Since the beginning of the week, I've been part of a small business startup program. It's got a five week in-class portion, which began Monday, where the people in the program learn how to assemble a business plan. The program is really geared towards local, home based businesses such as housepainters and furniture refinishers. Taskerrific is their first view of a social media service. And while this is causing problems (not least of which is caused by the fact that almost none of the people in the program, the ladies running it included, aren't really internet folk at all) I intend to stick it out so that I can get a small smidgeon of funding that will hopefully be enough to run Taskerrific for half a year or so.

Beyond the classroom part of the program, continued participation requires that certain targets are met by the small businesses. Unfortunately, one of those targets is income, which means I have to look at monetization for Taskerrific right away, rather than waiting for things to become somewhat established and tuned. While I'm resisting the temptation to make Taskerrific for-pay, it's obvious that without some decent funding dropping in my lap that I will need to make certain features premium as well as throw on advertisements (nothing obtrusive, I promise).

I had always considered ideas of monetizing Taskerrific, but I had hoped that it wouldn't be an immediate issue. After all, I don't like the idea of having to survive on handout after handout from venture capitalists, the way other social media services do. I want to build a successful, at least minimally profitable service, and not take as long as Twitter has to start bringing in actual income.

Another problem facing me is that I can't hire anyone while in this program, either. At best, I can contract the occasional person once and a while to do work on one part of the site or another, but actual hires, ongoing contracts, etc. are right out. Now, if Taskerrific becomes successful enough to take it off the program myself, I probably won't have the money to hire, or contract out, work anyway (at least without investors bankrolling it) but being told straight-up that I can't do it is pretty distressing.

Despite all this bad news, I aim to keep fighting. With the time spent in class and building the business plan, I have less time to actually code, and so my beginning-of-May launch date will probably slip to mid-May. But damned if I don't pull it off. I want to build this service, and help you live better lives for it.