Atlas City Project

This was in the news today:

www.jpost.com/Business/BusinessNews/Article.aspx?id=182201

And reminded me that as I see it, a way for us to develop an income is to make use of the internet, as this is something we can use today, before we move into a community, and when we have moved, without changing jobs!

My first thought on what business would be a good one to get into would be microfinance, as it then allows the creation of other businesses more easily, as well as providing a few jobs itself.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfinance

This is an interesting idea. Anything to do with an internet business is inspiring to me. It also allows us to run it from homes (no business building, wasted gas/time driving, etc.). Micro finance is also a worthy cause, as would be legal services. People are too often taken advantage of because they know little to nothing about these topics in the real world.

P.S. This is copied from the newsletter. Can you see anything peciliar with it?

"PITA hopes to raise another €3 million to expand the program over three to five years. Companies awarded direct financial assistance will receive somewhere in the range of $8,000 to $20,000 and will be expected to pay 20 percent to 40% of the proposed project’s cost."

I can help with this and I think it's an excellent idea.

I have run my own business from home for over a decade and my expertise is in building and marketing websites. I can offer free consulting via this forum and would be willing to do group trainings if it was of interest and the goal is to fund the Atlas Project.

What is needed:

Money-wise, websites can be created for next to nothing or free these days (well, if you want it to look really good, you'll spend a little bit for that), the real expenditure in having a successful online business is TIME and EXPERTISE.

Let's try a scenario:

Atlas members vote on what products or services would be:
1) most viable on the net
2) within our realm of expertise (be it a single member or collectively)

I can provide a number of suggestions.

My team provides the consulting on site development, design and marketing.

Atlas members volunteer to help with (and follow guidelines for) promoting the site.


There are a large number of ways to tackle this. For example, it could be an e-commerce site which sells Earth-friendly items, or a 'news' site where information is aggregated from around the web and a subscription is charged for those who wish to get the full story at one single news outlet, or a 'Google Ads' site where we focus on creating content - on practically any subject - with income derived from the Google Ads on each page.

If amongst us there are the following, we could really carry the conversation a bit farther:

1) Graphic Designer
2) Marketers or those with marketing channels
3) Experts on a given topic (Finance, construction, physics, you name it)
4) And most importantly - people willing to spend a few hours here and there doing the essential, hands-on marketing and promotion. They will also, in the process, be learning online marketing techniques which can be applied to ANYTHING one might wish to sell or promote on the web and in the world. The only experience required is familiarity with the internet - using this forum is an excellent example of the sort of experience you would need.

If this resonates with any of you, feel free to post your ideas for the sites and which of the above 4 categories you might fit into, and we can take it from there.

It is true that a profit-based business is against some of the prime tenants of a RBE, however, the main question is whether funding this project in an effort to transition could truly lead to a time when profit-based funding is no longer needed. As they say, we must remain emergent and flexible - and if funding is part of the transition, I say give it a shot.

Cheers,
Steve

I'm an aspie speed reader and an expert in 20 different things. World Religions, Sociology, Psychology, Physics, Meteorology, Energy Science, Civil Engineering...Climatology, Systems Theory, Advanced Aviation...

That expertise is most limited by the fact that my mind is just way musical and not mathematical.



I am a fairly competent draftsperson, and I studied Engineering and Architecture.

I can do autocad drawings and import them to other programs and am pretty familiar with sketchup.

I sing in five octaves, have perfect pitch, and play the clarinet expertly by ear.

I have taught and could teach sword forms and kata, and Chi Sao Centered basic martial arts.


All of that aside, my own plan for making us all rich is this one.

www.rbefoundation.com/grouptopic.php?f=431&t=2379

Seems there are several ideas for this. I know Scott from CityNet talks on their forums of a group of businesses chains, depending on who lives where and what works in that area. I like the internet basis. It allows many people to work with less waste. Online businesses can be a tricky thing though. It would have to have the write setup, look and topic.

5 examples of how to get some funding coming in:


1) Put Google Ads on this site.


2) Create a blog and allow members to help raise funds by blogging about their various areas of interest and expertise. Allow the public to comment. And put Google Ads on them. Prometheuspan, you would be an awesome asset in this effort given the number of topics on which you could speak.


