Once a week, as a part of Startup Reactor, Mark Hager will provide us with a working journal of what life has been like working on his startup, Age In Place. All feedback is greatly appreciated.

Our latest newsletter went out this past week and marks the debut of our first published submission from an industry professional. (We had the great pleasure of working with Jamie Goldberg, who is a Certified Kitchen and Bath Designer and a Certified Aging in Place Specialist.)

We allocate quite a bit of time to developing high quality and relevant content to interest both consumers and professionals alike. This has helped us maintain a 50% open and click-rate from subscribers.

Our work on Twitter is really paying off. We’ve been working hard to reach out to other Twitterers; lending a helping hand where we can and actively seeking connections with individuals in related industries. In the past two weeks we’ve increased our followers by 35%, made contacts with two industry professionals who have agreed to write for us, connected with principles of three websites looking to do some type of collaborative work and been in talks with a national radio show host who has asked us to do a monthly spot in 2009. That’s the power of the ‘social’ in social media.

Now that 2008 is almost over, we’ve taken a step back to figure out what is going to occupy our time in 2009. We will be putting our effort to the things we feel will serve consumers best and create opportunities to begin garnering income from the site. Our “Top 5″ at this point consists of:

• Locale specific information on the Age in Place website
• 2 new sections for the site
• A massive effort to involve industry professionals in content creation
• A total rework of all existing sections to ‘step’ people through making decisions for their own aging in place plan
• Collaborations/Partnerships that will net value for consumers

We hope everyone has an incredible holiday season and a great new year. We appreciate everyone who has read our story as it unfolds or provided feedback to us.

Until next week …

(Images)

If you enjoyed that why not find a job or read our guide to working in the 21st century. You can also join our Kiva team or hire me for your project.