The Beginning Part I
The Beginning Part II
In fall of 2006, I decided that I wanted to create a website that was geared towards media and entertainment. This was full circle back to my promotion and newsletter days (check part I). The name for me was simple, I love the music of the Caribbean and decided to go with DancehallSoca, ReggaeCalypso, and a few others. I started to dig deeper into domains as a viable business venture. In my exploration, I trashed my prior business model and create a new model strictly devoted to earning income from the Internet. At this point, I had roughly 9 yrs of experience and wanted to take things a little more seriously.
Through my research I found out that the name was registered before but later dropped. I learned that Byron Lee had an album titled "Dancehall Soca." I was not aware of this album prior to registering the name but was elated to find out that DancehallSoca was used by one of the greats in Caribbean music. This gave a much needed burst of confidence and I felt secure that this could work.
I thought long and hard about how I would go about creating original content @ DancehallSoca. I came to the conclusion that it would involve interviews and music (original idea right...lol). I placed a survey on the site and asked people to vote on who they wanted to be interviewed. I picked a few big names in the both genres of Dancehall and Soca. In the first month, the visitors to the site was a couple hundred persons. A month later, the site had roughly 3,000 visitors. They filled out the survey and I realize I had no way of getting in contact with Shurwayne Winchester (He was the winner of the survey) and being taken seriously with no established media platform. LOL.
This was the catalyst for a simple change that made DancehallSoca what it is today. I would devote DancehallSoca to profiling emerging Caribbean artistes. The feature of Dem a buss was born. Every month for a year, I interviewed a new artiste and learn more about their music, life, culture, etc. The first two artistes I interviewed were Kris Kelli (Jamaica) & Maddzart (St. Vincent).
DancehallSoca.com has been operating successfully now for almost three years. Our model is still the same. We recently added a video interview feature. I decided in early 2009 that I wanted to revamp DancehallSoca in order to bring the website up a notch. Our content is 90% original and produced by a dedicated team of individuals all over the Caribbean and diaspora.
DancehallSoca works because of the simple name, it is self explanatory. I was recently at a event and jokingly passed my card to a young lady who did not have a place to put the card. She said to me,"it is easy to remember, just DancehallSoca!"
Things to know
*The ladies in our logo is a real person, my cousin's(Ray) wife who so nicely posed for the picture, while her husband took my idea and bring it to life.
*The love sign (on logo) was totally random when the same picture was put back to back, if that is not a sign, I don't know what else to say.
* Logo was spiced up by my St. Lucian brethren Kerry a year and half later.
*Mr. DancehallSoca has now become my other name...lol
Part IV: The decision to blog professionally @ informtainment
0 comments
Post a Comment