Help, I need my readers’ advice.
As my regular readers will know, I’ve been contemplating expanding Paulitics: Paul’s Socialist Investigations now for some time.
I’ve been wanting to develop an American Empire Encyclopedia — possibly as a wiki, but at the very least with a clickable map containing links to academic scholarship documenting the democratically-elected governments the U.S. has overthrown throughout history and the brutal dictatorships they’ve supported.
I’ve also been wanting to develop a home for far left bloggers to put their feeds all in one place and read what each other thinks. I figure if libertarians, Liberals, Tories, and New Democrats each have one, there’s no reason why can’t we anarchists, Marxists and socialists have some sort of a website to promote each other’s blogs, get more readers, and find new far-left blogs that are interesting.
Now, unfortunately it looks like both of these things will require me to host my own blog and thus to move Paulitics away from wordress (but I’ll make sure to pay wordpress for a domain mapping service so that it redirects).
In order to afford the bandwidth and the hosting services and the domain mapping services, I will have to put some advertisements up on the new blog and that, I realize, is a sensitive issue for leftist bloggers.
My plan for the ads is that I would place the ads in a few select locations (not everywhere like most bloggers) and I was hoping to take from the revenue only the money needed to maintain the site, and then with 100% of the profits that remain, host a monthly or quarterly ‘election’ with Paulitics readers to decide which charity/leftist political party should receive the left-over money.
This way, I figure, not only would we be blogging and expressing important revolutionary opinions, but we would also be able to generate revenue for important charities and revolutionary causes. These charities could be anything that was democratically elected by you, the readers, such as Amnesty International or homeless advocacy organizations or local charities such as women’s shelters or even political causes such as a particular candidate for the Communist Party, the Marxist-Leninist Party, Quebec Solidaire or the Socialist Caucus of the NDP.
So, given that this would be a big move, and one which would require the implementation of advertisements to pay for the newly-found overhead, I wanted to ask my readers what they thought and what their advice was.
I’ve created a poll for this topic and I’d appreciate it if you’d all go and vote to give me your opinions. You can find it here:
Paulitics 
Hey Paul…both of those projects sound worthwhile, and if you have the energy and resources to do them, I say you should. As for ads, I’m sure you’ll take some flak for the idea, but the hardline anti-ads position is a very self-deceptive brand of revolutionary puritanism — not that I like ads, of course, but there is nothing pure about our ad-free blogs given that they are free because the companies that allow us to host them make their money by selling data about links and traffic and so on to firms that do data mining for whatever nefarious capitalist marketing purposes suit them. So I would say hold your nose and go for it.
Another option is seeing if you can make a go of using donations to support the project in an ad-free way. No idea how feasible that is, though, and you’d want whatever approach you take to be reliable.
What sort of ads were you thinking of?
I can tell you that adsense is not a money maker. in the two months we’ve had it on Birth Pangs we’ve made 11 something. :)
April – Wow, I had no idea that adsense was so horrible. I was thinking of a combo of adsense and that programme with amazon where you list books and get a cut of the sales. Just for my own info on this matter, do you mind me asking approximately how many hits Birth Pangs gets per day on average?
I have tons of space (and a good supply of bandwidth) if you are interested on my server. I won’t charge a dime and you can use as much as you want as long as the bandwidth doesn’t go stupidly high. (Which would be very unlikely.)
MrvnMouse – That’s a great offer. Would we have to use your url as a prefix (ie. http://1337hax0r.com/paulitics)?
BP stats
* Pages displayed : 33857
* Unique visitors : 13458
* Pages displayed in last 24 hours : 207
* Unique visitors in last 24 hours : 93
April – Yikes. I’m averaging about 350 hits per day lately, so I don’t think my situation with adsense would be that much better than yours. I guess I’ll have to do some more research on the matter.
Anybody have any first hand experience as to how much the amazon programme brings in for them? Anybody have any experience with other forms of advertising?
I think AdSense is still the most lucrative program around. For regular blogsites it doesn’t really pay off but if you’re planning an aggregate, it might. You will need visitors though.
