Bishop Hill Funding the blog
Jan 28, 2011 Blogs As the blog grows - and we're up 25% in the last two or three months - it is occupying an increasing proportion of my time. With trying to earn a living in a very hard marketplace, supervising small children, as well as writing another book, I am stretched very thin, and I'm in danger of taking my eye off the ball.
The tip box is very helpful and readers have been very generous (thanks everyone!), but I am wondering about possibilities to make the blog pay for itself in a more reliable way.
There's advertising of course, although I like having an ad-free site, and I'm not sure how much it would actually raise.
Another idea I've wondered about is a "subscriber's club", where you make regular payments and in return get the next book serialised ahead of full publication (plus, say, a limited-edition signed hardback when it does finally appear). Maybe also access to bits of information that I don't want to put out as a full blog post for one reason or another.
Lastly I could try standing outside Exxon's offices and wait for the cheque to be dropped into my hand.
Thoughts on any of these would be welcome, particularly the subscriber's club idea. How much, if anything, might people pay?
In the meantime I've put up the tip box again.
Reader Comments (74)
LOL @ jorgekafkazar.
Actually until a week or so ago there was a way to make easy, easy surefire money in the carbon indulgences trade.
You just go to someone holding some stolen ones and offer him 75 cents in the euro for them. He thinks they're tainted, and agrees to sell to cut his losses.
You now sell the indulgences on one of the exchanges at full price, and deliver them into clearing. You bought at 12 euros per indulgence, and sold them for 16!
The clearing house duly passes them back out to someone else. So they're back in play! You find out who's got them this time...and buy them back off him at 75 cents in the euro again. Then you sell again, then you deliver into the exchange...and then you do it again. And again. And again (until the buggers closed the registries - damn!)
Lovely, lovely free jubbly. Eventually you get rid of them by going to someone with an emissions compliance requirement and offering to meet it for him using your allowances. You give him a 5% discount for doing so, and use the stolen allowances to do it for him. So instead of paying 16 euros per tonne of plant food, he only pays 15 or whatever.
The only risk is that you may find the decline-hiders pull a fast one at some point and declare the stolen indulgences invalid. However, once you've churned them enough - and at 75 cents in the euro, this means churning them just three times - you've made 75 cents profit on something that only cost you 75 cents. It's therefore free, and is probably still worth the full value anyway.
It's a democratisation of free money. Governments sell indulgences and get free money. Thieves steal them and get free money. You churn them around and get free money. People who have to buy then get them cheap which means they get free money. Everybody's happy and getting free money (except for hippies, and who gives a rat's nob about them?)
Isn't it great when ecoloonies come up with an idea, Enron refines it, and the council implements it?
It just occurred to me as I keep reading the comments. I have a friend who was laid off from our shared place of employment. He started a few news sites per various countries. The sites are nothing great but all revenue is from ads. I asked him how much he is making on ads. He said he is pulling in $4000 per month for 50 sites from ad revenue. If this helps as an indicator... That fact that BH has some good content with loyal readers and not just loaded up with news aggregators and ads would hopefully be a better equation.
This blog may not have struck gold literally, but has influentially. Its importance is inestimable. But even more so, HSI, its predecessor Casper paper and the recent GWPF Climategate Reviews Analysis. Family first, but I'd be very surprised if they were not supremely proud of your achievements. New books, essays, columns, should be a priority, given your gift for gripping elucidation even of the most abstruse. The blog however has become virtually an institution in its own right and is hugely important both for your present readers and for new ones, and I would urge you to do whatever is possible in your free time to keep up the momentum, for public attention is fickle. As any stage performer/celebrity painfully learns- I've got one son living on a shoestring as a professional musician. Timely reminders on the tip jar, ads, etc. - no problem. And I like the limited edition signed copy idea.
I vote for ads. Very few people are going to be put off by ads, as they are so pervasive nowadays most people have learned to tune out (sorry I shouldn't have mentioned this deadly secret!).
In fact if you want eyecatching Flash ads even better...since I keep Flash disabled most of the time.
I'm not worried by ads as long as they are reasonably "on topic". I would also be happy with a combination of the current ad hoc tip jar donations (for the casual visitors) and a subscription scheme along the lines suggested in the introductory remarks for the faithful. My own druthers are for an annual sub payable either annually or monthly depending on the means/preferences of the subscriber. One highly successful blog here in Oz gave subscribers an "insiders'" daily newsletter including much of the news otherwise unfit to print. Another has a tiered subscription plan with higher privileges for full subscribers, including archival access and "free" copies of the several books produced by their publishing arm each year.
