneller-Straße 6, south of the Leipzig city center. Noches Latinas will be happening at the same time. Entrance fee is €3.