Most other affiliate programs (like Amazon) are seriously not worth the time.
Let me know if you need any more info, Paul, I’ve got experience in the web-marketing business and, the lefty I am, able and willing to give you some free advice.
Erik — Hey, thanks. I’d be grateful for any info you could offer me on this subject as this is most definitely not my area of experience.
Is it okay if I e-mail you? I think I’ve still got your e-mail kicking around from one of your past comments.
Cheers,
Paul
If you bought yourself a domain, you could just use http://www.paulitics.com or whatever you want, you don’t have to use 1337hax0r or vastleftwingconspiracy or any of my other domains if you don’t want to.
however, if you cannot afford a domain, you can use like paulitics.vastleftwingconspiracy.net or something like that if you so desire.
I only discovered your blog a a couple days ago so I haven’t exactly been a long reader yet, having only back-read a bit, but both of your ideas there sound very intriguing.
As far as the ads, it’s true that they often don’t really make you money. The affiliate program also are a bit iffy, considering you’d only make something if your readers felt some great need to purchase books etc.
As for domains, they’re not too expensive. Godaddy.com runs all their little special things.. I get them in a newsletter, their current one drops the .com price down to like 6.95 for a year.
This one lasts till the 31st, then I expect another email as they tend to constantly have them going.
Just thought I’d drop that in there, in case your doing thing soon, save ye a couple bucks.
Coupon Code for ze deal: gdm0819g
Paul said…”even political causes such as a particular candidate for the Communist Party, the Marxist-Leninist Party, Quebec Solidaire or the Socialist Caucus of the NDP”
the last two for sure but the Communist Party and the Marxist -Leninist,yikes.Do your self a favor guy stay away .Read more Marx you will then understand why I say this.I was your age at one time,trust me the CPC(out of touch) and the M-L (personality cult)are whacked.
Thanks for that advice dirk. However, as I said above, I have no intention whatsoever of making the donation process anti-democratic so it won’t be my decision to ‘stay away’, as you put it, or not.
Now that said, I do believe I mentioned “specific candidates” for either the M-Lers or the CPC and I would be perfectly fine giving money to them, provided a majority of my readers voted for it. I’ve met very brilliant people involved with the CPC (in fact I know their perennial candidate for Ottawa–Centre quite well and think he’s a great guy) so I don’t see the problem you have with my ‘youthful naïveté’ on this front.
I should have been more clear,I don’t consider you naive,I would not be so arrogant.I just meant when I was your age or so I dabbled with the CPC.Talk is cheap,actions speak loudest.And there probably are,indeed there are,some smart and committed people in the CPC.But that still does not change the fact the CPC is out of touch and totally irrelevant.THE M.L are just to weird.They sing songs and write poetry to their late “great leader”,and “teacher” Hardail Bains.But if your reader vote to donate,fly at it…
Anyway just some thoughts nothing more ,when ever the two Party’s are bought up I can’t help but roll my eyes.
Paul, e-mail me and we can set up a temporary place for you if you would like so you can start your transition.
Please don’t forget to have some connections to the social democratic / socialist movement in Europe, ESPECIALLY in the Scandinavian/Nordic region.
Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark have had much more experience and pragmatic success in implementing and making popular and VIABLE, the applied socialist principles, even with the pressures of a capitalistic/globalistic mixed economy ! Their low poverty rates, low infant mortality rates, low crime rates, low incarceration rates, pacifism, per capita foreign aid , economic competitiveness, generous welfare / social safety net, high educational standards, etc., all prove one thing : Democratic Socialism CAN INDEED WORK. Not only can in work, it can bring about the most superior and favorable socio-economic statistics / quality of life / standard of living *in the history of mankind*. This is something the mainstream North American media and general populace is completely oblivious to and entirely ignorant OF.
Compared to the complete and utter lack of success the left has had in North America, they are WIZARDS over there.
Please, for the benefit of this continent, build the bridge(s), wherever and whenever possible.
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