Bill, I suggest you check with the Trotts or Anil Dash and make sure you won't be in trouble with Movable Type's license. If you're in the clear legally, it sounds like a brilliant idea though-it'd be like you were a blog incubator (parallel to vc incubators intentional).

I think it would be ok as the only thing he would be charging for is his bandwidth and services in helping a person use Movable Type (usage of MT would be free).

You just may have to state that to be sure you are in the clear though.

Great idea though...a true capitalist. :)

As I understand my MT license, I can use it in a for-profit venture if I pay them a rather small licensing fee. If I get substantial interest, I will do so. If I don't, I won't need to.

A blog incubator is exactly what I'm suggesting. And a way to keep people from succumbing to blogspot. I don't want to host these blogs forever - I want to give people a chance to blog using the premier blogging tool, to see if they like blogging and want to do it long-term, while I help them build an audience and delay them having to learn about registering domain names and setting up MovableType and such.

I wouldn't mind giving it a shot. Finding the time to make a good showing of it would be tricky, and I have no idea how to use blogging software (heck I can barely figure out how to link on a comment board). But if you are willing to show me how it's done, I can give it a go.

I'm pondering this.

What happens if one already is a user of Blogger? IN that event, all I'd need is space. The beauty is, your MT issues would never come up.

by "for profit venture", I think that they are refering to a corporation running a blog. I would double check the licensing arangement on that. I know that Movable Type license only allows themselves to charge for setting up the server as a means of revenue for them. I would also assume that since they started typepad.com and blogs.com, that the licensing would frown upon people stealing business from them. And for that matter, I think that typepad is cheaper than what you are proposing.

I'll double-check the licensing issues. TypePad may be a little cheaper, but I'm offering something a little different - assistance in setting up the blog, design, and help building traffic, and then assistance moving to a separate site if/when the blogger is ready and traffic warrants it. I'm not so sure that violates the license. I could, I guess, offer to charge people to register a domain name for them and design a blog for them, and accomplish the same thing and not be in violation of the license, but there is a traffic-building advantage to incubating a blog as part of another blog.

Bill,

If you decide to do this, I am 99% sure I want to do it. Since blogs are supposed to be about what we care about, I would imagine that, besides politics, half of my posts would involve sports.

I'm interested bill... it will be middle of next month before I'll have time to do anything though.

Bill,

I'm definitely interested. I have been working on starting my own blog from scratch, but realize I am in somewhat over my head, at least thus far.

Bill;

Perhaps you can educate me; Since I run a Blogspot blog, what problems am I avoiding by going elsewhere?

I've decided to see if I can blog decently before I try committing any of my own cash to one. I've set up a blog-city blog to try my hand at publishing my Random Numbers for public consumption.