The first rule of internet business is to find someone else who has done something similar to what you want to do and copy it. That's because success is in the execution, not the idea. Many people have great ideas, but the truly great idea is figuring out how to make it work.

As I think about a resource for creative and innovative living, I look to see what's already out there and how it is working. Guy Kawasaki's Alltop provides a great dashboard into lifestyle-oriented blogs and the Compete.com toolbar quickly shows me an estimate of monthly visitor traffic.

Twitter led me to a surprisingly successful site, The Art of Manliness. I say "surprisingly" because my first reaction was, "this is so NOT me." I'm not worried about proving my "manliness" to anyone. But that's not what the site is about and as I read deeper and found the diverse and thoughtful comments to posts, I realized there was a lot to learn from this site, especially since it draws about 90K visitors/month.

A tweet from @cjshaefer sent me to his post, Are the Suburbs killing your Manhood? Like most of the things on AOM, it was initially provocative, but illustrated deeper themes of living life with integrity and challenge. OK, "manliness." I don't see that as gender-specific. I checked out the relationships and family category expecting to find some caveman thinking, but instead found Quit Coddling Your Kids-- provocative title, common sense advice; and a poll where the majority of respondents felt being a stay-at-home dad was "manly."

Now is this site kind of an online "Men's Health"? Or a male Cosmo? Far from it. It's a clever and thoughtful site that doesn't lecture men on how to live but relates stories from men with strong ideas that then engage the community. The categories of topics are not just an index to "how-to" articles, they provide a thematic framework to ideas that matter, in a less ponderous way than I expounded yesterday. But the site does also include many "how to" items and features so there are multiple ways to engage readers. The weekly poll, constant reminders to subscribe to the newsletter, and above all, an attitude that says, despite the title, this is not a site that takes itself too seriously.

Key takeaways for me:

• don't forget the humor!
• blogs and opinions alone are not enough
• use a variety of fun features to draw people in
• don't take yourself so seriously
• do be controversial and risk offense
• underneath it all, the core ideas still matter and the passion of writers and commentors is still the hook. But it's got to be fun!