I just finished listening to podcasts from Webzine2005 (San Francisco). I highly suggest you go and listen to the podcasts, there are a lot of great conversations and panels to listen to.

One specifically that I think a lot of start-ups in China will find useful is the one titled: “Selling Out: Making money doing what you love.” This panel was moderated by Philip Kaplan, formerly of Fuckedcompany.com; other panelists included:

Brad Fitzpatrick, LiveJournal
Jim Young, HOT or NOT
Srini Kumar, Unamerican Activities, StickerNation
Maheesh Jain, CafePress
Moderator: Philip J. Kaplan, AdBrite

Some of the questions Kaplan asks are:

1. What were you doing before you started your site? When did you leave your full time job (if you had one) to focus full time on your site?

2. How do competitors positively and negatively impact your business?

3. How did you get customers and visitors to go to your site?

4. What are the challenges independent web publishers face as they grow? How can they make money?

5. What was the turning point (i.e. financial, page views) or rather, at what point did your site exploded to the upside?

6. Is there a rush to be successful?