It seems most all of us share the desire to be paid for our writing.  Those of us who sometimes get paid for some of the things we write don't get paid enough. Others don't get paid at all.  

Maybe we can do something about it.  I suggest we form a Cooperative right here on OS where we generate income we can share.

I think that's what the Tips BS and Google BS is supposed to be all about, but that approach isn’t exactly a roaring success from my point of view.

Let's assume we all continue to write what we write when we want to write it.   I say this because that's what we'll do anyway, and that's what makes OS unique. And actually marketable to sponsors.

First we need a source of income.  As far as I can tell Salon makes no money from Open Salon.  We need to change that.  But only if we are true socialist liberal progressive who share in the wealth.

Either we need sponsors or we need to sell t-shirts with photos of Noni the Intern or Who Did That To My Cat, or snarky words of wisdom from Blumenthal, or poems from... or...uh, nevermind, that won't work.  Back when I consulted with New Line Cinema, I learned you can make more money from merchandising than the movie, but only after you've established a Freddie.

So we need advertisers. For advertisers we need an audience.  No, not an audience — we need different audiences for many different niches which showcase different writers and their subjects.  The writing needs to reflect brand personalities and bond the brand to the niche. Not that we try to do that, we just retrofit our work into the appropriate niche.

For example the niche for Polygrip, a former client, is oldies who write about social setting and their problems.  What I mean is, you don't have to write about your teeth falling into the punch bowl.  You can write about how the grandkids won't share their drugs with you, uh, I didn't really mean that. But you know what I mean. You write what you want to write about — like Cougars you want to do... (has anybody done that yet?) and that becomes part of the oldster niche audience we sell to GSK Oral Care.

But before we do anything else, we need to generate numbers of readers.  Let's face it.   Numbers on OS suck.  Okay, given we're still in Public Beta, if we are, there needs to a lot more people reading us.

The answer to that is a full-out Google Advertising campaign, pr, personal appearances on FoxNews, and a syndication plan that puts us on different sites or in real publications — and all the stuff Joan and Kerry were probably planning to do anyway.