Early this year I used a wonderful Christmas gift to buy a lively, colorful template and a domain name, and I set about building what I hoped would be a freedomista portal — sort of a daily starting place for all things to do with living free.
I was going great guns on the project until I ran into a couple of tiny coding issues. The young man I hired to help took nearly two months to do the hour or so’s worth of work (couldn’t fire him; he was a friend’s son; and to his credit when it was all over he refused to charge me). Anyhow, by the time I could get back to the site … fizzle. I had run out of steam.
All year I’ve promised myself I’d finish the project and get the site online. But now the hosting company tells me my free year is running out and this morning I had to face the reality: I am never going to do this on my own.
In addition to the fizzlement, the fact is that any such site these days has to include a social networking component, and I’m about as interested in social networking as I am in running for president.
I had hoped that the site would be a fun place to gather — both for experienced freedomistas and for newbies seeking resources. I had also hoped it could generate a few hundred dollars a month from advertising, Amazon links, and various other vendor deals. But with me alone, it’s not going to do any of that.
So … would anybody be interested in “adopting” a freedomista site? I’m open to various arrangements, from ones that kick me clean out the door to ones in which I play a subsidiary role.
If you’re interested and have either coding skills or marketing skills (or, amazing thing, both), let’s talk. And you have the enthusiasm to make it happen, of course. You can drop an email to me here: freedomsite at hermit dot cotse dot net. I can show you the work in progress (it’s online, just not publicly accessible) and tell you more about what I had in mind. If you’re still interested and I think you can bring to the site what it needs, we can talk business.
I would love to. Of course you would need to be heavily involved in this. Your fame would be an important selling point. I believe it could be a clearing house for good ideas on remaining free from government interference, an alternative to the alternative lifestyle, and leveraging technology into resilient living………………………. um… that’s all I got. I’ve already lost interested and will be going over to a friends house to drink wine and watch football. (sorry, couldn’t help myself). 😉
Too bad I don’t have the whereitall of a big mouth to keep up with the updates that this would require.
On another note, Claire, since I know you have a fetish for flashlights, I thought you might be interested in seeing this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZykL55HFN70&feature=player_embedded&utm_medium=email&utm_source=peer360&utm_campaign=CampingSurvivalNovember10&utm_content=Haveyouevertriedtostartafirewithmatchesalighteroraflintrodwithcoldhands
Naturally I don’t have anything to do with this other than an interested observer passing this along.
Great idea, wish I knew how to help…
Jim B:
Clicking on that link you provided gives me a window that says it is private and you need clearance from the owner to access.
“Too bad I don’t have the whereitall of a big mouth to keep up with the updates that this would require.”
I’ve had two incidents of assuming my thoughts were sufficient to do do a blog… they were not sufficient. The first time output ran out of material within a month. The second time it was clear my mind wasn’t on a journey as I’d always assumed, but a loop… and it started repeating itself rather quickly. A website? Talk about bringing my weaknesses to the fore.
The Price of Liberty.org has been going strong for 8 years now… no social networking and zero commercial advertising. Of course, we’ve never captured nation wide attention and our readership stays in the range of 1000 or so visitors a day… Sadly, the archives are badly under utilized. Lots of good stuff there from over the years.
Costs me about $120. a years, and a few hours a week to update it. I’d love to have more original content and do a major upgrade, but so far it’s just me and my shadow. 🙂
I do html coding, with help from an editing program, but I’m not much of a marketer, really. But I’d love to see what you’ve got, Claire. 🙂
MamaLiberty, I admire you for your steady effort. And I’ll drop you an email later today to show you what I was up to before I ceased being up to anything at all. My aim for the place was to make it a daily stop for freedomistas of all stripes. And to earn a little money by making it a great site. It either needs to grow and become as big as (or bigger than) sites like LRC or it needs to die quietly. The more I think about it, it needs vision and marketing more than it needs coding.
Ok, lets try again.
http://campingsurvival.com/flashlightfirestarter.html
This seems to be the owners of the video.
Go to the Camping Survival website, it’s on the bottom of the right hand column.
For some reason this site is not letting me link the site.
Or try this roundabout way.
http://www.thementalmilitia.com/forums/index.php?topic=29807.0
“The more I think about it, it needs vision and marketing more than it needs coding.”
What about a virtual hangout, with a barter/marketplace for freedomistas to exchange products, services, practical ideas for achieving freedom, and meetups? Or did you have something else specific in mind?
Pat — the “virtual hangout” ideas you suggest could easily fit into the site’s vision. I aimed for it to be a freedomista resource where people from small-government lib-cons to hardcore anarchists could come to get news, find resources, and otherwise get (or keep) on the road to living free. Whatever brings people to the site to do that would be excellent.
However, my running-out-of-steam problem wasn’t because I didn’t have ideas. It was because I’m not an entrepreneur or a marketer. I can imagine 1,000 things the site could be or do. I just don’t have what it takes to make it happen, so I’m looking for somebody else who has that vision, coupled with marketing and/or coding skills, to make it a reality. It’s either that or just let it die aborning — which would be better than putting it online and having it just limp along.
I have, however, had several interesting inquiries this morning. So we’ll see …
Sounds like an excellent resource. I hope it comes together.