It’s here. The day I can finally announce the project I’ve been working on since November, when I took that big leap from freelance writing to freelance editing.
Introducing Inside Edge, an online magazine on corporate finance for midsized companies sponsored by American Express and Federated Media.
The site’s still in a soft launch, which means it’s up and running and the sponsors are cranking up their own marketing machinery to formally announce it soon.
But I couldn’t wait any longer to share what I’ve spent so much time working on over the past five months. You can access it at www.GetTheInsideEdge.com or www.americanexpress.com/insideedge.
In addition to providing the team from American Express and Federated that developed the site with direction on editorial content, my main role has been as features editor, planning, assigning and editing stories in the Articles section. The site’s launching with several of these, and you’ll see more added each week.
The site’s still in the early stages and lots more bells and whistles are on the drawing board, including interactive elements that will let readers share stories they like on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Amex you probably know. If you don’t know Federated Media, it’s a five-year-old San Francisco digital media company that runs ad networks for 100 major blogs including Dooce, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb and VentureBeat. One of Federated’s cofounders is John Battelle, who started The Industry Standard, an Internet industry magazine I wrote for in the late 1990s before the dot-com bust.
American Express hopes the site will gain the same kind of success it’s had with OpenForum, a website for small business Federated Media helped the financial services company launch three years ago. OpenForum runs original stories and videos, content from influential small business and finance blogs, an active community forum and attracts close to 830,000 visitors a month.
Both Inside Edge and OpenForum are what the media industry calls custom publications, that is, magazines – in this case online magazines – produced by a company for its customers. Though not journalism in the strictest sense, at Inside Edge we’re trying nonetheless to provide timely, informative stories on financial matters that midsized companies care about, including expense management, cash flow, credit, and more.
Visit InsideEdge and find out for yourself. I’ll see you there.
Congratulations, Michelle!
Nice work, Michelle. And thanks for the info on custom publications. Although I understand the concept, I hadn’t thought about it from the online publishing perspective.
I’d worked on online custom pubs before this, but Inside Edge takes it to a whole new level. I think we’ll see more of these types of publications as time goes on.
Michelle
This is fantastic, Michelle! Great looking site and we know, since you’re involved, the content is fabulous!
Holly Tucker
@history_geek
Thanks Holly!
Michelle
Wow! Now that’s a custom content site! Very clean & attractive. I haven’t read any stories yet (I know they’ll be GREAT), but at a glance, the topics and presentation are very user-friendly.
Michelle, InsideEdge looks great. Custom publishing online is a big trend, but it is not usually done so well. Bernard
Michelle, I’m just now seeing this but wanted to offer my better late than never congratulations!!
Marshal and Bernard: Thanks so much, that means a lot coming from you.
Michelle
Hi Michelle,
Nice work.
Don’t forget about o2kl who also worked on the site, inlcuding the name, logo, overall design and navigation!
Cheers,
Did not mean to overlook your part in helping get Inside Edge up and running, but I didn’t work with anyone from the firm directly and the Amex team I do interact with didn’t share many specifics (at least with me) about the role you played. I’ve received lots of comments on how nice the site looks, so props to you for that.
Michelle