{"id":9888,"date":"2013-02-25T16:05:17","date_gmt":"2013-02-26T00:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=9888"},"modified":"2013-02-25T13:19:34","modified_gmt":"2013-02-25T21:19:34","slug":"my-thanks-and-a-quick-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=9888","title":{"rendered":"My Thanks and a Quick Question&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My thanks to those of you who answered <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=9862\">my recent call for support<\/a> on the heels of our <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=9838\">9th Anniversary announcement<\/a>.  A little more than 100 of you answered that call which, while seemingly a very small number of the thousands who visit here each day, is amongst the largest responses we&#8217;ve had to any of our attempted fundraisers over the years, in terms of number of people giving.<\/p>\n<p>So my great thanks for that. If you had purchased our premium offer for a signed copy of Marta Steele&#8217;s new book, <i>Grassroots, Geeks, Pros, and Pols: The Election Integrity Movement&#8217;s Rise and Nonstop Battle to Win Back the People&#8217;s Vote, 2000 &#8211; 2008<\/i>, it&#8217;s on its way or already there, <i>or<\/i> we&#8217;ll need a few more days to get a few of them out, since we oversold our limited number of available copies and Marta&#8217;s been kind enough to help us get a few more to cover all of those who purchased.  If you didn&#8217;t get one through our premium offer, you can (and should!) get one <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freepress.org\/columns\/display\/3\/2012\/1947\">via the <i>Columbus Free Press<\/i> website right here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>All of that said, I&#8217;m still facing difficult questions about how to sustainably keep going here as we begin our 10th(!) year of trouble-making, muckraking and journalism regarding many topics that most in the media would prefer to ignore. I hate &#8212; and am not very good at &#8212; constantly haranging you all for contributions, even if it&#8217;s just a few times a year. So, for the short term, a quick question for those who have time to offer some feedback to me here&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>While a good number of you were generously willing to help out with one-time donations during the recent drive, what, if anything, might help to encourage you in the future to become a monthly sustaining contributor? I&#8217;m open to any and all ideas. While I don&#8217;t usually directly request feedback of this sort, I am doing so now, as I search for a more reliable way to try and keep things afloat here as we move forward. <\/p>\n<p>I know there&#8217;s a lot of &#8220;competition&#8221; for your eyeballs and web support dollars these days. And so much free content is available out here that I appreciate how difficult it is to contemplate paying <i>anything<\/i> for stuff on the web. <\/p>\n<p>But is there additional or a different type of coverage you&#8217;d like to see here that might help? More quick news items? Fewer items, but more longer investigative reports? More and varied guest blog voices? A &#8220;subscriber&#8217;s only&#8221; area of some sort?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m just tossing out a few thoughts to give you an idea. I don&#8217;t want to prejudice the imagination of the jury here, and I may or may not be able to accomplish any particular changes given our limited resources. Also, I want to make sure that we continue to offer original reporting or analysis, rather than simply re-post stuff from elsewhere, as so many sites do these days.<\/p>\n<p>But I&#8217;d be very interested to hear your thoughts on what, if anything, might help encourage some of you &#8212; beyond those few who have already done so (thank you!) &#8212; to be more inclined to sign up for a monthly sustaining contribution (of any particular amount).<\/p>\n<p>Please let me know in comments. Or, if you feel more comfortable responding via email, I&#8217;m happy to <a href=\"mailto:brad@bradblog.com\">hear from you that way<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n<p>And, again, my thanks to all of you who contributed to help us try to keep going in <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=9862\">our most recent fund drive<\/a>, as well as those who have done so in previous years. The support truly means the world.<\/p>\n<p><center><b>* * *<\/b><\/center><\/p>\n<p><i>P.S. If you&#8217;d like to sign up for one of those monthly sustaining contributions I&#8217;m referring to, you can do so anytime, for any amount you like, in the light-blue box about halfway down the right-sidebar on any page here at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.BradBlog.com\">The BRAD BLOG<\/a>. Or, you can select from one of the pre-determined monthly amounts in the dropdown link below.<\/i><\/p>\n<form action=\"https:\/\/www.paypal.com\/cgi-bin\/webscr\" method=\"post\" style=\"margin-top:-3em; margin-bottom:2em;text-align:center;\">\n<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"cmd\" value=\"_s-xclick\"><br \/>\n<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"hosted_button_id\" value=\"PV4LPL78MB95Q\"><\/p>\n<table align=\"center\">\n<tr>\n<td><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"on0\" value=\"Choose monthly amount...\">Choose monthly amount&#8230;<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><select name=\"os0\"><option value=\"$10\">$10: $10.00 USD &#8211; monthly<\/option><option value=\"$20\">$20: $20.00 USD &#8211; monthly<\/option><option value=\"$50\">$50: $50.00 USD &#8211; monthly<\/option><option value=\"$100\">$100: $100.00 USD &#8211; monthly<\/option><\/select> <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"currency_code\" value=\"USD\"><br \/>\n<input type=\"image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.paypalobjects.com\/en_US\/i\/btn\/btn_subscribeCC_LG.gif\" border=\"0\" name=\"submit\" alt=\"PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/www.paypalobjects.com\/en_US\/i\/scr\/pixel.gif\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"><br \/>\n<\/form>\n<p><em>P.P.S. Of course, a regular old <a href=\"https:\/\/www.paypal.com\/xclick\/business=Brad@BradBlog.com&#038;item_name=Happy+9th+Birthday+to+The+BRAD+BLOG&#038;item_number=2013\"><b>one-time donation<\/b><\/a> is always appreciated as well! (Even by snail mail to <b>&#8220;Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028<\/b>&#8220;)<\/em><\/p>\n<form action=\"https:\/\/www.paypal.com\/cgi-bin\/webscr\" method=\"post\" style=\"margin-top:-3em; margin-bottom:2em;text-align:center;\">\n<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"cmd\" value=\"_s-xclick\"><br \/>\n<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"hosted_button_id\" value=\"LCH965NHAJ5ES\"><br \/>\n<input type=\"image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.paypalobjects.com\/en_US\/i\/btn\/btn_donateCC_LG.gif\" border=\"0\" name=\"submit\" alt=\"PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/www.paypalobjects.com\/en_US\/i\/scr\/pixel.gif\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"><br \/>\n<\/form>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My thanks to those of you who answered my recent call for support on the heels of our 9th Anniversary announcement. A little more than 100 of you answered that call which, while seemingly a very small number of the thousands who visit here each day, is amongst the largest responses we&#8217;ve had to any [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-9888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brad-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9888"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=9888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}