The important thing for me is that you don't burn yourself out, Yer Worship, or sacrifice your family in any way. Figure out a reasonable subscription plan and I'm in.
Genuinely don't know what the best approach is Bishop. It's interesting to note that people who previously viewed Rupert Murdoch as the devil himself are now prepared to be a lot more open-minded about him given his pioneering stance on paid content. All I can say is that I used to be a regular reader of Times Online, and presumably subliminally imbibed more than a few ads along the way (although I've not yet bought a Mercedes Benz). Since it installed its paywall, I've not ventured there and, to be totally honest, not really missed it. The issue for me is not just the cost but keeping track of multiple mini direct debits.
I know this is not much use - all I can say in my defence is that I bought a copy of the HSI with my own money! I'd have to say that at the moment I'd vote for the ads option, to be honest, but I'll respect whatever your final decision is. Hopefully in slightly looser financial times I'll be able to consider subscriptions again.
@ Bluecloud
"Publish some real science and I will donate money."
stick to the Guardian enviro comments mate.
or are you really visiting 'denier blogs' to gauge how you can reposition :-)
(Greenpeace activist that you are, come out more, nothing to be ashamed off).
I & most people here want changes to wasteful lifestyles we in the UK have taken for granted for the last xx years, but lets be sensible/practical about it & give others a chance to improve their lot.
forget the ACC/C... cant remember the latest, may be real but nothing so far has proved to my satisfaction theirs a problem (forget your precious peer review jokes)
Just donated and finally bought HSI. No problem with ads because I'm using Firefox along with Adblock Plus. I didn't even knew your site is ad free because I see never ever ads throughout the WEB. Q: Will you have revenue from visitors like me in case you should move into ads? (i.e. Are ads considered as submitted although I do not see them? I know already they are not loaded which speeds up the browser) I love this blog and apart from the content, the layout is very nice (square space too).
Why not having a banner at the top that reminds of empty Tip Jar on a regular base, like Wikipedia does? (these are not suppressed by Adblock Plus nor will your own ad for the book)
Keep up the good work.
jorgekafkazar
I'm amazed no one has suggested this yet: Sell indulgences.
Unfortunately, the carbon credit exchanges all closed down.
hello Dougie, i have always got my written word from books/info from a local library(up till now,blogs now add/supplement).
for the Bishops book I made sure they ordered & then put it on their shelves so everyone had access to it.
thus the cuts in budgets worry me, i aint that smart now, but without access to free books/info
paywalls are a bit sinister to me.
As well as speaking to Dizzy, would it be worth asking Iain Dale and Guido for their thoughts?
@ Bluecloud wrote:
Not that there's any evidence that Bluecloud has the ability to recognize "real science" ... but on the subject of this thread ...
It occurs to me that while tastefully-sized banner ads (e.g. Amazon ads on The Nizkor Project inner pages) can - over time - generate income, it might be worth considering supplementing this with an admission fee for the likes of Bluecloud and his obviously trolling ilk ... IOW, you could set up a "t[r]oll booth" ;-)
But on a more serious note ... I would certainly be prepared to pay for a subscription (as I currently already do for "premium" content on PJTV and for the digital edition of Canada's National Post) - but I think your offer of serialized advance edition of your new book in exchange is far too generous (and may well require much consumption of time to honour, thereby defeating the purpose!)
Yours has become my first point of call on the blogs and it would be sad to see you overwhelmed in terms of work and money in keeping the blog up. I don't believe a compulsory subscription would work, nor that ads would bring in sufficient money, although I have no objection to them, so the best course of action is to either get sponsored, or continue as you are and do something to stimulate voluntary contributions, or get help a la WUWT, in moderating the blog.
I can't speak to sponsorship because I don't know what's out there. Getting help with the moderation seems a reasonable route to relieve some of the pressure and from what I can make out you have many able posters who would do an admirable job. Nor do I have a solution for the voluntary contributions other than suggestion that you might want to try and that is to regularly (say once a month) put up a post asking for voluntary contributions, it may/probably stimulate the more supine members of your community into contributing to a blog they love by reminding them that it cannot go on without support. I would contribute a few pounds if I was reminded of that. The problem is that I don't know for sure how many regular readers you have outside of the excellent group who post here regularly (myself excluded!), but give it a try for a few months and see if it relieves your situation.
