If I were you, I'd look at what similar sites in other cities are doing. A friend of mine started this: http://www.altdaily.com/ http://www.altdaily.com/ They

If I were you, I'd look at what similar sites in other cities are doing. A friend of mine started this: http://www.altdaily.com/ http://www.altdaily.com/ They've been at it four years, and I know they've worked their butts off … and changed the model at least once. They've built huge influence in the community. I can get you in touch with them if it helps you idea-wise. I heard the guy behind this site speak: http://rvanews.com/ http://rvanews.com/ Sounded like a similar, lots-of-work situation. It was borne of a smaller blog network, if I'm right. But they've gotten a long way. A thought on the site's design: I like Jux as a platform for secondary (read: special feature) stuff, but you're really hurting yourself by making it a primary platform. One, it's very difficult to throw ads in, and two, while it offers a lot of creativity, you will feel somewhat boxed in because a lot of the design decisions have already been made for you. You should be making those decisions yourself. FWIW, I'm familiar with the platform, and got a good number of visits from an interview I did with BJ Mendelson a while back: http://slides.shortformblog.com/465373 http://slides.shortformblog.com/465373 I did use ads in it, but I had to use some hacky techniques to embed them. (I also had to use hacky techniques to modify the CSS, but that's a different story.) Also, understand your market: There are sites out there like Baristanet (http://www.baristanet.com/ http://www.baristanet.com/) and the New Haven Independent (http://www.newhavenindependent.org/ http://www.newhavenindependent.org/) that have been mining this model for nearly a decade, and doing it well. Do your market research here, and see what they've done that's cool and interesting, and what can be easily translated to your model. My suggestion: Don't be afraid to step back from this for a couple of months, work on the business model and start with a little more experience. It's way harder to get things moving without the business model already pre-considered. Hope that helps!