So its the summer and works ramping up towards the busy September period, and what do I go and do...sign up for a show at the start of October...well it will keep me out of trouble I guess. It should also push forward the development of Glasgow Theatre Underground.
This project (between myself and Bruce Downie) has been going on for about 9 months now (the earliest post at the minute is November 3rd 2004), and has been an experiment in running a very specifically aimed portal site. And we can say that a number of people have received work via postings on GTU (guys we'd like a cut!).
Unfortunately no site can sit on it laurels, and we have to look for new ways to gain readers and ultimately find some way of sustaining the site (hosting, domain names and bandwidth all do have costs). We already have a number of small and discreet Google Ad banners tucked away, and we have just launched a new PayPal donation button. We don't want to beg for money (and on the whole don't need to) but every little will help. I guess our next step is look at integrating ourselves with Amazon, to provide links to scripts and dvds of many of the plays that we are helping to publise. But the question that is on my mind is "Are we getting too far removed from the idea of being a grassroots organisation?".
At what point do we cease to be a couple of enthusiasts pulling a website together and become a "company" trying to make money, by pulling a website together? And are the two mutually exclusive? I wouldn't like to see GTU becoming a site whose sole purpose is to make money. I think that would lose us most of our readership, who (I think) are aware that the site is run by people just like them.
[posted with ecto]
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