Unlimited Inspiration For Only 3 Cents A Day!

Amazing Women Rock went live online two years ago, after one year in development.

It was a dream come true for me - the manifestation of my personal mission to do something concrete to celebrate, motivate and inspire women around the world.

At the time, few people understood my vision - in early 2007, the site was ahead of its time. Open-source technology and community websites were still in their infancy, and most people I spoke to thought I was crazy to want to launch a site that was dedicated to inspiring and connecting women.

Since then, the number of community websites has skyrocketed, and those targeted at women have exploded. Meanwhile, technology has kept pace with exciting new innovations.

A Labour Of Love

I funded the creation of AWR myself and spent considerable time and money further developing and marketing it via social media. That paid off, because it's how you found it and me :)

During the past three years, I have worked continuously on the site, researching, writing and uploading content, fuelled by my passion and positive feedback from a growing user and fan base.

It’s a labour of love. The work is joyful, and I feel happy that AWR makes a difference in people’s lives.

I believe AWR provides a valuable, if somewhat intangible service. It provokes thought and discussion on sometimes-controversial issues; it spreads joy, happiness and peace; it’s quirky and fun and funky. Fans and visitors are inspired and enlivened by it – I know that from the comments I get from all over the world.

Right from the start, I wanted the site and everything on it available to visitors for free. I still want that. I want AWR to be inclusive, not exclusive. I want it to be accessible to as many people as possible.

Today, AWR is at a crossroads.

Three-Year-Old Antique

The platform on which it was built (Joomla 1.0) is antiquated (imagine! in just three years); the whole site should have been migrated to Joomla 1.5 over a year ago. But it was delayed for a variety of reasons.

At the moment, the old platform is no longer supported, and the site’s functionality is impaired. More important, the existing site template does not accept standard ad sizes, which makes it difficult for me to host advertising. That means I can’t generate the revenue I need to keep the site free and running.

I need the site to become self-funding, because I can no longer to continue to support it financially on my own. Nor can I continue to work on it alone. I must devote some time to my business, which unfortunately has suffered from neglect these last 18 months. Even amazing women need to earn a living 

The good news is that AWR now has sufficient traffic (an average of about 14,000 unique visits / month) to attract advertisers. Once I have even a small amount of revenue, I can hire some part-time help to upload content, and to administer and market the site.

That means you and others will continue to be inspired, enlivened and amused by the diversity of stories, articles, music, poetry, humour and more that you find on AWR.

Three Cents A Day

I expect the process of migrating AWR to the new version of Joomla to be challenging. That’s one of the reasons I’ve delayed.

The site contains 1,500+ articles with thousands of links. It also has a Google page rating of 5, a critical factor for search engine optimization. It’s important that the content, the links and the page rating remain intact.

Cost estimates for “safely” migrating and redesigning the site to make it more advertising friendly are USD 5,000 - $USD 10,000.

I invite friends, fans and followers to help AWR keep inspiring, amusing and celebrating: please invest with me in the future of the site.

A gift of USD 10.95 would represent 3 cents/day over one year for virtually unlimited inspiration and fun! A gift of $100 is the equivalent of 27 cents a day for one year. Gifted investments of any amount will be gratefully accepted.

Several people have already donated, but I need many, many more to do so – close to one thousand people would each need to donate $5 - $10 to raise the required funds. Or allternatively, 60 people each donating $100, or 6 people each investing $1,000. Or any combination thereof! Please help me to keep doing this good work.

Use the PayPal button at the top right hand side of any page on the site to invest in the future of AWR.

Thanks for your support,
Susan