I am about to make a serious -- perhaps my last -- attempt of making money through the Web. (Not the "fancy sports car, blonde chick in a big mansion and own data center" kind of money, but more like "paying the minimal living expenses" kind.)

I have picked the category "videogaming", because it is something that I know stuff about and that I "burn" for, and at the same time, it's big commercially. It's really the one thing that I think might work me.

I can hear you, screaming from your chair/bed/toilet/wherever the hell you're reading this: "Oh, no. Not another lame and crappy gaming site!". Then again, you might not be screaming anything at all, wondering what the fuck I'm talking about. Anyway...

So what? There's definitely an audience, and at least a certain per cent must appreciate non-bullshit, clean sites with interesting news and articles. Because that's what I intend to fill this site with. Interesting news and articles, that is. Not bullshit.

I am not planning to review games. At least not in the beginning. The reason for this is that I doubt that anyone will send me free copies of videogames to review unless the site is really popular and has a big influence on gamers. (Reviewing warez doesn't sound too serious.)

So... it'll be all about news and articles. And of course a community forum (written by hand, of course). Things are happening all the time in the gaming world -- especially now, with the upcoming next generation, and I feel that I would like to write about this.

The reason I even mention it here is that I don't want to jump into another dead-end project. You'll probably call me crazy if I say that I expect this to lead anywhere, but I really do. At least I've got to TRY, right?

Alright. I'm looking for co-workers. That's right. Now I've said it. No, you won't get paid. Then again, all you need is to write and publish it on the site which I will code and maintain. Why would you do that? Well... maybe you like writing and see this as an opportunity to reach out to people. Or something. I'm hoping to find one or a few people like that out there somewhere, who hopefully have their lives set up better than me, and can afford to do this in their free time.

The income would come from Google AdSense. AdSense actually works. I've gained experience with it. It's just that you need a stable site with good contents and SEO. I can do it. I really just want to pay the rent and be able to buy noodles and Coca-Cola to fuel my body while I do what I like best -- create games. With Allegro.

I hope that if anyone around here is lurking with his or her typing abilities, and are just looking for some way to get it out to the world, they'll respond to this thread (or contact me by other means, such as e-mail).

Obviously, I understand if you, even if you're interested, don't dare to take on any responsibility for actually sticking to this project. I understand that I will have to do everything (or almost everything) myself. It'd just be nice to have someone who is equally interested in the gaming industry (it's OK to dislike modern games -- in fact, I'm an oldschooler myself) who also knows how to type. I understand if you'd want to see the site before you make any decisions, but I try to build up a solid impressions with this thread for you to base your opinions/thoughts on.

Some basic ideas about the site:

• It'll be international and in English only.

• All news and articles will be commentable without pre censorship.

• It will (or at least SHOULD) have well-written articles and news instead of boring shit that nobody really is interested in reading.

• It will feature a proper URL scheme and stable backend. It will, like all my sites, be 100% valid W3-wise and make use of good practice, if possible with no "black hat" SEO (which shouldn't be necessary with all the original contents).

If you want to join, you should know English well. If possible, please give me an example of your writing skills.

(Just because it's a serious site, that doesn't mean we can't speak freely. It's supposed to be an independent Web site that you can trust and which isn't partial. After all, it won't have any "official" sponsors with special TOS agreements. Swearing and generally writing in a shameless fashion will be OK, as long as the grammar and spelling is correct.)

Does this sound sane? In my head, it does. As I hopefully have made clear, this is far from my first venture into the Web business, but I really believe that I've learned from my past mistakes and found something I can make work. The question is if I've convinced you...

Comments and stuff would be very much appreciated, even if I tend to ignore negative such...

Means of contacting me, other than replying to this thread:

• E-mail: kimmoalm@hotmail.com.

• MSN Messenger: Same as e-mail address.

• Other IMs, such as ICQ: Sorry. Not anymore.

• IRC: Let's meet someplace if you're interested.

I really doubt that everyone has had this dream... and to be honest, it's not even a dream to me. It's just something that I know might work and a way to get an income and still be proud over it.

About using pre-written solutions: hell no! They are bloated, slow and bandwidth-eating. No way in hell am I using those.

