sponsorship/advertising $$$$
I totally agree with you Lisa and to me it seems pretty obvious.
If you put yourself in a potential advertiser's shoes, you would like some kind of concrete assurance for return of investment.
If a company is paying cold hard cash for effective advertising space, you really need to 'quantify' what they are getting for their money.
The only way I can see you doing this is showing legitimate, consistent traffic volumes from relevant keyword searches for the products they're buying advertising for.
It's idealistic to think that commercial companies will throw money at non profits organizations via their websites just for the good of humanity. But the reality is that companies expect to get 'value' for their advertising dollar regardless where they advertise.
I have gone over this sort of business model, and with this kind of model as with many others there's very few if any real ways of passing off the initial investment costs of establishing the business while still being receptive to any future bulk tangible returns.
I think this basic law of business applies......
That being those who are prepared to take on a greater risk, stand to receive the greater return, the secret is to effectively manage the risk.
Here's my take on the business model.....
Find clubs, sporting, social or basically a club niche that's most financial and offer to provide 'cheap' club websites. You could include all managerial tasks from hosting, domain names, you take over the lot with the exception of content updating.
Your selling point could be that the clubs sites will in time have an increased capacity to attract more financial sponsors, greatly inceasing the success of the club over time
A shortcut here could be to approach the regional office and offer a package deal for say 300 sites.
One condition could be that you reserve the right to access a certain portion of space on the sites for advertising to subsidize the cost of the sites.
Most people are not that familiar with web design, and your average Joe Blo isn't familiar with wordpress so you sell the fact that you can set up a system that gives the club the ability to maintain their own site through an interface much like Microsoft Publisher, (do not mention wordpress).
Provide an online example of a great template and how this could be the clubs site.
I think I don't have to go any further, I hope you get the idea.
Just like any business proposition you really have to present up front, a compelling, valuable and tangible benifet before any business is going to pick up the tab.
Just the same Zag I hope this gives you a few ideas on how you can further develop and refine your business idea.
Best of luck and if you wan't to bounce some ideas off me, feel free!
John Salamon
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