Need some feedback on my New Year's Resolution

[AndrewNC]

So this year, I decided to go big with my New Year's resolution: To raise $1,000,000 to help create new American jobs and promote American businesses (ok, maybe I started a little early on the New Years part). I recently got into learning about website design and decided to try this out as my first project. It was based on the success of the million dollar homepage. After seeing that most of those trying to duplicate it have failed; I gave myself a challenge to find a way to make it work. I have seen countless copycats fail: perhaps by not putting enough effort into it, or just the novelty wore off after the first one. The one success I found was a repeat charging a penny a pixel instead of $1.

After having trouble finding a job and seeing a lot of work being outsourced overseas, I stated the American Business Project (problem=high unemployment solution=help reduce it). What I am doing is selling advertisement space for American companies over the outline of an American Flag for $1 per pixel. I am also planning on selling pre-orders of a book I intend to finish by the end of 2012. Trying to avoid any disrespect by putting advertisements on top of the flag, we are titling it the "We Are America" flag to represent not just the 13 original colonies and the 50 states of the union, but the millions of citizens and businesses that make up the United States.

Our "brand" so to say is to help promote American job growth, so we pledged that 100% of proceeds will be used to help create new American businesses and American jobs. You won't see me driving a new car anytime soon (based on this project anyway). Less than 1% will go to paying for administrative stuff (domain purchase, hosting, etc.). What we plan on doing is 1) Raising the money as said above 2) Accepting submissions for people who want to create new businesses 3)Determining which businesses look like they have potential, and help get them started 4) When those businesses begin to turn a profit, the original money (without any interest) will be re-invested back into the project to create even more jobs. We envision a cycle of having this project continue to create new businesses for entrepreneurs over the years even after the advertising space is all sold.

What I have done so far (with a friend from college):

1. Created the website with the content and functionality
2. I collected the contact information from 5 media outlets in every U.S. city with a population above half a million and emailed them our story of "Raising $1 Million for American jobs as our New Year's Resolution".
3. I took a look at writing articles about the outsourcing of jobs and will submit them to as many directories as possible such as ezine, etc.
4. Offered free advertisement space for a couple of companies to show as examples.

So far, we have not had much success. We weren't planning to 'go live' until January. We felt that our story would be attractive to the media. Either A- they did a story and did not let us know, or B-passed by us. Based on the number of page views so far, it appears as if we have very limited success.

This is where I come to those on here with experience for advice. The website is American Business Project for those of you who want to look at it before answering questions (the design/layout will be changed before we go live January 1st, so I already know that needs to be worked on):

1. For those of you with experience with the media; what is the best way to get their attention? I am thinking of flooding forums and blogs first, then moving to small towns, then up to larger networks. Going straight to bigger networks did not work so far. I was hoping that I would get more replies to my "$1 million new years resolution for American jobs" story. Perhaps they are waiting until closer to NY's to contact me back?
2. Is there a better way to help get companies to sign up on our flag as opposed to $1 per pixel (minimum one box for $100).

I came up with some following options to change the way we are doing things. Do any of them sound more promising?:

1. Go nonprofit so the ad space will be considered a tax deductible charitable donation (Would this still allow us to put our money into creating new businesses and expect the original investment returned?)
2. Lower the price from $100 a box to $10 a box to help those less willing to spend the $100
3. Instead of selling boxes, rent them out for $1 a month with a recurring charge. The $1 might bring in more people, and it will work out to about $5,000 a month if we fill up (plus the stars being a premium fee when we fill up).
4. Change the layout and expand the "Make A Donation" page under the order tab so it could be our main theme.
5. Affiliate market for American made products.

3. Can I utilize the "pre-order" for an ebook. I remember reading somewhere that there might be issues with this. If so, could I phrase it differently (such as a donation, and we will send you a book when it is completed)?

We are currently working on adding a blog to the page to help bring a little more attention to us.


Any advice and feedback would be greatly appreciated. At the very least, we have succeeded so far in learning some valuable lessons on this project before we move on to bigger and more expensive ventures. I'd rather make my mistakes here as opposed to later on.

Thanks in advance,

Andrew

 

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