There has been a lot of recent controversy over bloggers that take on different roles. For example, bonddad, Chris Bowers, and thereisnospoon have recently launched a consulting firm called NetRoots Research, Strategy & Analysis. Peter Daou has taken a job with Hillary Clinton. Obviously, Jerome Armstrong’s role within the Warner campaign has been a hot topic recently. The cold hard reality of political blogging is that it doesn’t pay very well. Only Duncan Black and Markos Moulitsas make what I would consider a decent living off their websites. The rest of us struggle to pay the rent. (This is a reminder that you can help me pay my bills by visiting the Booman Tribune store). A decision to use the skills and influence we have gained as bloggers to make some income is one that must be weighed against the loss of independence that comes with creating a conflict of interest. Peter Daou now has the job of making Hillary Clinton palatable to the netroots (no enviable task) and no amount of disclosure will restore his prior freedom to tell it like he sees it. Yet, anyone that would be critical of Peter for taking a job with the former first lady that actually pays real money and (hopefully) comes with medical benefits, is being grossly unfair. As long as everything is disclosed, we should be happy that Peter has this opportunity.
If we want bloggers, particularly community bloggers, to maintain their independence we need to make sure they can make a living. When I was down in DC for the Take America Back 2006 conference, I was talking to Susie Madrak of Suburban Guerrilla about our financial woes. We started brainstorming ways that smaller bloggers can increase their income, and we came up with the kernel of an idea.
If you have ever visited Salon.com you’ve noticed that they require you, if you want to read an entire article, to either pay for a subscription or watch an advertisement. We thought, eureka, can’t we create a monthly e-zine of some of the more popular bloggers where bloggers can contribute exclusive material not available at their own websites?
One of the problems with the diary format is that it is quite limiting. We have to make our points in no more than about 1500 words or people will lose interest and not make comments in our threads. But, a lot of us would like to do more comprehensive and well researched pieces that are not designed to encourage lively feedback. Without the pressure to constantly provide fresh content, we can put our writing, reasoning, and research skills to greater use and do more wonky or hacky pieces.
We could create a kind of co-operative, where the contributors would make an equal share of the proceeds each month from the proceeds of subscriptions and advertisements. The model would be salon.com. Do you think that we could succeed with such a model? Would you be interested in reading longer exclusive pieces from your favorite bloggers on a monthly basis? Would you subscribe to such a publication? If it helps more bloggers maintain their independence, would that be something you see as desireable? Do you have any ideas for how to improve the business model? Would you volunteer to help write the software or sell subsciptions and advertising? What bloggers would you like to see in such a publication?
Also available in orange.
In principle I think it is a fine idea; I am not sure it is commercially viable. I recommended it at orange just so you can have a discussion.
Premium content? Well…it hasn’t worked too well for The New York Times. A lot of stories hidden behind the “premium” wall aren’t getting picked up elsewhere because why direct somebody to a source that’s accessible only to subscribers? (I am a “premium” NYT subscriber because, despite their problems, it’s still the “paper of record”).
Kos has a subscription that just turns off ads and does nothing more. I can’t imagine anyone uses it.
I don’t think the subscription model will work unless you have something really HOT–original reporting or something very controversial. Original reporting is hard for independent bloggers to do because it requires, as you know, time, effort…research. Resources that are beyond the means of financially tenuous blogs.
There is another idea: expand your audience base, and thus the potential to charge advertising revenues, by expanding the scope of one’s site.
For example, Salon doesn’t just cover politics. Art, music, books, society, celebrity gossip…I know someone who has a Salon subscription just for the arts and entertainment section. Feature stories, reviews of books, movies, etcetera, are something that any of us could do, unlike original reporting, and would strike a somewhat different tone for the blog. I personally would LOVE to read MilitaryTracy’s review of the new “Superman Returns” movie!
A site re-design that gives one’s blog a different “look” might help, too. Personally, the 3-columns layout of most blogs has becoming familiar…and boring. Slate recently re-designed their site and while it’s not a blog, it’s a much-needed facelift. I have some ideas along this line but they may not be technically feasible.
In other words, run a blog like this more like “everybody’s small-town newspaper”, with a wide variety of sections. That would necessitate a site re-design to make the site easier to navigate. It doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t be able to write about politics, but politics isn’t EVERYTHING. And it would be nice to read a review of a book I might not have discovered otherwise. Writing in non-political areas will also broaden your hits in Technorati and may increase your cross-linking with other non-political blogs.
