It’s interesting that there’s an Editorial & Opinion section on Dissociated Press; there certainly has never been an editor around here, and the content of the site itself is rife with opinion. The fact is, the site’s creator and only contributor wanted a place to engage in uncategorized ranting, and creating this section seemed like a lot more fun than commenting on the Huffington Post. Did you notice the lack of link in those two words? That’s because the Huffington Post sucks. There’s an opinion for you.

The Original Plan
I originally created Dissociated Press with the intention of building blog-like content for six months, and then slowly evolving the site into more of a magazine-style format, still with daily bite-size content, but also featuring longer, in-depth articles. At the six month point I had intended to redesign the site (it’s currently still running on a sloppily-created front-end for WordPress), and begin aggressively promoting it, as well as optimizing for search engines. The current design is VERY search-engine unfriendly for the standard reasons that WordPress, by default, sucks for SEO. Although I’ve managed to update the site daily since June 11, 2008 and build a following of a few thousand very regular visitors (Thank you by the way! Most of you I only know by your IP address, but I appreciate your interest!), those are hardly the kinds of numbers that make a site profitable, which was almost exactly 50% of my interest in creating a site like this.

If You Want To Make God Laugh…
….as they say, tell him your plans. As luck would have it, at exactly the six-month point arrived, so did a heap of new work, and shortly after, a considerably reduced heap of work. This has been a volatile economy for everyone, but especially self-employed people like myself. It’s one thing to lose a steady job, and another thing altogether to secure or lose several at a time, which is what can happen when the employers are jumpy, anxious clients in troubled economic times. The net result of all of this is that I find myself at the one-year point in a bit of a quandary, the point that Seth Godin would call The Dip. Is it time to push ahead, or quit while the quitting’s good? For me, the answer is simple. I don’t give up. I just don’t. But I could use some help.

I Don’t Want Your Money….
Although I’ve decided I need help to make the site profitable, there’s not a great business model here for seeking investors. The simple way to guarantee revenue from a site like this is to generate enough traffic and place enough ads that when all is said and done, you’ve simply replicated an annoying site like the Huffington Post, with 75% of the screen real estate devoted to ads, excruciating page load times, and content that ultimately feels like you’re watching the bleeding-heart liberal version of Fox News.

….But I Wouldn’t Mind Some Of It
That all being said, I don’t mind donations, especially birthday fund donations. Your money will be well-spent on either hosting or the main fuel required to run the site, a carefully balanced diet of chocolate, coffee, and actual food. In lean times, the site seems to run just fine on coffee alone. So consider a donation:

So What Do I Really Want?
I want help. If you’re a writer or business-minded person who enjoys the web and social networking, lets talk. I’d be especially happy to hook up with someone who likes to write about film & television or politics, or someone who would like to develop the business and marketing side of things so I could focus more on design and content. Or someone who can work on design and share the content load so I could exclusively focus on marketing and revenue generation. So let me reiterate in bulleted form what I’m looking for:

Are You….

• A writer who’d like to write about movies or politics?
• A business person who’d like to help develop a web site?
• A WordPress specialist who’d like to collaborate?
• An kind, attractive, female lawyer who wants to have kids and a work at home househusband?

Drop a line if you have some interest.