Chapter 11

Guy sat down at the dinner table. The kids and his wife had been waiting for him. His wife had a sour expression on her face. The kids were subdued. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but he figured that he’d find out soon enough. All he had to do was watch the videos of what his wife was telling the kids and he’d know everything.

They ate dinner with very little conversation around the table. It was the kind of tense meal that Guy had gotten used to having with the family. It did seem to him that the kids were a little more distant than usual. The fact that he was out late last night might have had something to do with it.

When they finally finished eating, Guy said, “I have an announcement.”

“What?” Maggie asked.

“As you know, I’ve been a little busy lately,” Guy said.

With an edge to her voice, Maggie said, “I have a pretty good idea of what you’ve been busy doing.”

“Max, one of the guys that was there when the attempted robbery took place, had lost his job that day. He’s starting up his own business. I’ve been meeting with him about it,” Guy said.

“That’s interesting,” Maggie said in a tone of voice that suggested she didn’t believe a word he was saying.

“What kind of business?” Ellie asked.

“An internet business,” Guy answered.

Sean asked, “What kind of internet business?”

Guy said, “Max discovered that there are all kinds of special interest websites out there that cater to a handful of people. The way he explained it to me is that you set up website addressing some particular interest, say knitting, and you charge members a small monthly fee. It doesn’t need to be a very big fee. You also post advertisements to other websites and get paid a fee each time someone clicks on the link. You can also get corporate sponsors who will provide content.”

Ellie said, “Smart. You get multiple revenue streams out of one website. That small fee gets charged every month. Even if someone loses interest, they are liable to continue getting charged until they realize they are wasting money. You could end up with years of revenue from someone who was interested for a month or two.”

Bill said, “There’s a lot of money in those advertising links.”

“You bet,” Guy said.

Maggie was suddenly very interested in this particular topic of conversation. Her suspicions about his cheating were put on the back burner for the moment. This sounded like the real thing. She asked, “So can you get in on this business?”

“He offered me forty percent of the company if I put up four thousand dollars,” Guy said.

He wasn’t going to mention that the four thousand dollars was a paltry amount compared to what Max was putting into it. His real contribution were the videos of his wife cheating, but that was a separate transaction.

“Take it,” Maggie said.

Ellie said, “You better have an iron clad contract.”

Guy handed a copy of his contract for part interest in the specialty websites over to her and said, “Read it.”

Surprised to actually have a contract handed her, Ellie said, “Give me a few minutes.”

“I figured if we decide to go with it, we ought to do it in both of our names individually. You’ll own twenty percent and I’ll own twenty percent,” Guy said.

“You’d give me twenty percent of their company,” Maggie asked surprised by the offer.

“Sure. The money would be coming out of our joint savings account. It would give you a little mad money of your own,” Guy said.

“I like that,” Maggie said.

Guy held out a small presentation folder and said, “Here’s a prospectus they made for me. They figure they can open a specialty website every other month. They’ll slowly grow the business to where they have ten or twelve of them.”

“How much do they expect to make?” Maggie asked.

“They are hoping to make five thousand or so a month off of each specialty website. With ten specialty websites, that’s well over a half a million dollars a year after expenses. A twenty percent share would be around a hundred thousand,” Guy answered.

“That much?” Maggie asked incredulously.

“Well, it would take some time to get to the point where it’s making that much money,” Guy said.

Ellie said, “There’s a risk that it won’t work.”

“That’s true. It’s still better odds than winning the lottery,” Guy said.

“It could do better than that,” Sean said. “I’ve read about people who are making a million dollars a year off their blogs.”

“Max said the same thing, but he’s going conservative,” Guy said. “You’ve got to remember, Max is a salesman. You don’t talk about a big sale until it is closed.”

“That makes sense,” Maggie said just to have something to add to the conversation.

“However, the way I figure it is that at ten dollars a month it only takes five hundred members to get a revenue of five thousand dollars a month. That doesn’t include the advertising revenue. There have to be five hundred people in the world interested enough in any topic you choose to sign up as members,” Guy said.

“World wide?” Maggie asked.

Sean said, “The internet is everywhere.”

“I forgot about that,” Maggie said.

“Who will be providing content?” Sean asked.

Guy said, “They’ve got an independent outfit that will be providing some content for one of the websites already lined up, but Max is being very closed mouthed about it. He doesn’t want to blow the deal with wild rumors getting back to them.”

“What kind of outfit?” Sean asked.

“I can’t really say,” Guy said.

“Can you give me an example?” Sean asked suspiciously.

“Let’s say you’re doing a knitting site. You get a distributor of knitting supplies to provide articles about knitting. They already have them, so it is no big deal. You go to a yarn company and get articles from them about yarn. Before you know it, you’ve got a website that is pretty informative and useful to some granny somewhere,” Guy answered.

Guy was not lying about that. Max and Marylou had given the matter a lot of thought. Their plan was to use the website of his cheating wife to fund expansion into other websites. Marylou had come up with the idea for the knitting website. She was thinking about a canning website as well.

Although there was a lot of legalese in the contract, Ellie had a pretty good idea of what it contained. Nothing looked weird as far as she could tell. She said, “This appears to be a straight forward contract for two thousand shares of a corporate stock. You would be a member of the board.”

“Right,” Guy said. “I have another contract in your mother’s name.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Maggie said giving him a smile.

Ellie said, “I know I want to be a lawyer, but I don’t understand all of the legal ramifications in this contract. You should have your lawyer check this out.”

“I already did,” Guy said.

Already visualizing a hundred thousand dollars a year income, Maggie said, “Let’s sign it.”

“We have to get the money out of the bank. We’ll need two checks; one in my name, and one in your name,” Guy said.

“I can take care of that first thing in the morning,” Maggie said.

Guy said, “We’ll have to get the contracts signed in front of a notary.”

“I guess it all has to be done legally,” Maggie said.

“That right,” Guy said.

“When will we start seeing money?” Maggie asked.

“It takes time for these things to take off. It could be six months before the first specialty site gets five hundred members,” Guy said. “It just depends.”

“That long?” Maggie asked.

Sean said, “Dad’s right. These things can take some time to get established. I mean, people have to find out about it.”

Bill said, “It could go viral if you manage to hit the right topic.”

“That’s true,” Sean said.

Guy said, “The great thing about this is that we don’t have to do anything. We can just sit back and collect our money.”

“Maybe I want to do something,” Maggie said.

“Like what?” Guy asked.

“I could run a specialty website,” Maggie said.

Guy asked, “What topic?”

“I don’t know,” Maggie answered.