I launched Viola Fair as a nonprofit art, art theory and literature site one year ago. A month later I began to experience dearth even greater than usual so I posted a donations page to at least help pay for hosting. Nada. So a couple of months later I began to develop internet commerce, to see if free enterprise could do better than begging in the manner of public funding. I emphasized content above selling, mixing it with research and resources to give the commercial portion of the site an educational feel as something of a guide. This earned next to nothing but more than public funding. I had to leave the site static for a few months during which visitation dropped by about half. (I was doing about 120 page views per day, up from about 90 when I first went online). Once I started back to work on the site about four months ago visitation immediately rose even stronger than before, about 160 page views per day. So I stopped begging altogether and began to emphasize commerce. About the same time one product began to meet the hosting fees, indeed, even better though not anywhere close enough to live on. It's odd because buyers are almost exclusively from the state in which the company is located. Meanwhile, nothing else is at all successful. Which is a drag, because working on the commercial aspects of the site have deprived me of the time needed to work on the art and literary portions for which the site was created in the first place. Relevant, naturally, is that I spend almost no money. So I'm left to discover devious ways to compete with those who've deep pockets. There are entire pages which exist for little more reason than to attract visitation. But I may have to leave the site static again soon, meaning visitation will drop. That's pretty frustrating after all the work one puts into it, and with so much yet to do.

Well, that's my experience. Cold reality!

Desperado (alias Larry) -

Viola Fair