For example, write a review of the new “Superman Returns” movie and link it via Technorati to Newsweek’s and Salon’s online reviews. That may bring more eyeballs to the site–people who have never heard of DailyKos.
In other words, to broaden audience you may have to lose some focus. The audience for political blogs may well have found its limits in October 2005, when it peaked–and has since been declining.
As an alternative to these suggestions would be to pick several high-profile fights with The New Republic, Newsweek, and prominent Democratic senators, which would then drive traffic to your site. That’s the easiest way, for sure, although in the end it may be self-destructive.
To sum up my suggestion: Re-think the concept of a blog. Is it an online newspaper? If so, why can’t it be a community-written newspaper that covers all the areas that print newspapers do?
I intended these suggestions to be helpful and hope they are received in that spirit.
(And yes, I’m ordering four BooTrib coffee mugs. I’m going to give one as a gift to Jerry McNerney, who’s running against the odious “Dirty Dick” Pombo for Congress.)
Almost forgot…a travel section.
I travel a lot, and would love to read other people’s experiences both in the US and abroad.
Hmm, not that is interesting and potentially ties in with politics. I may try to write some more travel diaries, or even post some stuff from my web site here.
I didn’t understand the United States until I traveled abroad.
To return to your home country as a traveller from distant lands is to see it with new eyes, and an open heart.
Even before the HTTP formatted internet, there were listserv email reflectors. They were all the rage in the early to mid 1990s. As you all know, with a listserv, people interested in a subject would sign up to the listserv, and then any email sent to the listserv would be sent to everyone so signed up. There was not front-page writers/blogger, and the back and forth discussion via the listserv was similar to the comments activity on blogs. Listserv discussion groups seem to be fewer now than at the beginning of the internet for some unknown (to me) reason.
There have always been newspapers, and they have always required a fee to read. The internet has fiddled around with free newspapers online in exchange for advertising potential, but that seems only to offer a limited amount of material compared to the print paper or the subscription online versions.
What I am saying is that you are really discussing two separate entities here with different developmental routes. Blogs with comments are more a derivative from listservs, and people expect to participate on them in the discussion for free. Newspapers are a specialized info area that people usually expect to pay for the special info. They are not traditionally participatory. If you want to become one or the other fine; however, I am not sure you can integrate the two together because the listserv participatory tradition is expected to be free! Just my 2 cents.
My idea is to keep the content FREE but to increase ad revenue by increasing the traffic to the site.
To increase traffic to the site, broaden the scope of the writing, expanding beyond the confines of a 100% political blog.
The community aspect would remain, because all of the writing would be done by volunteers.
Part of the site redesign would be a toolbar on the top that would have tabs for world news, us politics, arts, sports, etc.
And don’t forget the food and wine section!
This is a good idea for sure, but the sad reality of Internet advertising is that traffic does not necessarily = revenue. While BlogAds are doing pretty well now advertisers are moving away from banner ads as the ROI isn’t there and into more unconventional channels. I think that expanding the scope of the site might not be a bad thing, but that could just be a design and coding issue as we have tons of community members who post cultural, etc. diaries now. But, this is also a good place to explore how a newsletter, or feed, or whatever, with added value could be viable… and additional content streams can only help.
We do (or did) have some of these things now. We had a book club which I haven’t seen for a bit. KP has a jazz diary, the dog thread, there is/was a garden thread and, umm, a painting thread. Wilfred has reviewed films. There may be others currently escaping my middle aged mind. There is also the newsbucket by CG and KP. Sorry, KP, CG’s is cooler. 😉 Some of these things will need to be revamped, of course.
BooMan, I’m open to idea and will help in any way.
Regular features, though, with their own section. And cross-linking to other blogs, which builds site traffic (not to mention linking via Technorati to articles in Newsweek, Salon, et al). The idea is to get new readers.
I don’t necessarily agree with you 100%; after all, I love the pond the way it is – there’s no need to put in a parking lot. However, you’re raising tons of interesting points, so props for that. I think some of the features boran2 has identified, which members already enjoy bringing to the table, are definitely worth bringing to the forefront. And, in terms of making a blog profitable, the way I see it people might pay if you’re actually offering them a new way of delivering what they want. And yeah, cross linking and other types of promotion really help.
Well, it’s all about branding.
If you have a film review section, it’s “Frog Flicks”, for example.