3) Create an e-commerce site with Green-Friendly items where all the members (most of whom I would think are fairly Green-Friendly!) help to spread the word about it and help in the online marketing side. Even a team of 10 people doing 4 hrs a week could be driving SERIOUS, QUALIFIED traffic to the site within 45 days.


4) Use Flash "video chat" software to host a monthly "meeting of the minds" and ask $5 as a donation to the cause - it's a fund raiser that could probably grow pretty quick. I'd suggest having someone moderate (mostly to field user questions) and a host who guides the discussion as needed. Re-post the transcripts from these chat sessions to build up the content on the site and again, put Ads on the pages. You can reach a larger base by doing this online and not in a banquet hall.


5) Create auxiliary websites with targeted content which spread the word about Atlas in an effort to grow awareness, solicit donations to the cause, and drive traffic to the e-commerce and blog sites.


Some of this stuff is free to get rolling, the worst is around $3k.
The e-comm would be around $3k (though you could do an affiliate sales type website for next to nothing to get started), the mini sites (#5) if done in HTML or using Blogger (etc) could be free or super cheap ($350). Flash video chat could be as much as $500 for the program (multi-user license) and maybe a few hundred bucks to put up the login / payment / chat pages.

Might be worth it to start with #1 and #2, they're both basically free to get going and the funding could be used to subsequently perform numbers 3, 4 and 5.

***The main thing needed at first would be for the Atlas community to know about this potential source of funding and to pledge some time to help and make known their areas of expertise. Then you can quantify the amount of people-power you have to work with and their areas of specialty, and can then devise a strategy with the most potency.


Is this train of thought of interest to the Atlas decision makers?

My opinion in regards to several of the points made about:

In regards to Point #1: Maybe it's just me, but the displaying of Google Advertisements on a site seems pretty unprofessional. Frankly, I haven't seen anyone click the links in Google Adwords (not to say people haven't) however this isn't a place for advertisement.

In regards to Point #2: Again, with the Google Adwords, same opinion as above...

In regards to Point #4: Ads, dude really? We aren't a marketing website.

We are having hard enough time getting funding for this site, why the hell should we fork up the money to make a marketing site, e-commerce website, et cetera?

Hi Josh.

Valid arguments. Let me address them best I can:

1) If people didn't click on Google Ads, the ads wouldn't exist, and they wouldn't pay you money to put them on your site. Hell, Google probably wouldn't exist since their primary source of revenue for the majority of their existence is ADS (aka "Pay per click" and "Google Adsense"). Notice how many sites have them even tho they make their site look spammy? It's because of MONEY.


2) Content is king in terms of revenue based off of ads - so the burden is on the Atlas community to create content - doesn't really matter what their specialty is - someone is out there searching on it, which translates to money.


3) A blogger account with some ads on it wouldn't cost more than a couple hundred bucks to have someone setup for you (or do it yourself). I have clients who make around $10k a month on GOOGLE ADS ALONE (content-based sites). So I'm not talking "free energy", I'm talking proven concepts. You can research this yourself to see it is working...for those that know how to work it.


4) If you pooled the Atlas community resources - on a strictly volunteer basis - I think you'd find you had someone who could setup a blog site with ads for you, and plenty of people who could contribute to content. Hell, if I saw there was some positive feedback on this sort of thing, I might just do it myself in addition to offering the online marketing to the cause.


5) Additional sites could be launched (cost: $12 domain name, blogger hosting is free, put the ads on: $100) so that you keep the main site free of ads if that's too much of a detractor and the Atlas Community makes their content contributions on the new site (though this is not as advisable since the SEO (search engine optimization) benefits would be directed away from the main Atlas site - again, content is king when it comes to the search engines). However, i think a homepage message on the main site saying "the Google ads are here to fund Atlas" would make everyone proud to overlook them (or even click on them!).


6) As i said, Atlas could do affiliate sales instead of true e-comm. Again, someone in the crowd might be able to setup a basic HTML site (using GoogleCheckout or Paypal as an alternative to having your own credit card processing solution) and your expenses would be nil. With the Atlas community buying from this site and above all promoting it, it really could be a success.


7) You start with the free or cheap methods and you build revenue to afford the more advanced. This isn't based on asking members for funding, it's asking them to help bring in the funding. A considerable difference.


