Today is finally the big day in Columbia, Election Day, and I know you all woke up with the same question burning a hole in your brains:
Will Brad’s advertisers make it into the runoff?
OK, so maybe y’all weren’t thinking about it, but I was, and to the extent that that has an impact on my thinking as a journalist, I thought I’d disclose it to you, my readers. As you know, I have no private thoughts. Or not many, anyway.
See, the deal is, since we got a late start, I charged my advertisers half rate to get them through today, then I would charge them that much again to stay up through a runoff, if they got into a runoff.
I’ll be losing one of them for sure, and perhaps more. We’ll see. (Who knows? Maybe I’ll pick up someone in the runoff I didn’t have before!) In the meantime, I’m turning my sights toward the June primaries…
While I’m on the subject, I thought I’d share with you something I shared today with one of my friends still trapped in newspaper work:
[I’m] glad I’m in a growing business for a change. My year-over-year revenue growth is off the charts…
Of course, that’s because before last week, the blog had zero revenue…
It’s really funny. I’m making a small fraction of what I made at the paper… But because, for the first time in my life there’s a direct connection between the effort I put out and the money I make, I’m all excited about each little check that comes in…
It’s really kind of weird at my age, but this is an entirely new experience. I may starve, but it’s so much fun that I’ll be laughing all the way to the poorhouse.
All my life, I’ve been deliberately insulated (for ethical reasons) from the money-making apparatus — which has been a pretty helpless feeling in recent years, watching those folks fail and not being able to do anything about it as my ship sank beneath me.
I always busted my butt trying to stretch the envelope at work, but aside from promotions and the occasional bonus (and it’s been years since I saw one of those), it had no impact on my pay. I got no raise the last few years at all, even as I was putting in more and more hours.
For five years, I slaved away building this blog (well, technically, first I built the other blog, then this one), and never making a dime from it. I begged the folks in advertising to sell it as a separate product, but they wouldn’t do it, I think because it wasn’t enough money to make up the millions they were bleeding from much bigger accounts.
Well, now I’m making some dimes, and it feels great. And if I get on the horn and pester more potential clients, I can make more dimes.
This is great…
Congrats, Brad… may many, many more dimes come your way, accompanied by the occasional quarter!
May your business continue to thrive!
A while back, after working my butt off for a salary for a gazillion years, and always putting in more hours than my peers, I got a gig working at an hourly rate. I loved it–suddenly working late at night or all weekend had the same tangible rewards to me as it did for my employers.
Blog long and prosper.
Thank you!
Now, this is interesting — and alarming: A really thoughtful, intelligent reader said to me today, “I see you’re supporting Morrison.” I asked what gave him that impression (I was thinking maybe this was someone who had missed the news of the past year and thought I was still at the paper, which DID endorse Morrison).
Came the reply, “Only that an ad for him (and no other mayoral candidate) was on your
blog…”
Yikes! Look, every one of the main three mayoral candidates got the exact same sales pitch from me, on two separate occasions. The only one who bothered to reply was Steve Morrison, so he got the ad. I would have been thrilled to sell to the other two as well, just as I sold ads to no fewer than THREE of the candidates running for District 4.
This is one of the things you worry about when you start taking ads — that no matter how many times you explain to people what it means and doesn’t mean, even smart people will jump to really odd conclusions.
Oh, well. The only alternative is not to take ads, and then people would just misunderstand something ELSE — and I wouldn’t have the money. So we’re not going there…
Can’t you put some kind of “bradwarthen.com does not necessarily endorse” disclaimer as a header above the ad space?
I’m still in the newspaper business — and my salary has remained at what it was in 1993. That’s the cost of informing the electorate!
There’s no amount of disclaiming that will reach some people. It’s okay. We understand.
Wow, Burl–I have friends who just returned from your state, and they have been dining in our more expensive restaurants here relishing the Hawaiian McDonald’s pricing.
So it’s looking like I have TWO advertisers left in it. Which isn’t bad. The most I could possibly have had would have been three…