Category Archives: Featured

In January, I was back in the LAUNCH Incubator working on my presentation. I was planning to introduce a Recurrency app that made it easier for creators to engage and include their supporters each month. But the feedback I got was a surprise: “Why do you force me to join your crowdfunding site when IContinue reading “The End of Recurrency”

When I was searching for something new to build in 2014, Jason told me about the problems he was having with Mahalo on YouTube. At the time, a single YouTube subscriber was worth an estimated $0.10/year to publishers, but an email subscriber was worth $1.25/year. For Jason’s shows, collecting 100,000 email addresses could mean theContinue reading “YouTubers Just Got YouTubered”

Some creators can make Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans theory work. Most creators can’t. My Medium post Is ‘1,000 True Fans’ Too Good To Be True? explores the history of 1,000 True Fans, some its success stories and where most creators stumble. If you want to make a living doing what you love  —  playingContinue reading “Is ‘1,000 True Fans’ Too Good To Be True?”

I used the term “adblockalypse” in our team’s Slack channel and liked it so much that I registered the domain adblockalypse.com, created the Twitter account @adblockalypse and wrote a popular Medium post on the death of ad-supported publishing. “Adblockalypse” is the end of days for publishers and advertisers. Once it arrives, content creators on theContinue reading “Adblockalypse!”

I’ll never forget how my friend Carolyn introduced me at a backyard party a few years ago: “This is Brian Alvey. He invented blogging.” I immediately corrected her: “I didn’t invent blogging. I perfected it.” I’ve told that story on stage many times. While it might sound conceited, there is a lot of truth in the statement.Continue reading “The second mouse gets the cheese.”

Twelve years ago today, I hosted my first Meet The Makers conference in New York City. Later that year I did two more events in San Francisco and NYC. The events were incredible, featuring interviews with the people responsible for some of the biggest online products and sites like Monster, DoubleClick, Google, E*TRADE and MapQuest.Continue reading “Meet The Makers is coming back”

As I walked up to Simon on Monday before our lunch meeting it was clear that I was mumbling to myself. He asked what I was saying and I explained that I’ve had an old ’70s song stuck in my head since last Wednesday. The song that I couldn’t stop listening to? Gerry Rafferty’s Right DownContinue reading “Life’s a game made for everyone and love is the prize.”

I finally figured out a business model for Twitter. It’s advertising based and it only works if Twitter doesn’t solve their scaling problems. The way I see it, the most the Twitter user base needs Twitter to be running smoothly is about fourteen hours a day. That leaves ten hours a day of those cute “pleaseContinue reading “Twitter’s business model”

I’ve seen and met a lot of legendary creators at Comic-Con this week, but only one of them was Stan Lee. At the New York show I ran into him for about a second in the hallway when he was on his way to preside over his reality show contestants, just long enough to sayContinue reading “Meeting Stan Lee”

I watched a couple of our rocking TV Squad bloggers interview Zach Braff and Sarah Chalke on the set of Scrubs and when Joel Keller told Sarah that he’s from TV Squad, I got a little chill. That’s my name. I came up with “TV Squad.” How cool is that? And that got me thinking — complete withContinue reading “Names, names and more names”