ALBANY — Two years ago, the Web site run by Greg Dahlmann and Mary Darcy was a fledgling start-up, and it was unclear if there was demand in the Capital Region for its online mix of information and entertainment.
But today, All Over Albany is an established, if still small, part of the area’s media landscape.
The site — alloveralbany.com — has about 40,000 unique visitors a month, Dahlmann and Darcy say. And it sells enough advertising that the pair have mostly been able to leave their day jobs behind.
“Things have gone pretty much as expected,” said Dahlmann.
“Or as we hoped, anyway,” added Darcy.
But how much more can the All Over Albany audience grow? Is everybody who’d be interested in reading its content already doing so? Or is there a large audience of folks who haven’t discovered the site?
Those are questions that Darcy and Dahlmann expect — or hope — to answer this year. Noting the site has grown almost entirely by word of mouth, they say they’re going to work harder at advertising their work, while working harder to attract advertisers to support it.
“We haven’t really marketed ourselves, which is something we need to pay more attention to,” said Dahlmann.
Not that doing so will come naturally: “We’re producers. We’re writers,” said Darcy. “We’re not salespeople.”
For the uninitiated, All Over Albany provides posts on Capital Region entertainment and shopping options, as well as unorthodox takes on regional news.
Recent posts, for example, include a look at the sport of curling in the Capital Region; a quick scan of the potential Harold Ford and Kirsten Gillibrand matchup; and a take on buying winter coats in mid-winter.
New media outlets like The Huffington Post or The Drudge Report are sometimes criticized as so-called aggregators that take and profit from the work of traditional news outlets.
And All Over Albany does rely on local news outlets for a good chunk of its information. But Darcy and Dahlmann work, too, at finding content that’s unique.
“Otherwise, I don’t think there’s any point,” Dahlmann said.
All Over Albany is low-overhead operation. Dahlmann and Darcy are its only employees. There is no headquarters or office. On many days, in fact, Dahlmann and Darcy work from a laptop-laden table at the Uncommon Grounds coffee shop on Western Avenue.
Both have journalism backgrounds. In fact, they worked for public radio station WAMC. It’s been a frustration, then, that All Over Albany hasn’t always been taken seriously.
Isn’t it just another blog, after all, little different than some guy who, say, fritters away days by typing about his cat?
But Darcy said news outlets and others began to view All Over Albany differently last March, when the site seemingly scooped television stations and newspapers with a report of an explosion near the state Capitol.
All Over Albany picked up on Twitter reports detailing the explosion, and stayed with the story through the afternoon.
It was a victory — and a sign that All Over Albany was on its way to fulfilling goals Dahlmann and Darcy had when they launched the site in 2007.
“We’re not there yet,” Dahlmann said. “But we’re headed in the right direction.”
Chris Churchill can be reached at 454-5442 or cchurchill@timesunion.com.
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