A letter to Icon fans:

Since we launched our Icon website in late September we've been very encouraged by the positive comments from viewers.

The interesting part is that the Icon is a very part-time job for us. We are grateful to the many viewers who send us material and story ideas. Without you we couldn't continue.

We are also encouraged as we find new viewers who recently discover us and pass our link on to others.

Some of you may be wondering what you can do to help us out. Here's a suggestion:

We are creating some promotional pieces and we would really use some honest "testimonials" or "endorsements." Think about movie reviews that you've read when one sentence or a phrase or a word jumps out at you. That's what we seek from viewers: Descriptive words about the Icon.

We'd appreciate you adding your name to your statement so that we may attribute the statement to someone everyone knows. Who knows, we may use it on that billboard on State Route 103 near the interstate!

A word about logging in

You've probably noticed some very strange comments added to some of our stories...like ads for Viagra. We'll, these were coming from an automated e-mail source. Unfortunately, the only way to block them is to now require all comments to be made by viewers who log in.

That's the price for technology.

We are a "free" news source

It's amazing that you can obtain all our features, photos and news at no cost to the viewer. We plan to continue this way. Our revenue comes from advertisers. We've been extremely happy with the advertisers who have contacted us.

Please thank these advertisers. Oh, and encourage others to join us. At the moment we link business websites to the Icon for a very minimal cost. In fact, it's only about $1.35 a day.

That's an amazingly low price to reach all the viewers we've touched.

We've also had several viewers ask if they could send us money, sort of as encouragement. We won't turn anyone down to that request. We've even had a couple persons send us money. Please understand any donations are not tax deductible. We intend to be a for-profit organization. But, we thank you for your support.

Classified ads

We are working on a plan to offer classified advertising. Stay tuned. It will happen soon. It, too, will be very affordable.

Our viewers

We are experiencing well over 280 viewers a day. As you can see on our home page the number of total viewers since Sept. 22 is well over 12,000. Of these viewers, we've obtained a group of 2,355 "unique" viewers. That represents the number of individual persons who have checked out the Icon. That is very encouraging. It tells us that the word is getting out there and that we've created a loyal group of readers.

Some follow us on Twitter and on Facebook. Some viewers tell us that we are the first thing that opens on their computer in the morning.

Again, thanks for your support, for spreading the word and for continuing to follow Bluffton events on the web.

Your ideas and comments are always welcome.

Fred and Mary Pannabecker Steiner