Publish e-book editions (Kindle for Amazon, and PDF or EPUB for the other online bookshops) of the HSI. It will increase your sales. I doubt I'm alone in being very reluctant to buy printed books these days now that e-books are available. Some authors and publishers (Paolo Coelho, the Mises Institute) even give away free e-book editions and they say that it increases the sales of their print editions.
Bishop, I went to the tip jar, but it's pointing at PayPal UK. How can those of us in the colonies contribute?
Besides buying the book, and the next one I'll buy as directly as possible...
I'm not convinced by Google Adwords. I think the clickthrough rate may be really low for a site like this.
How many readers of WUWT click on the "lose weight by the Gabriel Method" that keeps appearing?
Jan 28, 2011 at 1:13 PM | Barry Woods : Ie Willis is great. (On WUWT.)
To which I respond: Willis is just a distraction (although I will buy his autobiography when he writes it).
Ads I will accept without complaint; and AdSense at least requires next to zero work to have running. Keep in mind that even Rupert Murdoch is finding his newspapers tested by the web and the need to generate income. There does not seem to be an easy answer.
Andrew in San Diego
I don't think this is a problem. You should still be able to use it. I've quite a few donations coming in from outside the UK.
Contact me me if you're stuck.
pay walls are only possible for the big ones I am afraid.
You can have WSJ online+paper for a year for less than 150- ...
People are willing to pay for smaller fish if they need to come out of their nest for what they get:
You want some assurance you will get the day spent well. To pay for it helps.
Think organising conferences (200 persons @ 100- a day minimum)
Courses can go at 20persons @ 250 a day minimum.
What helps then to be profitable is if you can claim a communal (free) ground , which I think government is obliged to. ie if you can try and claim a slot from the Royal Society or university instead of having to pay a hotel or other expensive venue.
I would pay money for a 1-2 day conference where a sceptical and critical view on AGW is presented.
I would also pay for a course that explores uncertainty, probablity , stats , time series analysis at a more advanced level, and with AGW brought in as an example.
An even more academic way of living in this area would be to create a think tank, which
formalises and makes conferences + courses + publications as a continuous proces.
I would payto become member of a libertarian UK think tank which organises a few events a year.
Myself I have not often paid for smaller knowledgeable sites .. only ones I can think of is justanswer.com like thing but they answer really pressing individual needs and not a broad policy issue. the standard trick to make it in your case is to become such a pain in the a- of the establishment that they make you part of it :) You should pool with similar guys and become that big pain / think tank ? is a matter of hanging 3 blogs under the same banner and organise an event ?
this was done many times over by the warmists actually (eg grist.org) and seems very difficult for us sceptics to pull of.why is that..oh yes: becus the others ARE the establishment
http://www.grist.org/about/funders
http://www.1010global.org/uk/about/partners
just come to read there that fukking O2 sponsors the warmists 1010 ? With me money ??
They can now also sponsor fukkin bishophill or I cancel my subscription.
Or does O2 think they should "teach" us on global warming..
I think an O2 paid for the "positive" message that is "saving Gaia".
i think it will be difficult for them to patronage a site that is only attacking that idea.
one has to have a big idea/ big positive message that incorporates scepticism on global warming.
i think that positive message is libertarianism .
O2 should be made to support a libertarian think tank now.
A sceptic tank then.
Hi Andrew, please get in touch with the author Cory Doctorow, he has many interesting ideas on generating income from writing--one of them being selling very special limited edition copies of a book. See more at:
http://craphound.com/?cat=10
Good luck and KUTGW! Also, see kickstarter.com
BIsh - Even though you seem to have been inundated by (conflicting) advice, here's a quick few pointers:
1. I've just put a tiny tip in the jar. No problems with continuing to do this from time to time (and I'm on the other side of the world; no problems with Paypal)
2. Don Pablo de la Sierra may have a point. It would be terrible to fall foul of the UK's absurdly one-sided libel laws. And if going 'commercial' were to place any limits on your blog's freedom of expression it would not be worth it..
3. I'd pay a subscription if necessary.
4. Given HSI's success and your issue of not making much money/considering self publishing - maybe your author agreement is not all it could be. For my sins, I'm in print too. If you wanted to have a dialogue in confidence about what you might expect then I'm sure you can track down my email from the blog database. Happy to swap notes.
Lucia at The Blackboard has recently posted that she is experimenting with an Ad Plugin. I don't know whether it would also work in the UK but perhaps worth investigating -
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/testing-ad-plugin/