A site just for fun



When I was 14, I started a blog on Blogger.com and got all my lil buddies at the time to post. A year later, it had become somewhat of a hotspot for political rantings, movie reviews, and social criticism. No joke, a bunch of my friends' dads obsessively got involved in comment wars with the various trolls & critics of our linkbait-esque rants. The entire website was the ultimate troll fest, long before "trolling" became the mainstream sensation it is today. We hipster trolled, and did it well.

There's something about inciting week-long debates amongst full grown adults that never gets old, especially when you're a 15 y.o. smart-ass.

I also created a hip-hop review site with a buddy where we critiqued mixtapes, albums, singles, etc...
It actually got a number of loyal readers and some decent traffic due to some calculated controversy on my part (as well as some decent interviews with local artists).
Eventually got bored of it and started fucking around with AM and now it's just one of a thousand abandoned projects I started but never finished.
 
guerilla said:
I have been running a forum since 2005. My interest in the subject matter waxes and wanes, but I love my community.

It is probably the one site I am most proud of since I started having my own websites in 2002.

Forums don't make money usually and this one is no exception.
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Pretty much the same for the most part, but I've been running mine since 2004.

The forum itself doesn't make money but I've built out features from it which do.
 
I've had a political blog in the early 2000s and it became rather large and famous.
That feel' when random people start citing you on wikipedia as a source :D
It also launched me into some sort of political carreer but i quickly aborted the launch because i realized that i was just feeding my ego and hindering the success of good initiatives.
 
That's a great idea indeed. Even I am thinking of starting an informational site based on weight loss. Hope that goes on the floor soon. :2drinkspit:
 
Many of my sites are about a subject that interests me, but I built all of them with the intention of making money. I've also tossed around the idea of starting a blog in this niche for years. I know I'm capable of writing the best content on the web in this niche. I've had people email me saying as much (based on content on my existing sites). I haven't because the kind of content I want to do takes a lot of time to write/create. It involves more than just writing articles. The ROI on the niche as a whole has been low, so I'm not inclined to put in the effort. I'd probably enjoy it, and would love to have the audience from a site like this, but I need to focus on things that make money.
 
learningcurve said:
I'm actually just starting one on Animated gifs... Just like my own personal online collection lol.

I might stick some ads on it but I don't expect to make any money of it.
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I had numerous geocities websites that were full of DBZ gifs back in the day. A damn shame I deleted all those folders. I might have to start making them again.
 
I've been photoblogging for the last 5 or 6 years now. Not monetizing this except some small merch, but it's a nice little project that lets me blow off some steam once in a while.
 
thehobbster said:
If I had kept pushing it, I could probably have jump started some kind of career as an author. If anyone has a hobby, pursue it with a website! You never know. I gave it my all, literally, and people responded. They can tell when it's genuine and authentic.
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qft

I was already thinking the same way: you never know what these things could lead to. I wouldn't mind getting paid to travel, and the site could serve as a calling card for bigger opportunities elsewhere. For people who write well and take decent pictures, the Internet makes it easy to find new opportunities.

I would run ads and use an email collection form. The site may be for enjoyment, but I still like making money.
 
A buddy and I caught news of an upcoming game called "Spore" with a ton of hype / interest so we built a community around it, SEO'd the home page for the game name (pretty easy as it was a new term), and became the biggest independent community for a few years up until the game finally launched. Then the game flopped, all community sites died etc.. Didn't make a lot of money, but I got an all paid trip to fly out to San Diego to play the game before launch and check out EA Maxis studios.

Seems like a decent strategy for those who love games. Build up communities around new upcoming titles with a lot of hype. If only Spore had near the level of success and following that WoW had, could have made decent money as a community.
 
Madin said:
The forum itself doesn't make money but I've built out features from it which do.
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My community is a bit too niche for this. That and now forums get a lot of competition from facebook and such.

If you think about it, before blogs, the only place people could express themselves online was forums for the most part.

Then blogs came along and forums probably lost their top 2 or 5% to people with motivation and talent starting their own blogs.

With facebook, so much of the conversation happens there, among friends and family and coworkers, that getting much activity on forums is much harder to do.

I wouldn't start a forum for my topic today, it would be waaaaay too hard to get off the ground.
 
Bodybuilding.

BlueYonder said:
Does anybody have a website about a topic they care about, rather than a strictly moneymaking thing?

I am thinking of starting a travel website because I love to travel. I found an okay(ish) domain that fits, and would post travel pics still sitting on the camera. Of course, I'd talk ad nauseum about my travel interests at the site.

If anybody else is running a site just for enjoyment, what are your interests? :costumed-smiley-087
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well not really a website, but i'd love to start an open-source app just for the fun. but i'm not financially secure enough to do it. and i'd probably lose my cool if some idiot was giving me crap about a feature or a bug when it's FOSS.

one i'd like to do is an OS clone of the Twitter API that just works off screen-scraping twitter.com on the backend. so it would need to be constantly monitored if Twitter ever changed anything. and of course, Twitter could never block it or rate limit it like the real API

or an android app to java decompiler. i could definitely do it, but it would take me 4-6 months. most people don't realise how similiar java byte code is to the real thing. the technologies are already out there but nobodies brought it all together in one system that works great. well, maybe someone did, but kept it for themselves.

my first website was made just for fun, back in 2001. it was for ringtones. you can guess how taht turned out.
 
I have a few websites I run for fun.

One is about conspiracies/ETs/religion/history/etc. This one gets okay traffic and has a very passionate and dedicated community.

The other is a platform for discussion and implementation of a free society. I launched this one about 3 months back and am slowly growing it.

I see them both as long term plays and have numerous directions I could go with either one when I feel the time is right. My first site is great for cross-promotion of newer projects.
 
drave said:
see, i just dont understand that. why would you not monetize it just because you can? its like having a golf store on main street with a bunch of equipment and gear sold at cost just because you always wanted to have a golf store. why??

explain that logic, i'm curious.
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i have put up an ad or two....over the years..it made nothing.
to monetize it i think id have to build my own thing..perhaps sell discounted rates...and compete with golfnow
 
guerilla said:
My community is a bit too niche for this. That and now forums get a lot of competition from facebook and such.

If you think about it, before blogs, the only place people could express themselves online was forums for the most part.

Then blogs came along and forums probably lost their top 2 or 5% to people with motivation and talent starting their own blogs.

With facebook, so much of the conversation happens there, among friends and family and coworkers, that getting much activity on forums is much harder to do.

I wouldn't start a forum for my topic today, it would be waaaaay too hard to get off the ground.
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Agreed. Activity has certainly dwindled... I wouldn't think of starting a forum today.
 
I've had a few over the years. I had the typical one for the kiddos, but that also had some commercial applications.

I've played with some domain names for a new one for interior design and home improvement, but I haven't done anything with it yet. For now I just amuse myself and my friends with Facebook pictures of various projects. Nothing earth-shattering, just fun.

I've had several teaching sites over the years, but those are more for sharing links and giving assignments to students before the advent of the virtual classrooms and communities. Always a pain when I'd set up a quick blog and the district would block it, but I digress.
 
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