First, it should be mentioned that this idea originated as an alternative for the IT news site IDG.se, which is basically a really crappy IT news site, and yet the largest one in Sweden. I decided that the chances of getting a crowd reading my news would be too small, though, and that it was pretty much hopeless.

The second version, still in early alpha stages in my head, was something that would've fit perfectly for geeknews.com (or nerdnews.com), both which are taken and not used for any good purpose (the first one wanted three grand for me to buy it -- I bid $5 tops).

So... I ended up with the gaming site. Which really suits me the best. Finding a .com that's not taken and has a nice, catchy and still original name won't be easy, but that shouldn't really matter too much.

Judging by the way you type here, you seem to know English well. It seems to be the case with most "evolved" geeks, actually. ("Geek" is not a bad word in my vocabulary.)

Yeah. It'd be nice with a sample. I have noted that many sites split up their articles into several pages (possibly to show more ads), and this is something I strongly contradict in my Web religion and philosophy. There is absolutely no good logical reason to split up the same article into several pages.

The news items, as I see it, will consist of a fancy header title, a summarization of < 128 chars and a body text of everything from a couple of paragraphs to an entire "page", meaning 5-8 mid-length paragraphs (wild guess).

The articles, which basically should be personal opinions/thoughts about the gaming industry, could be themed with current topics, still looking back at past events and making a nice little story out of it. If this is obvious to you, just warp back one minute with your Personal Time Traveler. What? They don't sell those yet? My bad. Forget I said anything.

Seriously, though... You're more than welcome to submit any sample texts, but there's a long way to go. I'm going to put my soul into this project and work harder than ever before to make something good out of it.

Of course it'll be easy to publish the news, and once you get "accepted", I won't have to "verify" your items, but will let you upload them yourself whenever you feel like it. It's when we reach this point that things get really interesting.

Naturally, the author of each text will be properly credited. Perhaps I shouldn't compile a document with "standards" for how a text should be written to "fit in" (as long as it follows basic rules, of course). In fact, it might be a good idea to mix typing styles.

I have my own little version of English, where I like to swap the comma with the quotation mark, because I think that it makes no sense to say: "Mary had a little lamb," and she was happy. (As opposed to: "Mary had a little lamb", and she was happy.) Any comments on that?

Nobody knows better than me how hard it is to start up a community with absolutely no money or contacts. Without sounding like I'm going to give up early (because I'm not): I can only do my best. Sometimes, it's not just up to yourself if something goes well or bad.

You will fail. Your enthusiasm will burn out as quickly as it started. You announced your plan on here because you know you will fail. You think that if you tell people about this idea, you will be obliged to follow through on it. But that never works.

Is it monday yet anyway?

Whats sth?

Kimmo: You could cannibalize my e-z-cms+forum if you'd like - I've made it as easy as possible, so even Amnesty members can use it

Forum not finished yet, but getting there.. www.amnesty.se/uppsala

EDIT: And PS - maybe it would be cool to call your site HogWash - I betcha someone could make a cool log with a hog fighting a flushing hose

What the hell did you smoke?

To Kimmo Alm: go for it, try at least.
I would be interested but i sincerely don't have the time, all i can give you now is encouragement.

Sorry, but if you had spent the time writing this post on writing PHP code you would have advanced in making your homepage.
Now you have got a bunch of stupid advices and no progress.

Web site = collection of Web pages.
Web page = Web document/file.
Home( )page = first Web page on a Web site.
Start page = Web browser's start page.

Front page = physical newspaper term.

Moreover, using pre-made Web solutions is cheating and equivalent to claiming that you've beat Doom with the "iddqd" and "idkfa" cheat codes turned on.

Is the intent of the site to show off your personal prowess as a coder, or to bring content to readers?

If it's the latter, you have nothing to gain from writing your own system. If it's the former, you must write your own system.

I often asked myself why the allegro community would not make a single commercial game. We have a great platform, we have great artists, great programmers that all have individual special abilities, great designers, but everyone is so pessimistic.

edit

Hands up, if you would get the offer to join a big team, who of you would join?

So you can get on with the job of creating site content instead of asking others to do it for nothing.

He's still right.