Earlier tonight, a girl from our church called me wanting to know if I wanted to buy some stuff for a fundraiser for the cheerleaders. How do you tell a 16 year old that you don't want to donate AGAIN to their school project???
Well after donating to the silent auction, the BETA club, the math club, the general fundraisers and teaching out there for 2 years making half of what I'm "worth" an hour.... I finally said "no."
I wish there was a way for them to raise money doing something that is really valuable to people. I don't want cheesecake or cookie dough, I don't want wrapping paper and pop corn, I'm not done drinking the 4 cases of cokes that my wife caved in and bought last semester.
I've thought about a web fundraiser. Something where they could sell ads, on a web site that they updated, that had local news that was well written, and that they got some free advertising with the paper and radio from... They could get a lot of local traffic, and would get a chance to learn some cool stuff... But they would have a valuable thing to offer to people. I'd pay 20 bucks a month to get more business. If they did 10 --- simply 10 businesses, and had a real site that people would go to and that they updated... They would be able to raise $2400 bucks pretty quickly. Well if they had another ten, that had a smaller ad for 100 bucks, that would bring them up to $3400... I'd donate the site for the price of having the most prominent ad.
But the question is... What would you want to see on a site like that? Links to good MS and national news? Sort-of a "local-Drudge" site? Local scoop on stuff? I bet they could find some really good stuff. Maybe write some opinon articles, stuff about the local mayoral races etc... There is some liability in this of course. But you could monitor it via the board and make sure that everything was cool on the site.
If this works here, who's to say that we couldn't do it in really big towns like Atlanta, and sell ads for $75 a month, and get 100 people on there. Splitting that 50 / 50 would make it worth my while. Having the traffic make the site work... What do you think would be news worthy that would generate traffic?
2 comments:
best local gas prices
potholes to avoid
what's blooming in whose garden
best sales of the week in local stores
interviews with old timers about how things used to be
pictures of new babies
list of items for next aldermen meeting (city council?)
match of servers with people needing help:
babysitting,yardwork, spring cleaning, shut-in shopping
joke of the day, quote of the day
contests that readers enter
recipes
local ballgame schedules
focus on favorite sons that have done well or interestingly(like Adam going off to Iraq and such)
travel reports from retired (or others that have gone somewhere--mission trip reports)
post pictures of way cool wrecks
"on this day in 18xx, thus and so happened..."
puzzles and brain twisters
Is the Winston Co Journal a daily paper?
The Journal, is not a daily paper. In fact it's weekly, which give us a good market for daily news.
Good stuff so far, now all we need to do is pull in kids from all 3 major schools to get more good "scoop" about the local happenings.
That definately would get people going to it... To have a "births section" and stuff like that... Good thinking JMA... What about you Mr Batchelder? Any ideas?
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