Crowdfunding the creation of the next version of LFGSS

The affiliate links can make a huge amount too though. Take a look at the MoneySavingExpert site for example. It's cash is mostly made from affiliate links as I understand it. They have them everywhere, in the articles, the forum (although for the forum, see http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/site/skimlinks )

As I understand it MSE mostly makes it's from the links in articles that it produces though, Microco.sm would be doing it by piggybacking on user generated content, and by the volume of that.

High volume, low cost. I think that given the mockups (and if my reading of them is correct) Microco.sm has a good chance of challenging in places that might not be expected. The gallery pages have potential for example, as I think they look better for sharing and getting feedback on photos than say Picassa or Flickr, and I'd be interested to see more of this sort of page too, buts thats a way out at the moment.

On a totally unrelated note, is it MicroCo.sm, microcosm.app or Microco.sm, or somthing totally diffrent?

This is all true. But as I said I will not be aiming at the top of the long tail.

The original quote on that:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html

Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.

That's the aim.

The volume of users over thousands of forums is what matters, not the revenue from a single forum.

We have no expectations of getting the few biggest and most profitable forums and media sites. We're aiming at all of the hobby sites... the long tail, none of which cover their costs, and all of which would prefer not to have the technical pain that they have today.

Plus if we really make the user experience something special, we hope to help increase the size of their communities and the engagement of their users.

And for now, it's Microcosm.