Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

About 4 years ago, I launched a free, easy to use online poetry & writing website: http://www.MoonTownCafe.com

MoonTown Cafe is an online poetry and writing website designed to get poets` work read, critiqued, and published. Our free forums and blogging space are designed to help poets succeed with every area of their writing. There are way too many features to describe here. I`ve created a trial account in case you don`t want to open one up. Your opinion is highly regarded.

user: poetryco
pass: poems  

I invite you to have a look, and your feedback and suggestions are much appreciated!

Sincerely,

Kyle O.

http://www.moontowncafe.com
A Family of Writers & Poets

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Visit our poetry website today at:

www.moontowncafe.com

Geez...! This is interesting enough as it is that I bookmarked it! I wasn`t interested in the poetry, but you also offer story writing, short and long, and thoughts, dreams, and so forth. How cool is THAT!?

My daughter is a poet, so I sent her the link as well. I guess my only question is how do you make money from it? I`m very skeptical of sites that are totally free, as I assume they`ll eventually go away and whatever I`ve put up on the site will vanish. But if I know there`s a way the owner is making some money, I also trust the site will have some longevity.

For example, if you have the premium area for adult content, I would suppose that`s where someone begins to register and pay a small fee? It doesn`t have to be huge...maybe $4.95/month, with discounts for annual or multi-year membership. Sort of like Live365.com radio works.

Thanks for the comments CraigL. As far as how we make money, if this was my sole income, I would have gone out of business years ago. This was started as a hobby and continued because I enjoy it so much. Our sources of income are:

- We do have a Premium Area for adult content and there is a small fee for that. The purpose of the fee is to protect the kids, not to turn a profit.
- Advertising, mainly adsense.
- Book publishing, this will really hit full swing this winter. We plan on sharing the profit with the poets we use in the books. Not expecting to rake in the cash on that, but we will produce some high quality books and pay many poets for their work.
- Contest form. We get paid a small amount for hosting a contest by another poetry company. On our contest page, one of the contests is for our site, the other is for a different poetry company.

Like I said, we are making a little money but not enough to raise a family on. If I didn`t have so much fun with it, I would have quit years ago. That`s the main reason, I know we will stick around. Thanks,

Kyle 

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Visit our poetry website today at:

www.moontowncafe.com

Kyle,

Don`t get me wrong. I intend to put up my own Web site for free, hopefully getting some money from downloads of partial content, pamphlets, or whatever other ideas I end up having. It`s not that it`s all about the money. Rather, it`s about the longevity of a site. Even if you`re making enough to pay the ISP bill, that`s sufficient to promote what`s otherwise pure fun and joy. :-) You`ve satisfied my curiosity, and I stand by my earlier post that it looks like a hugely fun site!

MoonTownCafe... Great site. It`s very easy to navigate and seems quite organized. I too bookmarked it. I think I will sign up soon.

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Vincent Wilcox (a.k.a. KRAKR)
Drummer
My band: Letters Make Words