Rent-Day: State of the Site

I had to pay my rent today and it reminded me of a little problem I have. I don’t have a job outside of this blog, so I don’t have enough income to offset large bills like my rent check.

Booman Tribune has exceeded all the benchmarks I set for it (yes, unlike the President, I do have some kind of plan). And my decision to attempt full-time blogging involved an acceptance of a certain level of poverty. I don’t mind having no money as long as I can buy enough dog food to keep the big guy happy and I can keep afloat.

If I need to, I can always get a part-time job. But, I do occassionally need to beg people for support.

The easiset way to be supportive is to visit the store and buy some shirts and coffee cups. For those of you that feel like being really generous, we offer a bumper sticker at a marked up price. And you can also buy BostonJoe’s excellent book, Direct Actions.

SusanHu has also been very busy offering a bunch of nice features for members of the community. She has set up the affiliate program with Powell’s Books. Powell’s is a non-corporate bookstore and they are very blue. Amazon is a deep red corporation. Barnes and Noble is more balanced, but we feel comfortable with Powell’s. Their customer service is excellent, and we have been able to negotiate some discounts on books we feature. Buying through our Powell’s links means that we get 7.5% of the sales and you can feel like a solid citizen for refusing to give your business to the Bush supporters at Amazon.

:more below:
We’ve also added these affiliates, for which we get varying percentages
of sales. We carefully chose these affiliates with three key
requirements: 1) that they be “blue” and eco-friendly companies, 2)
that they offer products that are of high quality and which might
interest you, and 3) that the company be reputable and personally
“vetted” by people we know in “real life.”


We added these companies’ affiliate programs specifically because
Susan’s daughter, and her bosses, order from them regularly and swear by
their products, service, and reliability. For example, Darcy’s boss
buys much of his clothing and hiking gear (including boots) from Sierra
Trading Post. A good friend bought a chair for her back, and yoga
equipment, at Gaiam. (And Darcy just bought two sets of sheets from
Gaiam — $80 sheet sets for $30.) Darcy buys her vitamins from Mother’s
Nature which she says has great deals and is very reliable. She and I
have found hard-to-find books at Alibris and were impressed with their
service and fast shipping. And, we’ve had DISH satellite service for
over five years, and would never go back to cable. For one thing we get
progressive channels like Free Speech TV and LINK TV that we couldn’t
get on cable. And, their customer service is superb on the very rare
occasions we had to call them.


We’ve also added these affiliate programs from reputable, “blue” companies:


Many of these links offer considerable savings, and the one’s that don’t are at least companies that we feel good about supporting. As much as possible, we have looked to create win-win-win situations, where we can build some revenue, provide a valuable service to the community, and drive some sales to good companies and away for bad companies.

But there are other ways you can be supportive of the site.

Some of these:

1. visit our advertisers and make some purchases, or sign their petitions, etc.
2. write some diaries.
3. make sure to make some comments in other people’s diaries, or to recommend them.

Also, tell your blogging buddies about some of the neat features of the site, like the World Recommended Diaries feature, the fact that you can still post two diaries a day here, and the fact that diaries do not just scroll off the page in a few hours. Tell them about the wonderful Froggy Bottom Cafe and Lounge.

Making a living blogging is a long-shot, but one that I think is worth pursuing. One of my problems is that money is not very important to me, and so I am not motivated enough to do the little things that help build revenues. I prefer to think about ideas and to write.

So, writing stuff like this is a kind of downer. I don’t like having to ask for your support. The community already gives me tons of support just by being hear and caring. But, every once in a while I have to grovel. And rent-day seemed like to right time to do it.

Thank you all, again, for being a part of this great community.

Author: BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.