Business plan

At present, this is not a business plan as such, so much as a statement of intention, and to ensure that there is no confusion or misunderstanding about what sort of project this is.

The plan in brief
I (Skud) hope to run Growstuff as a small, self-sustaining, money-making business.

Terminology
I say "money-making" rather than "for-profit" because I am not sure yet about incorporation as a non- or for-profit. I'll be looking into this. Please note that I am based in Australia, which has its own regulations about these things, so assumptions based on US or other regions may not apply.

Principles
Although I do not have a full business plan in place yet, this list of principles may help explain the sort of business I want this to be.


 * 1) Growstuff's software and data will always be free and open to the greatest extent possible. See: Open source, Open data.
 * 2) Income from the site will be used to support the site, through hosting or through paying a small staff to maintain and improve the site.  Examples of other businesses that do this include (and which I like) are Dreamwidth, Ravelry, Pinboard, etc.
 * 3) Any income will be derived from areas that do not run counter to our users' interests.  In particular, we will not have mass-market advertising on the site, because monetizing social media through advertising is doomed to failure.  Examples of income streams that help the business match its priorities to those of users include paid accounts and peer-to-peer ("classified") advertisements.  See: Why no ads?