We Need Your Help With the Good, the Bad, and Elon Musk

“We thought we could, we thought we could…..we did it we did it we did it.” — PolitiZoom, The Little Political Blog That Could

If you ask anybody who knows the first thing about political blogging, it is an endeavor filled with peaks and valleys. And in the world we live in, journalism in general is that way. And sometimes the valleys get really deep and turn into a slough of despond.

I write now for two reasons: One, I understand that we had some kind of a button on this site which said “Read More” and yet when it was pushed, it did not allow people to read the article? Is that what took place? I never saw this thing with my own eyes, but as soon as horrific reports of it came to my notice, I tracked down its origins and eliminated it.

If anybody here could give me details, like when it appeared, what it looked like, what it did or did not do, I would appreciate it.

The second reason I come before you is because PolitiZoom is taking a beating — as are other outlets — due to things beyond our control and I need to pass the hat. We don’t beg for money around here like many blogs do. We’re always open to a donation and certainly we love nothing more than more Patrons on Patreon, but we don’t send 50 fundraising emails a month, all screaming “my hair is on fire and the sky is falling.”

So when we come and ask for money, it’s because things are going south and we really do need help. Here’s what has affected us:

1. There is an ad recession which is industry wide. It affects all ad revenue on all entities with a digital presence, which is us, the New York Times, you name it. This started the end of Q2 last year.
2. Elon Musk is destroying Twitter, as I’m sure you have gathered, and that has affected our bottom line as well. We simply don’t get the traffic that we used to. We’re still paying the same for advertising, but the profit margin is less.
3. Overhead has increased. I’ve had to hire a company to do analytics, because Google Analytics used to provide certain stats for free and they stopped. I’ve also had to lay out more money for our email services than we did in the past and finally, our hosting provider refuses to downgrade us to a lower level plan, even though the traffic drop off is there. So we’re paying for resources we’re not using and hoping for a better day.

This is a thumbnail sketch and I’m happy to provide more details to anybody who wants it.

If you are able to send a donation of any amount to PayPal, please do so at [email protected]. Funds received will be kept in the bank to pay for overhead.

The writers are still getting paid what they contracted to get paid. The only one who takes a bath when things are down, like they are now, is me, because my compensation is based not only on what I bring in, as a writer, but when we do well, what the site as a whole makes. I’m the owner, so I take the personal risk, and when things are good, it results in a personal benefit to me.

Conversely, when things are bad, I get paid whatever’s left after the overhead and the writers get theirs. If things get really bad around here, I may have to find another stream of income, transcribing tapes or some such.

We had a good year in 2022. It started out slow but picked up a lot of steam. 2023 has been a disaster so far and this month we’re making less than half of what we made in July, 2022.

My goal today is to have some overhead expenses stashed so that what we make can go to pay the writers and myself and also I need to look into hiring an SEO expert, to increase traffic, and figure out advertising strategies, again to increase traffic.

The good news is that we are still putt putting down the track after five years. We’ve expanded incredibly in that time and there have been some considerable challenges. If you were here in 2021 when we split off from our sister site, Daily Sound and Fury, you remember how we had awful technical difficulties. Poor DSF is the party that came out of the site separation the worse for wear. As much as I’m complaining about our issues now, DSF has shrunk to getting in one month the same amount of views that we get in one day. Tragic but true.

We have overcome all the obstacles we’ve faced and all we need to get by is a little help from our friends.

If you can spare anything, go on PayPal and contribute to: [email protected].

Thank you. And thank you for coming here everyday to read and socialize. We have done our part to link to candidates’ campaigns and get worthy Democrats elected and we will do much more in the future.

Since you’re here, we made it to this media chart a few months ago.

See us? We’re above Wonkette and to the right of PalmerReport. Not bad for a handful of disabled people with a platform and a passion.