I'm hoping to move beyond theory to action on some of the threads we've been sharing. Trying to think the following through, hoping you can help.

On any webmaster forum the dominant culture seems to be lots of small webmasters working on their own, by themselves, struggling to get a profitable site up and running.

Usually, a lack of publishing information and tools is not the problem, as tons of both are widely available for free.

The challenge seems to be more one of how hard it can be for any individual to get a site "over the hump" from obscurity to popularity.

The process can be quite discouraging, which reduces motivation, slowing the process further, etc.

Sound familiar?

Ok, that's the theory, now the action.

Instead of webmasters coming together on forums to TALK about web publishing, would it be more productive to come together to DO web publishing?

A GROUP SITE: Instead of 20 little sites each inching forward at an agonizingly slow pace, suppose the 20 webmasters came together, and put their content and links in to one domain?

Each author on the group site has a control panel which allows them to create, edit and delete articles within one section of the site.

Each author promotes their own section of the group site, just as they would their own site.

Each author uses their own Adsense and affiliate links.

Or, a site wide Adsense system could be set up to divide the Adsense income between the publishers. I just realized yesterday it would be possible to do this precisely, documented for all to see.

Each author owns their own content, and can withdraw from the group site at any time, whereupon their section of the site is removed.

There's a forum where the group site authors can build personal connections, urge each other on, etc.

What is your reaction to this kind of proposal? What benefits and problems do you see?

Ok, that's enough to open a conversation, if you're interested.