2017 went swimmingly for OrangeBean. 
The website went from discussion to fruition in less than two weeks.  After kicking the tires on different designs, our web designer concocted a layout we really enjoyed, and there was our site, like the birth of a digital baby, without the pain or the pooping.  Our LLC was formed (liability averted) and we continued putting out news stories, as we do now, as we will do tomorrow. 
Our additional plans for 2018? 
~Without delving into dry metrics, we plan to increase our daily visitors and views by a factor of 10.  That’s a healthy leap. 
~We hope to come up with a system of monetization that will keep the site going but won’t obstruct your experience.  Trial and error, trial and error
~We’d like to up our daily story aggregation from roughly 20 a day to 30.  There are plenty of stories out there to share, and the hardest job of an editor is deciding what NOT to report
~We’d like to add at least five feature writers to our staff, so we can provide more fresh articles for you.  There’s only so much time in the day, and features take a significant amount of time.  Much as we’d like to add more, we only have twenty-four hours in the day. 
~We’d like to explore Indiana and get our feet on the ground with traditional reporting.  In a few weeks we’ll attend our first event as members of the press, which has us very excited.  Who knew being labeled a member of the corrupt media would be such a milestone?
~We hope to incorporate more input from readers to make your experience more enjoyable.  More updates, more stories, better navigation…like Roy Orbison crooned, “Anything you want, you got it.”
~We aim to expand the site to incorporate more media: video, Instagram, audience-submitted photos, pictures of your pets.  Basically lots of pretty pictures
And that’s just what we thought of in a few hours.  We’ve got the whole year ahead of us, plenty of time to learn from our successes and mistakes, plenty of time to hear from you, and plenty of time to fine-tune our humble website into a substantial member of the state media.  We don’t have a ceiling yet.  Or if we did, it would probably be a Pulitzer. Aim high!
Thanks for coming with us and we hope 2018 treats you as well as it will treat us.  Come what may, we’ll keep providing constructive, positive stories, doing our best at Celebrating Indiana- One Story at a Time. 

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