ORIENTEDdotORG/Segue is not designed to make money. It is run by volunteers who will hopefully gain “something” other than cold hard cash thanks to their involvement.
I often use my own experience as an example of a significant yet non-financial gain reaped from the project. I would not have heard of my graduate school program were it not for ORIENTED.
I was making my final decision about which graduate school in the US I was going to go when I received an alert from the ORIENTED Events Calendar. The new Asia campus (Singapore) of the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business used it to announce their Taipei information session. In a few short weeks, my entire graduate school plans changed and I’ve been able to continue living in Taipei since.
In fact, I’m writing you now from Singapore – where I am spending the next week in classes (this will explain why you won’t hear from me much for the next week or so) before heading back to Taiwan.
You could say I owe my latest extension in Asia (these past 18 months) to ORIENTED. You could also say that instead of “making money” from the site, I’m now spending a whole lot more in tuition and airfare (but then going to grad school was already long-planned)
Banners will be back. They will go at the bottom of the website because I like to keep the main content free of clutter. Banners will be for exchange only – with other sites and Taiwan resources.
Certainly, this project is NOT free – but it isn’t terribly expensive either. I’ll be using Paypal to invite donations to help cover for the website’s upkeep. I’ll also be setting up a CafePress store as a way to encourage donations (here’s what I’ve done so far – cafepress.com/segue – please note that most of the money on these items go to CafePress, not to me).
The website costs US$ 100 a year for hosting at www.BigBiz.com and some more for some of the software I’m planning to install (mailing list blaster, classifieds database). If we get the print edition of the website going later this year, then there will be printing and distribution costs, too – but I’m a cheapskate at heart and it shouldn’t cost much money or effort (well, hopefully).
After business school (March 2003), I may actually leave this island once and for all. Hopefully, the team@segue (the moderators and writers, like Carson Wu) will have found a smooth way to manage the site without my interfering with an upgrade or downtime now and then.
Until then, please think of this website as an experiment for ALL of us – YOU, me and the Team. Hopefully, this is an experiment that is inexpensive, open-minded and relatively painless.