All I know is this: I have a friend who has one of those free accounts on Blogger.com, and he blogged on the Duke rape scandal and reference Newsweek’s and Salon’s reports on it. People followed from those BIG sites over to his blog and his site traffic jumped from zero to 1,700 a day.
Imagine how cross-linking on non-political topics could build site traffic here. Who knows, we might convert some Republicans 🙂
Well, actually, I don’t think Boo was talking about rebranding BMT at all, and that’s one of those points where we disagree. I can’t say what Boo wants to do, but I know what I’ll do when this pond dries up. I’ll look for shelter and hope to see my dragonfly friends on the other side – Boo himself included.
What I was hinting at, without trying to shoot down the notion of making this site chase the money, was that we might start by appreciating all the value that’s already here – that our community enjoys providing to one another. You know, the thought of Military Tracy reviewing Superman was quite something, but who puts a salon in the middle of a pond?
MWOC is exactly right about traffic peaking in October, ’05. According to Sitemeter, that’s true for Black, Kos, Drum and most of the older blogs. FDL and RS are still growing, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of growth in the audience for progressive political blogs.
I’m not so sure about MWOC’s point about stirring up controversy. It’s hard to imagine more controversy than dKos has been involved in this past week, and there’s little to no bump in traffic. Maybe Sunday was up a little from what it would have been otherwise.
Broadening the range of topics might be necessary to reverse the drop in readership.
I was kidding about picking a fight with Newsweek, The New Republic, etc.
you will make buckets of money
im working on that right now
Porn?
Um…no.
And no cream pie fights, either.
Let’s not go there.
Excuse the crappy MS Paint job, this computer doesn’t have photoshop and I was too lazy to go to the other room.
This might increase the revenue stream a bit. Or make people throw up in their mouth a little. 🙂 I would have used a pic of BooMan, but they seem to be a rarity.
No, Catnip…but they WOULD pay to make it go away.
I’ll give Booman $20 right now to get rid of that picture!
You’re such a communist, Booman. I mean, collective revenue-sharing? Why don’t you get your Communist Manifesto out while you’re at it? 😛
In all seriousness, it is a matter that needs to be considered seriously. Daily Kos is probably the only site (along with MyDD and Eschaton, perhaps) where the writers could live off the ad revenue. However, getting readers who aren’t as dedicated to read may be tough. After all, I can read The Next Hurrah (a blog that has a supremely impressive cast) for free. Why should I pay to read someone else?
That being said, I’d pay to read your stuff. And I wouldn’t mind helping on the business aspect of it.
What about a fund-raiser to support the second-tier bloggers?
My telephone company is Working Assets. They donate a percentage of their profits to support organizations like Greenpeace, the ACLU, etc.
Every year, we Working Assets MEMBERS–not “customers”–get to choose how our money is allocated by voting. For example, I voted to give 25% of my contribution to one organization, 40% to another, and 35% to a third.
What about an online fundraiser, where people can contribute and vote how their money will be allocated? The bloggers’ “PBS fundraising telethon”…
I love Working Assets…. good idea, I wonder if we could tie this in to a larger concept with companies and discounts… I think mythmothers idea of an e-conference is a great one, we can put all this stuff out there, talk logistics in more detail and try and figure out some funding models.
You are asking some very good questions here. These are fundraising questions, but as a professional fundraiser, I am at a loss trying to figure out how my knowledge and experience applies to the blogosphere. Short answer: it doesn’t.
So just a few reflections. I used to read salon.com but stopped when it became a subscription website. There was nothing they were saying there that was so interesting or so unavailable from other sources that I was willing to pay for it. Plus I hate the name, I go to a salon to get a hair cut not for information that helps me understand my responsibilities as a progressive politcal activist.
Unfortunately, the nonprofit 501c3 model does not apply to websites that have a political agenda, so you can’t raise money that way. The only thing I can suggest it to figure out how to make it easy for your subscribers to donate small amounts per month, week, day, or visit. For this to work, subscribers need to feel fiscally safe donating over the internet and identify with the good that is being done by your website. If there was a way that regulars could feel safe and reinforce their sense of community by donating small regular weekly amounts, such as $5 over their credit cards, these small amounts could really add up to something.
We can have some more conversations about this if you want to email me at mythmother yahoo.
