That’s a question we all ask ourselves from time to time, especially in periods of transition.

Would I do anything differently with Syntagma Media if I knew what I know now?

The answer is pretty obvious : Yes, I’d go straight to where we’re going next without all the bits in between.

But life isn’t like that. We have to travel the long learning curve to get a rounded view of the basics and intermediates before we tackle the more complex areas.

So, where are we going next? I’m afraid I’m going to break the habit of a lifetime and stay partially dumb. Except …

This last week I’ve been reorganizing the inventory and the magazines — they will now have a more flexible content list. Where one site overlaps the readership of two mags, relevant posts will appear in each, for example. Syntagma will also appear in Phi.

As an interim measure, we’re cutting back on underperforming sites and merging similar sites that would do better together than apart. This will cut down on our admin and trim costs. We’re having a new general logo and a separate, initially-hidden, subset of sites, codenamed, Syntagma Confidential. And, no, these are not naughty sites, just experimental; the testbed of innovative ideas for the future.

The main bone of contention, though, has been the means of tackling the huge retail projects we still have in mind. In the light of the perceived — and actual — glass ceiling we’re grappling with to enter the upper echelons of this sector, I’m going to try out a smaller, less competitive, commercial sector in order to develop and attract the skills and infrastructure to tackle the Everest of retail mid-2007.

We’re also developing our growing inventory of new book serializations. Following Steve Newman’s continuing tour de force of the Hemingway serialization of his fictionalized biography of the author’s life, he’s now putting up his new Victorian crime novel, The Crime of the Crimea featuring the detective duo, Swann and Parker. This will be preceded by a juicy Christmas story : The Great Christmas Train Robbery, written exclusively for Syntagma readers. Watch out for this soon.

On another tack, we’ll be following the expected nuptials of Prince William to Kate Middleton on a separate, dedicated site. The huge tidal waves of traffic to our Royal Anecdotes offering, with the comments becoming a regular forum for every Royal fan and n*tc*se, tells us there’s a vast appetite for this subject out there. If every site in our network had the unique visitor stats of RA, we’d be close to the kind of traffic we need for a major breakthough in the biggest-ticket advertising.

But our main area of progress through 2007 will be in upgrading the backend technical side, plus unveiling a new template for our individual Wordpress websites. Small beer, perhaps, but necessary for our upcoming assault on mainstream media.

People always ask me why I’m so “obsessed” with advertising. The reason is simple : a content business lives by ad revenues alone. We don’t do subscriptions or direct sales (yet). Our entire stock of treasure comes from our advertisers, and those who click on Google Adsense.

It’s often not appreciated that professional content would virtually disappear from the internet were it not for advertising support. Yes, the big egos would still be there jostling for attention, but real writers would all but vanish.

So we value our advertisers past, present and still to come, and wish them a great December of sales, and, dare I say it, a very merry Christmas.