A few months ago, before I had any idea how busy I was going to be during Tech Training, I purchased the domain name "hashtagroot.net" with the intent of blogging about *nix-related topics. I wanted to make it something like the "Dear Diary" feature we've started on the forums, only in blog form, and with other things occasionally mixed in. The thing is, in the past few months since starting it, I've only really posted once, and I never really settled on a blog engine I liked, not to mention that I completely forgot about the purchase and didn't even think about it for the past few months. So now I'm pretty undecided on what to do with the site and I'm all ears for ideas. Some notes:

1. I would like to make the site profitable, but at the very least, self-sufficient. If I start paying for hosting, I want the site to pay for itself.
2. I wouldn't mind making part of the site interactive and/or social, where other people could contribute their own content and such.
3. I definitely wouldn't mind inviting other people to write for the blog, if I decide to keep it as a blog. There are a lot of people who know a ton more about Unix than I do, and their posts would likely turn the site from mediocre to amazing.


Any ideas for things to do with this domain name?

Edit: I also remember my original brainstorm for promoting the site: I was going to announce new blog posts on twitter with the hashtag "#root" and try to dominate that particular tag.

Coop,

Candidly, I see a number of problems with this business plan:
1) monetized websites commonly rely on either subscriptions or ad revenue.
2) From the sounds of it, you're talking about mashing-up a blog + twitter or similar... frankly, unless you do this in some spectacular and new/original fashion, you're just wasting your time.
3) there are lots of blog sites for our types out there, starting your own is going to require a tremendous volume of time/energy/resources, and at the end of the day if you spent the same resources on writing for another -- already syndicated -- blog, you'd probably see a better return.

That said, I'm not the guy to piss on anyone's dreams. I'm just trying to be a practical sounding board.

Cheers,
Soda

It's hard to make a website that pays itself, and if you force people to pay to see some content, you're gonna loose some audience, even if it's really cheap. You could just put a paypal link or something for people who like what you're doing, like a donation system. People always pay more if they're not forced to do so ;)

Now to make the website "social", it will have to be dynamic (comments, votes, likes, etc..), so you'll probably need some "heavier" blog engines like wordpress and the like (heavier than jekyll and such, that is).

After that, I love the idea of a community driven blog ! It let people not having a blog express themselve, and you'll obviously get some golden content from it ! I really want to see this happen, but be careful not to let everyone post. there are spammers everywhere, and your site could turn into a big trash blog after that. You'll need a subscription system, or even better, a white list.

Finally, if you want more ideas, here are some:

• Host your own image gallery, so that you could show pictures to your family and friends from everywhere. the "Cloud" OMG
  
• Create package repositories for your distribution, so that you could contribute to the community
  
• Provide mirrors for downloadable content, like software (this one need a bit of work to get up to date)
  
• imagination...
  

The donation system sounds like a good idea - I myself hate ads, so I couldn't see any reason in putting ads on the site.

As for having no useful or new ideas about what to do with the site, I'm looking at other unix-related sites right now, looking for a vacuum or emptiness that my site can fill. I just don't think having "yet another unix blog" is gonna be what I end up doing with this site in the long run.