For the less trafficked blogs, (and maybe even for the trafficked blogs) raising money is problematic. I had a thought while over at Firedoglake looking at their survey. What if a coalition of blogs got together and had a American Hero(ine) contest, with the winner decided by donations? People could donate 10, 20, 30 dollars with the cents designating the winner. People could even donate more than once if they really liked more than one entry.
More on the flip:
The entries could be diaries in one category and projects in another. (I envision a whole separate blog where people could put up what they thought was great on the blogasphere.) Each entry could be numbered 1 – 99. A blog could possibly enter more than one entry but would be limited by the number of blogs that joined in that category. For instance, if 30 blogs joined then they could limit diaries for each to 3.
Voting could be done quarterly or even monthly and the amounts could be split according to various formulas. One formula might be that 80 or 90 percent would be split evenly with the participating blogs but the winners would share the 10 or 20 percent. People could read entries from blogs they haven’t seen before. Deadlines for posting votes (donations) would be prominently visible and current tallies on votes would be kept.
I believe this could solve several problems. First, we have a short term memory and it would serve as a reminder of the issues we have dealt with over the last several days or weeks. Second, people could get a view of the best writing coming out of a lot of blogs, all of which would be linked within that contest blog. Third, projects ongoing and in the intermediate stages could be highlighted bring much needed cash and attention to the writers. Fourth, writers could find encouragement in the applause (denoted by votes) where sometimes mojo is hard to come by.
The problems this creates is how to get these blogs to be able to come tegether – what would be the criteria? How many (certainly no more than 99 using this schema unless we go to the dollar level).
Oh yeah – and who could put in an entry? Could a reader enter a diary that they found fascinating or could a writer on a blog enter their diary? I think there would have to be an okay by the blog owner for any entry.
Obviously there would have to be some programming and I don’t know who would do that. Votes would have to be tallied for different sections and different categories perhaps. People would have to be allowed to make more than one “vote” – diaries and projects and perhaps categories? But there might be coalitions of blogs in different categories that could use the system – say witches and warlocks in one section and political blogs in another section and writer writers in another section. Act Blue can get a tip from donors and this blog would have to be able to either take 5% from the donations or gather tips.