That said, there’s alot going on as far as political fundraising that I know nothing about. This has produced some abominations such as the Swift Boat Veterans and Jack Abramoff. But there must be a legal and ethical side to this that would apply to the progressive blogosphere. Just a thought, I don’t have a clue as to the inner workings of it.
great insights mm, I’d really love for us to wrap our collective experienced heads around this and help Boo and friends figure this out.
Maybe we could have a progressive blogosphere fundraising e-conference and pool our resources to come up with some suggestions?
Maryscott has a “subscribe $5/mo” and a “subscribe $10/mo” button over at My Left Wing. I have no idea what the mechanism behind them is (e.g. Paypal) or how much money she is making off them, if any.
Well, MSOC just bought her own personal Zeppelin, which has been spotted moored to the roof of her apartment building in Los Angeles–so she must be raking in the Benjamins.
Boo, good job with thinking outside the box. I’m not sure if the pure “exclusive content” idea would work, but perhaps if it was wrapped in a prettier package (i.e. an aggregate of the top/ most important posts from all the bloggers on the network for the week, kind of like an RSS lite, along with more in depth articles, comments of the week from each of your respective blog, etc. and tie it in with a ‘premium’ offering, i.e. a collective group membership to Lexus/ Nexis, or premium content subs to the NYTimes, Salon, etc. it could work.
As a starting point I’d offer a few tiers of pricing and the ability for ‘founding members’, incl. members of the community who promote the subs/ newsletter on their blogs to get a free, or massively discounted subscription…
also offer a free version vs. a sub version, etc. dude. I applaud this effort. It needs tweaking, but I really, truly appreciate your willingness to try and find solutions to the problems we’ve been discussing while trying to make a living doing what you love and are so good at. I’ll help anyway I can. Drop an email and we’ll chat more.
I hate to be negative but…
People are NOT going to pay to read Kos’ writings. He’s a very mediocre writer, although some of his front-pagers ARE good.
Booman is a very good writer, and if good writing was the primary criterion for popularity of a blog, BooTrib would have far more traffic than it does.
Two main questions:
Notice that Salon, which as Jann Weiner as a sugar daddy, has to give away its subscriptions on a daily basis just to build readership. The “pay for play” model is untenable.
Well, considering I addressed a couple of added value things that people, like me, would pay for, like a Lexus/ Nexus sub, it could work.
And no, I wasn’t suggesting “all the good stuff is pay only”, just that perhaps we, who want to support Booman and MSOC, and such, would be willing to throw a few bucks his way and help him promote it if we would be getting something in exchange of value as well as an aggregate of some cool shit we may have missed when we were offline or in a different thread.
Don’t know the history of the evolution of Blogs and the expectations of the readers, but I know what I like. I like Booman Tribune! I’m very willing to subscribe to this place. Not too many others though!
How about a package deal? Share ads, and subscribe to here, the Orange place, Think progress and maybe another for one price?? Just because you are a progressive does not mean that you shouldn’t make a living at this.
Good luck figuring it out.
There’s no incentive for Kos or Duncan Black (Eschaton) to participate in this, though. They’re doing quite well without participating in this. And without their participation, the subscription model doesn’t work. If people can get Daily Kos for free, or Blog World for $19.95 a year, they will choose Daily Kos.
Kos makes his living from ad revenues (plus the secret slush fund that Jerome funnels to him in non-sequential $20s…just kidding!!!!) and so does Duncan Black. I’m not sure about MyDD. They get the eyeballs on the pages.
But the audience for the leftie political blogosphere is limited. So I’m in favor of expanding the audience–which I realize is much different than what Booman has proposed.
I still say, pick a huge fight with Newsweek and watch the site traffic jump. Works for Kos.
So, bottom line, you aren’t the target audience for this.
Actually, I probably would pay for what Booman’s proposing. I’m one of those suckers who subscribes to The New York Times online edition.
I’m questioning how many others would.
I’ll withdraw from the discussion now since I’ve contributed all I have to say on this topic.
I hope Booman’s idea works and, if it doesn’t, that he’s able to come up with another one that is economically viable.
I’m not asking you to withdraw, I’m asking you to step back from the dkos, etc. negative bias since that isn’t what Boo is talking about here, and is actually trying to counteract, and talk about things that could work… site traffic isn’t the end all be all and in fact isn’t that viable economically anymore. So, yes, expanding the reach is good, but there needs to be something of added value that people will want to support.
