So begins what I hope to be a periodic review of certain projects that I’ve jumped into (often rather hastily), some of which started out as just for fun and some of which were a direct attempt to make a bit of coin.  Perhaps it’ll give others insight into what works, what doesn’t and what might come of future efforts!

Site - http://www.MiaFan.com - M.I.A. Fan Site

M.I.A. is a rapidly rising international hip-hop/rap/political activist.  She is Sri Lankan by birth, but spends most of her time in the U.K.  I became a big fan of hers only recently and noticed there wasn’t a whole lot of information on her except for her main page which is an exercise in confusion (frankly, it’s kind of an eyesore.)  I learned later, after having created the site, that she has a rather popular message board in the U.K., but it wasn’t easy to find so I thought I might still be adding some value for her U.S. based fans.  I didn’t really set out to make any money on it and it’s only worth some pocket change each week, but it still counts as a monetized internet venture.

In fact, I had a bit of pocket change and thought it would be good to do a bit of link building (outsourced through scriptlance).  I’m still waiting to see if that drives much traffic to it.

Fan sites are apparently quite popular - never occured to me that someone could be so obsessed with a celebrity or a tv show, enough so that they would create a site around it, but apparently, they are basically “MFA” sites . . . made for adsense.

Plies.us is a fan site for the Florida rapper, Plies.  The site was for sale on Sitepoint Marketplace for a stretch and is great example of an MFA site, although the author apparently truly like Plies - enough that it doesn’t appear to be just a financial interest.   Still, the site was making about $700 bucks a month on adsense!

In any event, my site isn’t meant to be an MFA site (though who would truly admit to that!)  M.I.A. is not a fleeting interest of mine . . . but I just haven’t had time to research her much to update the blog.

I may sell it to a hardcore fan soon, because I think it could become a great resource for big fans.