A short review of our year – 5 general questions on ThinkGeoEnergy

Alexander Richter 21 Dec 2015

Another year is nearly behind us and it is time to reflect a little bit on our activities this year. Did you know that we have now reported on the geothermal energy industry for more than 7 years? When I started to post news on this platform in late 2008, I clearly did not expect the site to reach such a wide readership across all facets of our industry.

While I want to give you some highlights of our achievements, I thought this year we should try something slightly different. From time to time I get questions either by email or in discussions at events on our activities and our plans with ThinkGeoEnergy, so herewith I want to answer a few of them.

But first let me wish you a festive holiday season and a successful and prosperous new year. ThinkGeoEnergy will be taking a break in news posting from December 22 to January 4th.

1. How many people work on ThinkGeoEnergy?

We are actually two that are running ThinkGeoEnergy and our Spanish-language service PiensaGeotermia.com. Francisco Rojas who joined ThinkGeoEnergy in 2014 has been a tremendous help. He not only runs PiensaGeotermia, as I don´t speak Spanish, but also makes sure we stay on track when it comes to our social media feeds. But after some challenging times following some web development gone bad (see notes below), he is now only working part-time for ThinkGeoEnergy.

We could actually need some help, so if you feel like helping us in one way or another, please drop me a line. E-mail address below.

2. How is your work-load?

This is pretty much an up and down. This year seems to have been particularly busy. As the development of our new site ended up to be much more strenuous on us time-wise and financially things were rather busy. Then the World Geothermal Congress took place in Melbourne. So there has been tons to do.

Doing research on the industry, connecting with people, sourcing and writing news take a bulk of our time, but we spend most time exploring ways on how we can financially stay afloat to continue serving the industry. This past year I also travelled a lot and that sometimes made it difficult to keep up with news, so posting news whenever there has been an internet connection, even in the weirdest hours of the day were a constant element of my life.

So there is never a dull moment.

3. The business of ThinkGeoEnergy

ThinkGeoEnergy is first and foremost set up as a self-sustaining business. ThinkGeoEnergy is first and foremost a media business focused on a rather narrow niche market. We have grown organically over the years and our income, mostly through advertisement, has been mostly reinvested into developing our web-front, attend conferences and also cover some of the expenses of me being on the Board of Directors of the International Geothermal Association.

Back in October 2014, I wrote a piece on “Surviving running a business in a (micro) niche market” on LinkedIn. The article gives a little bit of background into our thinking and plans.  So the key driver for ThinkGeoEnergy is to create sufficient income to grow and provide all the things that we think can help push our industry forward.

4. Do you work with any partners?

Over the years I have been able to rely on several good friends in the industry, who have been very supportive. Our advertising partners have been a great help along the way. Working with them on promoting the geothermal energy industry and their products and services is a great inspiration.

We also work closely with several of the national geothermal associations and are looking forward binding them more into our work, particularly for the new sites we are planning.

We are working on several new things for ThinkGeoEnergy with our partners at Enerchange and Geo Energy Marketing Services, more on this early in the new year.

But we are also seeking new partners to drive our business in Turkey and Indonesia, so don’t hesitate to contact me if you are interested.

5. What are your plans for the next year?

After the challenges on our web front end, the focus now is on finishing our new website and the integration of our research database. Then, we will be working on fine-tuning our content on the site, re-launch our PiensaGeotermia website and launch a Turkish geothermal news platform. After that … well there are lots of things in the pipeline. Again I can only point to the article I referred to above.  

… and here a short statistical overview over 2015 for ThinkGeoEnergy.

• 112,000 visitors
• 190,000 sessions
• 540,000 pageviews
• Visitors from 215 countries

From us here at ThinkGeoEnergy and PiensaGeotermia, I wish you a nice holiday season and all the best for the new year.

Alexander Richter

e-mail: alex@thinkgeoenergy.com