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History of LonelyPrisoner.com
My older half-brother has been locked away for robbing two banks in Dayton, Ohio. Knowing that I was well experienced with computers and the Internet, my brother Pete asked me to put his name on the net.
I started slowly adding here and there at different regular Pen Pal web sites and Match Maker sites. All of which were free services that I was able to locate. And I finally tried to expand his exposure by finding a free web space where I could locate for a home page. I started out with his picture, address, and a few drawings that he had been working on and mailed me. Some of where were on the outside of the envelopes.
I had to keep finding new web sites to host Pete's info on because after a few days, they kept turning off the free server to the pages for some reason. But during my tribulations, I worked on getting my brother listed on some search engines to give some more exposure. Since he had been sending me a half dozen illustrations so far, I focused the Search Engine submissions to the Sketches and Artwork sections, with tattoo designs.
He also was telling me how we wanted to write a book about the American Justice System with how basically how they are not that well ran and executed. To show how many problems they have using examples from different fellow inmates. He wanted me to find him a publisher for this book concept. I decided to first try to publish it online as a small business idea. I was going to employee my wife to be the editor while I tried to make sure I could post the book online and sell it. I was going to password protect the book until payment and basically have it automatically give the customer the password to download the book. I was also planning on selling the book by chapters to help keep the price down in general. So if people liked what they read for only a dollar or so per chapter, they might want to buy more chapters. And in the long term, it would be able to make the book very profitable.
After a few chapters started coming in to be edited, we quickly realized that the book wasn't really about the judicial system as lead to believe. Fearing the "Son of Sam" laws out there, we made sure the book was not going to sell Pete's story. Since we knew he couldn't profit from his own story. So all this stories were of his criminal counterparts who he was going to start interviewing. First, he started recalling some of the people he meet previous to the thought of writing a book. But with those chapters, we quickly realized it was more focused on the criminal himself. Showing what type of crime he committed, how long he got away with it, what his final undoing was that got him busted, and how much money was involved. I personally thought the chapters were quite interesting but my wife was not as impressed because she feared it glamorized the crimes.
My wife started spending less time helping with editing so I started spending less time typing up the manuscript. And finally, my brother got into a prison fight which broke his writing hand. He was transferred shortly after the incident to another facility but he has not restarted writing chapters for the book.
While I was still on the hype of this book idea. I decided to purchase a domain name with some of Pete's suggestions. He made a list of domain names that sounded good to him and I went through and found the one that sounded best for my taste that fitted almost anything I wanted to do with an inmate web site and was still available for sale. I wanted to expand the site to include the ability to add other inmates to the site itself. I am not trying to get rich off of the inmates suffering or anything, but I am charging a small fee to help keep this site up and operational.
I had started promoting the site by joining chat rooms in Yahoo. I was chatting in the room when somebody said that Yahoo should add an actual official chat room to help with parents and spouses who are going through the same type of torment with a family member in prison. There were a few issues that I could see a family member might want to talk about so I quickly worked on incorporating a chat room to the website.
Ever since the chat room, I am trying to make it my goal to keep improving the site the best ways that I know how and to keep promoting it to allow the word to spread for people to join along and view the fruits of my labor. I have also started to print out a few brochures that I can distribute locally or send out to people. I have also ordered business cards printed out and will be getting some T-Shirts in shortly so I can wear it out for a little extra advertising. I've also had a few ink pens made with the web address printed on them to pass out here and there.
I am always trying to think of ways to getting the word out about the site and I believe my future plans will to eventually post little classified ads in local papers across the country. I might also make a TV Commercial then figure out when the best time would be to purchase airspace and have it broadcasted. And the same with a small little radio spot. I am slowly trying to improve the site and its exposure to the world. I want to make this web site the BEST that I positively can make it.
Most recently, I have been planning on making some T-Shirts. I have asked both a friend and my brother to both help make a few new logo's since the ones on the website came from the Microsoft Office XP Suite. And I do not want to violate any copyright or anything. I do not believe any of those images are copyrighted but I just do not want to take any chances. I have started by buying myself a Silk Screening Kit to practice with. And to test a few designs. And to help with a test market, I plan on taking the shirts to a local flee market to see how well that they might sell one weekend. And if the design works great, I will goto a local screen printer and get a few more dozen T-Shirts printed out, and put some on the website at that point and time and also start getting a regular routine of going to the flee market and selling them there. And just see where this avenue of our venture will lead us.
Last Revised:
19 Apr 2002 10:05 AM . |
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