No, I meant I don’t have any more ideas to contribute. I pretty much put them all in that first long post I wrote.
I’m hoping somebody else will come up with something better, or can figure out a way to implement Booman’s plan. I think keeping the original political focus of Booman Tribune is the ideal solution, and mine is a compromise that might need to be made to increase this site’s ad revenues.
Expanding the scope of the writing might make the site more attractive to other types of advertisers, too.
Y’all should put out a print magazine.
Call it weblog® not available online.
Good writing, sharp graphics, interesting size. People pay for that.
Your basic idea, one good designer, one clever capitalist, and it could go.
wanting to make a living.
I’m willing to make some contribution to bootrib for both the content and the community here (even though I mostly lurk). I’ll go buy a couple bumper stickers, I promise.
I’m sceptical of the ezine idea though. It’s going to be tough to provide content better than we can find for free. Every print ‘zine is finding that out right now. And as Man said above, the idea that you’re saving your best stuff for the paying customers won’t help bootrib or any of your partners.
And who the partners are matters a LOT – many of the blogs I’ve looked at don’t have anything worth reading for free, let alone paying.
so that menstruating she devils can bitch freely and when three of us get together we can make that witch’s power triad thing right?
is a huge pain in the labor of love I also discovered while visiting you in PA!
Make the suggestion to her. She’s very responsive to readers. I suggested Scoop to her on a number of occasions over the last year or so. She asked her readers what they thought and they hated it, so she decided against switching even though it would have meant increased page views and better revenue. The objections were well thought out and on a pure, I like Susie’s blog so much I host it for free level, I agreed with their thoughts. I can’t find the link right now, but the general worry was that it would become too much like Kos and her voice would get diluted in a sea of weirdness.
To be perfectly honest I dont think the smaller blogs can make the money short of getting into: porn – please no!, dating services – oh my God!, or something else unsavory.
I’m also not a fan – to say the least- of a move into political consultancy!
However, people should be able to make a living. To go to pure subscription service will cut people out. To put things behind walls goes against the open source stuff. The only thing I could think of was a non-binding system where those willing donated. I dont know how this would work. It could just be a pledged amount, but I personally would be willing to donate say x cents per comment I made plus Y cents per diary. Add em up at the end of the month and send em off to pay pal, or suchlike. The X and Y wouldnt have to be huge, and each participating individual could decide on what their X or Y would be.
At the moment I get a chance to read interesting stuff and comment and even splash my own insane ideas on a fairly well read organ. I also wouldnt like to see Booman’s site drastically alter just to try and dramatically increase readership so he can afford a pizza. I’m willing to pay something for this. I think sometimes people are averse to asking for donations but maybe the comunity itself can offer something.
Anyway this has pretty much been brainstormed as I write and maybe it sounds completely wacko. Apologies if it doesnt sound well thought out.
Honestly, if Booman puts up a PayPal donation link, I’ll give $5 a month. Come on, that’s one grand mocha latte at Starbucks, which I don’t like that much anyway!
I cancelled my cable subscription after 9/11 (when all the teevee stations started Bush-worshipping, yeck) and donate the money I was sending to Cox Cable every month to…the ACLU! Plus now I have more time to read books!
A fundraiser to Support Your Independent Blogging Communities is worth a go. I started a Friends of the Library organization to help out our very underfunded school library, and raised $5600 the first year (and that was without any fundraisers, just cash that parents gave to us in $5 and $10 increments). My goal? $1000, and I was doubtful we’d reach that.
Our goal for this year is $8,000.
Of course, if people are going to donate to a foundation, they want some accountability–who gets how much of the pie and all that, but that shouldn’t be a problem.
Or marry an heiress. Are there any rich, single women in Philadelphia?
I can’t write the software, but I can test it if/when the time comes. I can also edit.
I would be interested in it. Don’t know what kind of price you are talking about. Certainly is a problem, I don’t want to pay much but I’d like you to keep working and making this all possible. Doesn’t seem quite fair when you think about it. Too bad Warren didn’t drop one of those billions to support the bloggers.
