SyFy is a respected name in science-fiction journalism. It has been run by people who actually work in journalism jobs in real life. The owner is an associate managing editor for a newspaper chain, and is personally managing a circulation of 100,000, and is considered a leader in his field. With the site, you not only get an existing readership base, an existing content managing system and even most of the existing volunteer staff, but you also get a chance to benefit from the years of hard work many of us have put into the site. With absolutely no promotion, people have found their way to our site each and every day, and we already have projected that with the simple purchase of Google keyword ads and some strategically placed banners, we could double our traffic in a short period of time, and be able to expand our ad revenue even more. But to do all this does require a commitment, a commitment that might be more of interest to someone who works professionally online already. Unfortunately, the current ownership no longer has the time. We do have a redesign ready to go, which a sample is available at www.syfyportal.com/leigh.

SyFy was never meant to grow as much as it has. It is a general science-fiction site that usually concentrates on a specific show while providing additional coverage on secondary television shows and movies. Late in 2004, SyFy started using its own ad banners for the first time, selling space to Google, which has surprisingly generated an average of $5,000 in instant revenue annually. While we are in the process of beginning to offer full banner ad sales and the like (with prices beginning at $150/month), we simply don't have the manpower to pursue such options, since the site is operated by people who do it on the side as volunteer.

Over the last seven years, a lot of SyFy Portal's traffic has come solely on cross-promotion traffic from other Web sites. When we publish original stories, it is regularly picked up by regular Web sites. SyFy also is listed with major news servers such as Google News and Yahoo! News, which means each time we post a story, it instantly becomes available in their searchable news databases. Many sites also carry our RSS feeds, and we have a non-promoted mailing list of more than 500 people. The site owner also is very well known on the Internet, and has made it a point over the years to directly respond to ALL correspondence, to make numerous appearances on message boards under his real name, and to form informal working relationships with larger sites.

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