Look, i'm new to your community and i have no idea what your budget is or how it's being spent. I am, however, not new to web development and online marketing, and would never put myself on the hook for so much effort if i didn't fully believe in the proven potential of it. Simply put, i have almost no free time, but this is a great cause.

It's true, this site isn't a marketing site. It's a site trying to accomplish one of the most challenging goals man has ever faced - literally changing the world. It won't be done by prayers or ignoring new ideas and technologies or we'd be there already.

The real test is in the opinion and volunteer efforts of the community, and without them being aware of it and offering their essential input, it's a guaranteed failure.

Otherwise, if they are interested and willing, in my 13 years experience, it could be one HELL of a success for Atlas with zero-to-minimum monetary investment.

VivaLaWeb wrote:

HTML is noobish, I could program it in PHP with jQuery stuff. But thats besides the point.


Thank you for your interest and willingness to volunteer in Atlas Initiative Group. However, we have no funding, and we expect to get the majority of it from government grants. I don't find that to be a logical solution, and I think at least allowing people to donate is better than nothing. I know people who would love to donate, but HELLO, there is no donate button.

I'm not that much of a fan of Google advertisements. I'm sure it works, but this site is aiming to be as professional as possible. Now, I do think, a logical solution would be to change the footer image from what it currently is, to a horizontal Google Advertisement. It will still look nice and I'm sure after people read posts, they wouldn't mind clicking a link down in the bottom too. I might even click the links down there just to rack up some money for Atlas.

I may need your expertise in marketing for a group I founded, Atlas Open Source Development Team. We are already working with several other RBE groups and I plan on releasing software and cloud-based applications, that I hope, will change the world. We are in need of funding, simply to get better computers for all of us to develop on, a server to run a git repository off of (gitosis), et cetera.

Perhaps I should start off by stating I really hate adverts when I'm trying to view a site!

But, I'm also very practical and find it works to listen to advice..


> Maybe it's just me, but the displaying of Google Advertisements on a
> site seems pretty unprofessional.

Its not just you..


> my 13 years experience,

Worth listening to experience in my view.


> we expect to get the majority of it from government grants.

Whilst I reckon thats possible, my thoughts are:


Here is someone with experience of earning money using adverts, something we could do right now. If we get government grants later, great too! But if not, then at least we will have funding from adverts to do something with.

Just because we might use adverts at the beginning, doesn't mean we have to continue using them once we have enough money to invest in something else that makes money. (Which would be my preference..)


So, I hate adverts, but I think its a good idea to use them for now to generate an income, then use that income to generate funds without the adverts.

Here is an extra thought, to get away from adverts, yet still generate money, why not a paid for subscription which entitles the person to the advert free version of the site so to speak.

That way, the majority of people who contribute to the site, will be paid up members (It can be something very low maybe, say $5 a year, dunno, lets debate it!) who don't see the adverts, but people who come and go, they will see the adverts.

The more i know, the better i can help develop strategy for a client, so thanks for the great feedback.

Josh, happy to help on RBE projects, shoot me some details anytime.

Great idea on the subscription vs. ads idea, and the donate button - this could be setup for free thru Paypal or GoogleCheckout.

Another revenue solution might be to create a 'blog' section on the site and only put ads there. When you enter the blog area it would state that the ads are there for funding Atlas. I do recommend it be under this main domain for SEO advantages, which would be considerable with a large volume of content.

I only suggest ads - which i despise too guys - as a means for getting some initial bread coming (without any setup cost to do so) which can be re-invested into non-ad sites (such as e-commerce or subscription sites).

There are a ton of options, but really, we need to know the full extent of what the community has to offer in terms of expertise and time before we could fully know what options are available.

For example, if there's a member who's an expert in, say, Commodities, and they spend their day going around to commodity news sites anyway as part of their routine, they could aggregate those stories into one single site - offer a few articles as teasers and charge a subscription to get full access. Offer a few days free. Charge $15/mo at first and raise as it gains in popularity (there are sites that charge $60/mo for this, depending on the level of content and prominence).

This could even be done collectively with a topic such as Earth-friendly products, services, articles, etc. Imagine how fast content could grow with the community helping build it up.

Sorry if i get a little excited at the idea, but i've seen what one person can do in terms of promotion. An active community with a common goal could move a mountain.