Expanding the Unofficial empire: Your thoughts?

Great idea! I'm all about schwim getting more duckets!
You may have a problem getting other sites off the ground without it being a lot of time and expense on your part.
I would say that if someone wants a site, they need to have some skin in the game. I can see there being a problem with some grass roots type entity's getting enough signatures to start a site. It's more like build it and they will come.
I would suggest having an option were someone could request a site and front the necessary start up costs. They in turn would be reimbursed from a portion of the donations, advertisements etc.. until it was payed back.
It would have to be understood that the site and brand (unofficial) were yours.
Moderating might be an issue for the first year or so. I'm not even sure you would allow moderating privileges to the person who started the site. You might be able to turn over the privileges to a few members who have shown some street cred on the site after awhile.

Just another thought here..
You could begin this endeavour by starting off with 1 or 2 other Unofficial motorcycle sites with some
of your own pre-chosen moderators from people you know are qualified.
Reason for it being motorcycle is because there are a lot of common things that are known with the operation,
maintenance, suspension etc.. that would be easier deal with.
I would say the chosen brands could be done by taking a poll with your prospective group of moderators
to determine the most successful ones.
I have an idea of a few myself that could attract a nice following.
One thing that might take some time is contacting the brand owners to spread the word that the site is there.
But if you feel it is worth the time to do so in hope of people catching on it could pay off.
And then some of those more knowledgeable about the brand who actually owns them can move into the
moderating position if you feel they are qualified.
As you mentioned about start up costs. That would be a concern of course because if you are footing the idea
and bill with the site you would be relying on its success a little earlier because of lack of brand owners.
So attracting brand owners would be critical.
Maybe begin gathering them beforehand if possible

pollo




pollo