I like the idea of being able to send donations. I already have tons of mugs, I’d much rather just donate the money directly. I also don’t have much right now, but I would like to be able to kick in some cash from my paypal account whenever I sell something on Ebay for example. I don’t like the idea of a regular fee, I do like being able to contribute when I am able. I don’t think anyone would think any less of you for putting out a literal tip jar, I know I wouldn’t. I don’t post all the time, but I check in several times a day and would happily support the site. I get a lot out of this site for free, it’s only fair to give back a bit. Besides, if you ain’t paying for it, that sounds like communism. 🙂
I would enjoy reading more detailed, indepth discussions of topics from some of the experts that frequent these blogs. The wonkier the better, personally. I also agree with previous posts that a wide range of topics would be great. One of the best things about these sites is knowing that there are other people that share the same basic beliefs that you hold. Naturally, I would value the opinion of like-minded people much more than a music review from a corporate media blowhard or that sort of thing.
Something that I would definately pay for would be short video news stories/documentaries by some of these great investigative bloggers. These folks actually ask real questions and investigate real stories. Or could you imagine a monthly video Cheers and Jeers? I don’t know, maybe my generation’s brains are so addled from years of media bombardment that…hey, look, a shiny object!
As to your question about volunteering services, I would volunteer some time in whatever needed capacity. I have seen online job boards for projects where people can sign up and register with their skills and experience and how much time they can offer. You might not find 3 or 4 people willing to commit 12 hours a week, but I bet you could find 12 people to commit 3 or 4 hours a week. If at all feasible, many hands make light work.
Does this have anything to do with the technical questions you were going to send me that I haven’t received yet? 🙂
I notice you’ve updated the ads in the margins. Keeping that content fresh would help a lot, but I understand that the person who was handling it hasn’t been here in quite some time.
yes, it does. And we have a new person working on the books with buzz thingamabob. She will probably reveal herself shortly.
CabinGirl?
A book is reco’d by her on the FP and she does have admin privledges…
Sorry, was it a secret?
You, my dear, are obviously paying WAAAY too much attention. 🙂
well, this is what happens when people don’t give me stuff to snark about… I go into meta mode… 😉
(oh, and I’m in the ad biz, I always notice these kinds of things :P)
I might have missed the point in my quick review of this diary, but I will say that I stopped reading Salon when they made me wade through ads several times a day as opposed to just once. There comes a moment when I will say, “I love you” but not like this. Boo, if you started charging for premium content, I would leave. I hate that. It is like the Net Neutrality movement. Information should be free. On the other hand, if you offered a monthly subscription of say $5 or $10 dollars, I would help you out. Maybe offer a free bumpersticker and a cool club card. :>)
But, the vast majority of these money making ideas do nothing for me. I don’t want to buy some item to contribute to a site I love, and I will not pay to have the privilege to read something that someone else can’t read because they don’t have the funds.
When my kid’s free summer school program asked for $25 to cover some small extra costs, I gave $100, because I knew at least 3 other families would not be able to give even $25. That is community. I will be happy to give you some money, within my means, to keep this site viable, but giving extra access to those with means makes me cringe.
This is a model worth thinking about. It is editorially distinct.
You’ll probably need some familiar name writers to headline it, make it promotable, maybe by doing something special say once a month, like maybe do theme sectons–a number of people writing on the same topic, plus the transcript of a group discussion, interviews, etc. Throw in some podcasts and editorially it could work. Financially?- that’s never been my expertise.
Another model from the magazine world is the special interest publication, which attracts advertising if you find the right niche, and that can help support this enterprise. Of course, that can be risky, and dangerous, too. I recall a magazine I wrote for called New Times (not the current one) out of NYC. My first editor there was Frank Rich. It was political, cultural, etc., at the tail-end of the general “smart” magazine era. The owner started a running magazine as well, ostensibly to help support New Times. Eventually he closed New Times, but kept the running magazine… For awhile.
That’s my motto.
BTW, you need to consider that your subscriber only content will leak out – just like the NYT’s and Salon’s – by bloggers who will just post parts of it free on their blogs for others to comment on, which discourages subscriptions. I don’t subscribe to any site. Then again, I’m poor. So it’s either eat or read the elite stuff. Cheesecake tends to win.
Put up a PayPal link. I think I’m going to try that on my blog.
I’ve been at him and Jérôme several times over the last year to put up a donations link here and at ET. Do a fund-raising drive once or twice a year. Works for Steve Gilliard, works for Melanie, works (sorta) for Arthur Silber.
I’ll do the fund-raising drive if other people are too embarrassed to do it: I don’t benefit from it so I can feel free to badger people into paying up!
The subscription journal is a possible source of cash, but extract the obvious, easy and cheap funds first.
