I'm going to take a short term hit for switching to Drupal (lost search engine traffic), but I'm still positive about the change. The Drupal community is so large, and active, and more than willing to share. (Props to the fine folks at Morris for all they do. Hopefully I'll be able to give back to the community someway somday...) In any case, this screen-shot shows a cool module for Drupal I recently implemented. Giving users points for tasks on the site is going to be pretty interesting. Not sure exactly where I'm going with it, but I have some ideas.

In other news, I feel comfortable enough to let loose some more information about something I've been working on for a while - a partnership of sorts. We're in the final stages of getting everything down on paper, but after three hours today, we hammered out a lot of the specifics.

I'll have more on the specifics next week, but here's the overview. We've found another businessman whose primary skill is sales and networking. He has a website, but it's primarily a business directory with little to no original content. He has a client list, though, and a desire to grow. I have an audience. Al Jordan (ElwoodIndiana.org) has a large audience.

Basically, we're going to let a third person join our loose alliance and sell advertising for our sites for a percentage of the sale. We'll also have bundled sales on multiple sites, etc. Access to the relationships he's built up over the last few years is another perk. On top of all that, he's hungry too.

There's two reasons I haven't been concentrating too hard on local sales even though I know they're extremely important. One is the fact that the editorial/advertising wall is there for a very good reason. I felt uncomfortable going out into the field for both sides of that wall. I still did it a little because it was necessary, but I quickly backed off the advertising side and waited for people to come to me.

You can't run a business that way, though. To be successful at sales, you have to dedicate a lot of time to building solid relationships with the advertisers. This third person can do that (and do it well.)

So our little confederation expands a little, picks up another couple skill sets. This is good and could really be a game changer. Once I have a decent revenue stream (I'm looking at it like Google Adsense on the local level with a real live sales rep. out there hitting the pavement... Of course, there are risks involved in this, but I think they're worth it...) - once I have that steady stream, I can start to concentrate on MFP (And the other sites) more, which will attract more traffic and will lead to more sales, etc.

It could be the jumpstart I need to really get moving. With even a little capital, I can start a print product - which will help market and also bring in ad revenue... Among other things I have up my sleeve.

This whole process would've been easier if someone had thrown me a pile of money, but I think it's better I've come this far on my own, building it slowly but surely.

The future of journalism is alive and well, out here in the trenches, amongst the rebel alliance plotting the demise of the death star...

kpaul out...

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