There are thousands upon thousands of little clues -- identified photographs, old letters and postcards, private business records, receipts, trade-cards, greeting cards, bank-checks and much more -- appearing for sale online, only to disappear into private collections, most of them never to be seen again.

I have begun preserving some of those items, but the task is far too large for one person. I thought of making a public-effort, volunteers like the GenWeb project. But have you noticed, the GenWeb project seems to have 'lost steam' -- not many new records are added any more -- and for a project that has been around for 14 years it has not really accomplished as much as we would have hoped. (I'm not knocking the project -- what they have accomplished is wonderful and very useful.)

It seems to me there has to be a more effective way -- and I think this site is it.

The Plan

The plan for this site is to provide software that makes it easy for someone with an interest in a particular area, such as a county, to gather and preserve digital copies of the memorabilia for that area.

This site will be the 'parent' for sub-sites -- we hope eventually to have a complete website for each county in the USA and Britain, each Canadian province, and other countries as well. Each site will belong to an entrepreneur, who will run the site -- not as a volunteer, but as a profitable business venture. That profit will come from four sources:

1. Archival Fees (descendants of those named in memorabilia items, or people who may want a particularly attractive graphic, will be able to get larger archival copies of the files for a small fee)
2. Advertising (Google adsense is the easiest, but other advertising sources are also possible)
3. Affiliate Sales (the site owner will be able to promote related products/services for a fraction of the sales amount, such as Amazon books and other affiliate products)
4. Selling the Site (owners will be able to sell the site they have developed when they decide they no longer want to run the site)

People who want to own a county site will pay a monthly fee for web hosting and use of the software, and will retain 100% of all subscription fees, advertising and affiliate revenue and profit from sale of the site. They will be provided step-by-step guidance on how to maintain and expand the site, how to find material, etc. No technical knowledge is required beyond basic computer use, though the person should have a strong interest in local history or genealogy.

So how much can a person make with one of these sites? Well, I do not really know yet. I would not expect to be able to earn a living from one -- but I certainly hope they will prove profitable enough to repay the effort. I'll revisit this question in a year or so, when I'll have some hard data on which to base my comments.