My Web Community

I have been doing a lot of thinking about ways to establish a presence on the web and possibly make a little money with it. I don't want to make this a new career or something that replaces my job (I love my job), I just want to do something that will help others in my life.

To be more specific, what led me to this thought was the idea of allowing my wife to use her love for the internet in a more profitable and fulfilling way. Also, my brother is interested in staying at home with his children and is looking for some work at home ideas. He's already tried a couple of things that I am afraid are scams. We'll have to wait and see. But it gave me the impetus to start thinking it through more carefully. After a great deal of research, I have come up with the following. If you have any thoughts on this, please let me know.

My idea is to create a web-based community similar to the communities many people grew up in. The community I am thinking of is one in which you know your neighbors and they are always willing to lend a helping hand. I know there are many people who grew up in communities where there was little interaction amongst neighbors. I have experienced both and much prefer the former.

In my web-based community (for now I'll refer to it as "WebCom" although I think someone could come up with a much better name) each person knows the neighbors and the skills/talents those neighbors have. For example, I am a civil engineer who specializes in environmental issues (particularly landfill related issues). If a neighbor wants to build a retaining wall or has questions about a landfill to be located near their child's school, they could ask my opinion. I tell them what I can about the issue - for free. I share my knowledge to help a neighbor. In turn, if I have an automotive question, I locate a neighbor that has relevant experience and ask their opinion. That's the gist of it.

One big obstacle that I see would be legal issues related to bad advice. I would, for example, have to have some sort of disclaimer that my opinion was not being offered as a Professional Engineering opinion. I can't put my license on the line for someone I have never met or received compensation from. The ideal here would be to have a legal expert in the WebCom that could recommend proper disclaimers and such.

I have a couple of ideas on how to structure the community:

The first idea is to have it completely within my webspace (which I don't currently have). With this structure, I would provide the webhosting (probably through another provider) and neighbors would have to pay me or the webhosting company a "move-in" fee or "rent" to establish their home(page).

The second idea is to let the neighbors setup their own homes wherever they want and submit links to me. This might be the easiest and cheapest way to handle it. I need to consider that aspect more. Any thoughts anyone?

Other concerns I have are as follows:

Politics - do we limit the politics and other hot-button topics so as to make this a less confrontational community. I don't think so but it is worth considering.

Referrals - I would need some sort of good database software to track the links by skills and talents so that new residents can quickly find what they need.

Subscriptions - In order to make this work, I would want everyone to be willing to share their talents rather than just get info from others and never give anything back. I could require users to subscribe and pay but that will likely drive away some useful people along with the bad. I probably wouldn't sign up for something like that. Maybe a better idea would be a kind of rating system that tracked a user's "advice given" versus "advice requested" ratio. If it's not above a certain level (after adequate usage), I might not respond to a question from the user. That sounds promising.

Marketing - How would I get the word out about the community. I hate spam. I don't want to spend a lot as I don't expect to generate a lot of revenue.

Favorites - I would want to have it set up so that each home-owner could choose their neighbors which would simply be adding a resident to their favorites section. It could be made neat though. Maybe even have addresses and a map or something like that.

Family members pages - For my "home", I would like to have separate "rooms" for me, my wife, and my daughter. My wife might have a blog about homeschooling activities. My daughter might tell what she has learned each week. I could even have a guest room where relatives or friends "spend some time" occasionally.

To offset the costs of the webspace and the time spent , each family could choose their own advertising. From what I have seen thus far, adsense by Google is probably the easiest to seet up but I don't know that much about it yet. My guess is that you would not have the ability to control who advertises on your page. I don't know that that would be acceptable to me. Of course, if I am getting a decent amount of traffic, I might be able to sell the ad space directly to an advertiser. Home Depot comes to mind as well as the company that would be hosting my site.

It needs some more work and research but it is the best idea I have come up with so far. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Organization

Okay. One of the common themes in my life at this moment is "I need to get organized". I don't know if this is really what I need but I think it can't hurt.

In my job, I handle multiple projects all day (and night) long. It seems that every day that I go into my office with a plan of attack (I am going to work on/complete this project today), a thousand other things come up to occupy my day. Before I know it, the day is over and I haven't yet touched the "planned project". This usually just leads to me working late to make some progress.

At home, it's much the same. Whether it's getting the grass cut or fixing a leaking roof, it never seems to get done in a planned fashion. I'm always reacting. As I have spent the last few months considering what to do to improve my life, the one thing I seem to be focusing on is this - I want a plan for my life. I don't wqant to always be reacting. I want to take actions because they move me toward the goals I have set for my life. (Yes, I need to set those goals first).

I think a lot of this introspection has been brought on by my attendance at the Dale Carnegie Course. In this course (see link) the instructor phrased my thoughts as "I want to lead an intentional life." I really like that idea. Now how do I get there?

I'm a bit dissapointed that I haven't received any comments on my original post. I don't know if I am just being impatient or if this is not going to be a good format for the kind of support I am seeking. Regardless, I feel better already just because I have made the effort and recorded some of my thoughts.

I'll sign off for now. In the next post, I intend to detail some of my planned actions and detail the questions I am asking myself - and you.

Thank you!

You Are Invited

Welcome to My Blog - and my life.

I'm 35 years old, mildly successful, have a wonderful family, and a nice house. What's missing is a sense of fulfillment. This blog is all about helping me to sort out what I need to do to gain this fulfillment. I expect that much of my progress toward this goal will come from the simple process of putting my thoughts down and organizing them. However, I also hope that this process will be sped up and made far richer by input from YOU. Whoever you are, I believe that you have an idea that I can use. It may be just the mental nudge I need to grasp an illusive concept.

It seems quite selfish to ask so much of you without offering something in return. Here's what I think I can offer.

1. My Blog should inspire you to "Think some good thinks". Who can't benefit from a little mental stretching?
2. I will do my best to respond to all comments.
3. I hope that some of the ideas that I post and that others share will be useful to you.
4. If you are like me, the sense of pride that comes from helping someone else is very satisfying. I can give you that.

Well, that's going to do it for the initial post. I will begin to provide more detail of my present situation in the next post.