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Thirty years ago when Michael published his first newspaper, New Horizons, the world was very different. 

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The Internet was not a big deal yet. 

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Nobody communicated through Social Networks.  Facebook didn't exist.  People wrote letters to one another and mailed them through the U.S. Post Office.  There was no such thing as texting.  If we wanted to tell one another something, we either did it in person, wrote a note or used the phone.  And desktop personal home computers were something you saw on science fiction TV shows like Star Trek.  

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THE BIRTH OF A NEW WAY TO COMMUNICATE

In 1972, all that began to change.  The Intel 8008 was built and sold about 90,000 units.  This was followed a short while later by the Commodore 64 which sold 17 million units. 

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Through the late 1970s and into the 1980s, computers were developed for household use, with software for personal productivity, programming and games. 

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There was Radio Shack's TRS-80 and Steve Job's Apple II.  By 2001, 125 million personal computers were shipped in comparison to the 90,000 units sold in 1972.

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Little did we know the incredible impact on our lives that the personal home computer would have.  But this evolving technology was setting the stage for the Internet.

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And what a stage!  Back in the 1970s, cell phones were big bulky things and businessmen were still using pagers and going to a pay phone to return calls.  Who'd of thought that just three decades later the same businessmen would be conducting conferences online with customers halfway around the world?

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Although the Internet had been around a while (it started back in the 1950s with point-to-point communication between mainframe computers), it wasn't until 1995 that the Net as we know it today took its first real step.

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And what a step!  Today, over 97% of all telecommunicated information is delivered over the Internet.  News.  Email.  Movies.  Online social communities.  Magazines.  Games.  Shopping.

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The Net literally influences every part of our lives, weaved into the fabric of everything we do, our culture, how we communicate, how we parent, how we work, even how we date. 

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TAKING IT TO THE NET

In 1997, Michael created his first online newspaper, The Hometown Journal.  The Net was still very much in its infancy.  There was no such thing as high-speed cable or satellite connections.  Modems connected at 9,600 to 14,400 baud.  You had to wait forever for sites with graphics to load.  The idea of watching video online was ridulous (you'd be waiting hours for your favorite TV show to download).  So, creating an online version of an actual printed publication was quite innovative (not many were doing it). 

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But it's time was coming ...

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About three years ago, the Internet finally came into its own.  Technology had made it possible to transfer information at amazingly fast speeds.  And more and more consumers were doing more and more things online, playing games, reading the news, visiting, banking and shopping.   For the first time, online retail sales surpassed real world brick-and-mortar retail store sales.

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The Internet had grown up.

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The same phenomenon that was happening to retail stores was also taking place in the publishing industry.  Online digital versions of newspapers were leaving their traditional printed counterparts in the dust.

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Michael's publications were no exception.  More and more of his readers found it easier just to go online with the web address they had found in the paper and enter it directly into their browser.  They found it more convenient and easier to share their favorite stories with friends, family and co-workers via email.  These new readers simply had to click a link to be instantly delivered to the online publication. 

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So, even though these online publications were primarily promoted to the readers of the printed publications, which they picked up in actual real world coffee shops, diners, beauty shops, doctors offices and special events, they had limited circulation.  

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No longer the case.

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We are now actively promoting My Guide to the Backroads of America and the Roadside Cafe online ... on search engines and in Social Media communities (like Facebook) and on blogs ...

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We're adding over 300 new Profiles a day to the Cafe and each of these new Profiles and any accompanying blogs are being ranked on Google and Yahoo and Bing and AOL and other search engines with links coming back to our network driving new traffic to the members of our Cafe.

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This aggressive approach has resulted in our readership growing at an unprecedented rate, doubling every couple weeks and even that is about to increase ...

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A NEW WAY TO DO THINGS 

It used to be that if you wanted to meet someone or you wanted to learn something or be around like-minded people, you had to do it in person.

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No longer the case.

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Facebook's 500 million users do all that without ever leaving their keyboard.  Why?  Because people love to connect and love to feel like they belong.  Because people love to have real two-way conversations (an online community is not a flyer or a billboard talking at them).  Humans are social creatures.  We love to connect and share.

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With the explosive growth of Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, iVillage and about one thousand other smaller online communities, the old way of marketing (getting in someone's face and demanding their attention) is dead.

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If the person you are trying to reach is not interested or finds your message annoying, they simply "click" you our of existence.

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JOINING TOGETHER WITH
OTHER LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE

The answer for you as a merchant and for us as publishers is to  connect with people the way we are meant to – by gathering together with like-minded individuals who inspire and support us, sharing ideas, telling one another about amazing and beautiful things that others have created, by opening up dialogues with others and by listening and appreciating what they have to say.

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Afterall, isn't that what you are trying to do anyway?  Whether we're an artist or a photographer, a sculptor or a craftsperson, aren't we trying to introduce people to what we create with the hope that they will like what we made as much as we loved making it?

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That's why we created the Roadside Cafe - to provide a place where artists and artisans can showcase their work, a place where people interested in creative things can meet the artist and their creations, a quiet intimate place where folks can slide into a booth and relax with a hot cup of Joe and have a friendly conversation with you and get to know you and your work.

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