Why are conservative bloggers struggling?
It has been brought to my attention that there are several conservative blogs that are really struggling financially. Struggling so much that they are in danger of having to shut down. I have been living in my own little “rose colored” world…..just happily blogging away when I had spare time from my job. That’s the operative word…..JOB. Many bloggers have lost their jobs due to this atrocious economy and are relying on donations from their sites to keep their families afloat. I feel like such a Pollyanna. I don’t carry the financial responsibility of HillBuzz….Kevin does (WELCOME BACK KEVIN!!!). Why is it that the liberal blogs get support from the George Soros’ of the world (and the Matt Damon’s and Sean Penn’s) while the conservative blogs are left to fend for themselves? You know that the DNC probably kicks money to their pet blog sites. Conservative blog sites are the backbone of the conservative movement. Where’s the Tea Party and the RNC? I realize that they may be supporting some sites but not enough.
One of our dear HillBuzz readers/posters is in dire need of help. Zilla(zillaoftheresistance) and her husband have both lost their jobs and are just about to sink (go to her site and read her post). Her Internet service was scheduled to be turned off today but some of her supporters have helped just enough to keep her going for a little while longer. Two other wonderful conservative bloggers( The Other McCain and Blazing Cat Fur )have also come to her rescue but they too are struggling. It breaks my heart.
Do you think that we could get Rush to take up our cause? Just one mention from him really makes a difference. These blogs are vitally important for the 2012 elections.
I’m very guilty of not giving a little to help in the effort (other than my time). I love Zilla and her site and she is a very big supporter of HillBuzz. Conservatives are not comfortable begging for money….it’s not in our character. It’s something that the left is very used to doing….relying on others and not taking responsibility for themselves. …but the time has come to help each other out.
What are your thoughts on this?
What can be done?
© 2011, Bridget. All rights reserved.
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I noticed something on my RSS feed lately. NRO stopped supplying the entire article (even though they are usually very short). You have to click on a link at the end of the first few sentences to "continue reading this post" which takes you to the actual page of the comment. That way, they get a visit to their site which must help their ad numbers. Although I wish I could just read it on my feed, I understand why they do this. You should (and so should the others) investigate this practice, because I usually just read your articles on my feed and never actually visit the site. Perhaps I'm full of it and feed readers get "credit" for visiting the site (I'm no computer expert), but thought I'd put this out there. And by the way, my day is complete because I see Kevin is writing again. I was bereft thinking something had happened and I'd never read his brilliant prose again. Thanks to all who helped hold his place. Thrilled he's well and back and writing again. Thanks be to God!
Thank you, Bridget! One small correction though, husband works (at a hot, physically intense job) but his company not only fails to give the men raises, it also took away their overtime & likes to cut their hours. So husband has been working his butt off after hours trying to get his new business off the ground in the hopes of a better life for us. I am a disabled stay at home mom with two young children, I try to help make ends meet with ad revenue, selling custom ads & freelancing, but nothing has panned out yet. We are drowning because the cost of absolutely everything that a family needs (like food, gas for husband to get to work, diapers for my son, etc.) has sky rocketed. Food prices alone have basically tripled (even quadrupled for certain items that are basic necessities) in just the past few months.
We are all suffering, and unlike the left blogs, there is nobody nin the Republican establishment who does a danged thing for the conservative new media although the GOP benefits greatly from our efforts. There are some terrific related posts about this at The Other McCain: http://theothermccain.com/2011/07/24/notification… http://theothermccain.com/2011/07/23/possible-t-s…
and The Sundries Shack (Jimmie Bise has a great idea!): http://www.sundriesshack.com/2011/07/24/my-crazy-…
The Republican donors spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fund loser political operatives who have no record of success but completely ignores the New Media who are getting the job done.
" Why is it that the liberal blogs get support from the George Soros’ of the world (and the Matt Damon’s and Sean Penn’s) while the conservative blogs are left to fend for themselves? "
Because conservatives believe in taking care of themselves, of their own families, of their own community … not in receiving handouts we don't really need. We also take care of everyone else via faith-driven (mostly) charity … read the book "Who Really Cares" … but we have a blind spot, which is political support … most of us don't mentally group this with charity and it tends to get overlooked as a result … this is my own theory based on personal experience and conversations with friends/family.
I think enlisting Rush and all the other conservative media forces that we can … how about Breitbart's empire? They have nothing to lose and all our boats will rise with a rising tide.
Welcome back, Kevin!!! Prayers for you.
It might help if you detailed the expenses incurred in Blogging.
Blogging expenses:
– Hosting, if you're not of a free blogging system, $5+ per mon. Hillbuzz and Malkin pay a lot more.
– Domain name, $10 per year
– Internet connection
– Computer equipment
– Pay someone to set up the site, scripts, custom coding, etc. (if any)
– Time needed for research, or pay someone to do it.
– Pay team to hack cell phones and buy info from Pols, Cops, and interesting people.
– I'm sure there are a few others that I missed.
Sure you can do it on WordPress.com or Blogger, for free, and use a library computer. There's just the time commitment.
Also, bloggers need to look into ads, affiliate marketing, selling text links, and such. Or maybe making other sites to bring in some cash and pay for the political site. Heck, at least get an Amazon affiliate account and sell Amazon political books and stuff for a 5% kickback.
The up side is that all of this can be done from home and inbetween kid juggling and job hunting sessions.
First off, let me say publicly how very thrilled I am that Kevin is back.
The main expenses in running a high-traffic website are bandwidth and storage. When Hillbuzz is mentioned on Rush Limbaugh, the site can see tens of thousands of concurrent visitors at a time. Without high-capacity hosting, the site would just bomb out and be inaccessible. So you have to have a hosting package that will dynamically scale up when you have huge demand. Not all WordPress hosts are able to do that.
And when it comes to storage capacity, Hillbuzz is HUGE. Kevin’s prolific nature has created gigabytes of site content. You also have to add OVER 295,000 APPROVED COMMENTS to the storage capacity. Oy.
And because of the nature of Hillbuzz, the site is a 24/7 target of hackers, Obamavoters, and Leftist trolls. Most WordPress sites are pretty easy to hack. We’ve had to implement a number of security protocols that are pretty technical, that are not available from your standard brand-name hosting companies. I suspect that a lot of conservative sites have to go this route.
In this case, it took several months of behind-the-scenes work to export and reconfigure all of the old data from WordPress.com. The site archives were so huge that we (and by “we” I mean “Michelle”) had to massage all the databases by hand, dealing with every single file individually. That was over 7,000 posts and 260,000 comments. Then she had to rebuild the databases in the new hosting space and import all the data by hand. (To most of you, this won’t mean anything but to anyone who knows what a MySQL database is, this should impress you.)
Kevin’s genius is in writing, and so we do a lot of behind-the-scenes technical stuff to allow him to focus on that exclusively. My personal hope is that soon Kevin will be making his living from writing and analysis, like the Michelle Malkins, Ann Coulters and Andrew Breitbarts of the world.
Re: your final paragraph. This is where Kevin should focus. These past few months without him at HillBuzz have left a little hole in my day. Kevin is as irreplaceable as Rush and Mark Steyn. These three share something unique – the ability to arouse passion, fury and laughter within a paragraph. It's a gift and Kevin has it. He needs an agent. And he'd be great on TV because he's just adorable!