Is there some legal reason we just can’t send regular donations in to help support BooTrib? I know I would sure be willing to send a small sum every month so that Boo can make a living, too, and as a way of expressing my appreciation for the hard work that goes into running a site like this. There are a LOT of us out here who feel this way, and if we all kicked in what we could on a monthly basis, wouldn’t that help?
If I remember correctly there was and that’s why Boo set up the store. I could be totally wrong though.
He’s a Limited Liability Corporation, for both tax and legal liability purposes. So he can’t accept donations directly.
I’ve been thinking about this myself for quite some time. In my neverending effort to finance my Ph.D. without actually, uh … getting a job, I’ve been sacrificing sleep and food for various freelance web design and op-ed projects. My blog (which I am far more passionate about) has consistently suffered due to it’s lack of, you know, making any damn money whatsoever.
I think Salon has a good revenue model which I find flexible enough to account for the casual viewer without making unreasonable demands upon their time (should they choose not to subscribe) yet still encouraging revenue from mandatory adverts.
Blogs are clearly on a sharp upward spiral in public consumption and the timing is kairotic for a cooperative project. I hereby publicly state not only my support for the project as a concept, but a promise that I would also be the first to participate by both lending my web design expertise as well as contributing journals. If anybody wishes to discuss this further, please feel free to contact me via my blog (or email me directly).
Jay Daverth (urthwalker)
The Hindsight Factor
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Being unemployed – I don’t really have any to spare, but usually give when somebody asks. This morning I stopped myself from giving away too much to Claire McCaskill’s campaign when they made me fill out the form four times. It’s too sad that we have to worry about this. Asking for cash is a hard thing, I have given to Susanhu and to Soj when they asked here. Now that you mention it, I will go and buy BostonJoe’s book from you. The only site that has received any financial support from me is Buzzflash, they sell stuff I can’t resist – books, dvd’s etc. I would also go for a membership fee or subscription, if it’s an easy one – a monthly contribution, say.
Boo, you have created such a kind and generous community here, you should never have this kind of worry.
I’ve thought about this overnight and the only way to offer free content and make a living is increased advertising. Exclusive, subscriber-only content goes against the whole open-source intent of the internet. It divides readership into those who have $20 and those who do not. And it doesn’t work in practical terms because someone who pays the $20 will copy and paste anything of value behind the subscriber wall elsewhere for free. It won’t work no matter how astounding your contributors and content may be.
What you need, BooMan, is an advertising manager who sends out mailers and makes phones calls and gets advertisers to pay for play on the Pond. And, that ad manager needs to offer a “new product model,” a venue that gives the advertiser guaranteed exposure. (I pity poor Sierra Trading Post — regular readers rarely scroll down that far on the page.)
Instead of thinking of ads within the context of print media and running them down the margins of the page, ads need to be sold as commercials that are inserted between clicks on the main page. For example, when someone clicks on a front page feature to read the extended text and comments, they will be see a commerical before automatically rolling over. When someone clicks on a diary in the right margin, they get a commercial first.
These commercials could be value-based depending on their length: 5 seconds, 10 seconds, up to no more than 30 seconds. If a reader sees something they like in the commercial and clicks on it, it should open in a second window so they can continue with their BooTrib reading after closing it. Each of the “books with Buzz” could get a full-screen 5 second presentation. If a reader clicks on the commercial, the advertiser would pay per click in addition to paying for placement.
Obviously, not every advertiser would want to be featured on BooTrib, nor should they be. I’m thinking the readership here really wouldn’t mind seeing ads for joining Working Assets or MoveOn.org or the Sierra Club inserted into their reading here. Even ads offering discount subscriptions to Vanity Fair or The Economist shouldn’t upset anyone unduly. Or a 30 second spot for Toyota’s latest hybrid car. Or a video message from Russ Feingold or Howard Dean…
By selectively approaching logical advertisers, the ad manager could actually enhance the content of the site. It would be like seeing an ad for Home Depot or Dutch Boy paint while watching HGTV. And for those who can’t stand the idea of supporting the site by enduring commercials, there could always be an ad-free subscription option.
The ad manager would, of course, need to be compensated for their efforts with a commission drawn from every ad they place. They could offer their services to more than one site and offer advertisers exposure on multiple blogs.
Gawd, I wish I was young enough and healthy enough to volunteer for this job concept. Hopefully, some unemployed ad exec will see my idea and jump at the opportunity…