Censorship
I listened to a song about somebody's grandfather on YouTube, and without warning YouTube shifted to a "song" parody by Brian Coyne. I put the word "song" in quotes because it wasn't much of a song. We all produce some gems and some clinkers, and this one struck me as a clinker. The lyrics consisted of "Climate hysteria spreads like malaria," which isn't even true; a little cold weather cools that fever right down. But Coyne has done some brilliant parodies. This one, which was censored for months, has been brought back with new video effects. (Warning: video effects include an anatomically inaccurate cartoon drawing of an abortion.) I think it's one of the great parodies in English literature. Even if you vote "blue," you have to agree the lyrics work and the song rocks. (Well of course...it sounds like, though it is not, Joan Jett.)
Concerns of the Web Site
This web site is growing. We have repeatedly asked Google to block various foreign bot armies that have artificially inflated our numbers. (They're not hard to spot! They don't actually visit any specific page, so the page view count shows two thousand extra views of the site but only the usual numbers of views of actual pages.) Google has gone after the bot armies with splendid efficiency. And the traffic coming from actual people keeps growing. I always knew this would happen. This web site is doing waaay better than my Associated Content corpus did.
So, monetizing the blog is an option. At last, at long-awaited last! It probably won't bring in much money but it could bring in enough Amazon giftcards that I could read some of the sequels to some of the first-novels-in-series people have sent me..even, eventually, fund the web site's Internet connection.
How do we do that while keeping what this web site is all about? To rake in top advertising dollars, you have to sell out and let the corporations dictate that all photographs of women have to make it clear that they're using lipstick, and other slimy, disgusting policies. We don't want top advertising dollars right? We want ads for things we actually encourage people to buy. Books, first and foremost. Clothes, when people need clothes. Furniture, if they need furniture. Computers, cars, tools--y'know, legitimate merchandise, as people choose. We want no drug ads, no ads that pop or blink, no ads that distract readers from actual posts, no ads with sound tracks, no ads for porn or gambling or similar "vice" sites.
Do we want Google ads if they're quiet and unobtrusive and stay at the bottom of the screen? We've all seen some sites where the Google ads were obnoxious. Google says that's the blogger's choice, but if you don't let the advertisers screech and fling like monkeys you don't get the top advertising dollars. Google would use the site to advertise corporate products, most of which I don't endorse and you probably wouldn't either. Google would allow corporations to try political censorship on topics like climate change.
Do we want to try Amazon ads, again? Or do we want to let Joe Jackson run with the Amazon ads, which did not exactly rake in the cash here when we had them, but seem to be working for him--so I use Amazon to market actual books? Amazon ads pay bloggers commissions on things readers buy from Amazon. It used to be that you had to buy the same edition of the book to which I'd posted a link, but now you can click on a link to a book, browse around, buy clothes or reconditioned car tires or whatever, and still shoot commissions to Joe Jackson. Would you readers use Amazon links here to buy things you want, whatever those may be?
Do we want more Zazzle? Would any of you readers pay $20 or $25 for a T-shirt if you really liked the graphic on it? I had started thinking that Zazzle was basically dead, and then I checked a page--new to me--that compares how many people click on a product page with how many actually buy the product. For most of my Zazzle designs the number of buyers has been zero, but the number of views is reasonably high. Zazzle has also started rating designers from one to ten, giving me a score of four, which is eligible for a higher commission on any actual sales. (The last commission I made on a postcard that took hours to design was three cents, Gentle Readers. That's why you've not seen Zazzle links here lately.) Do you ever buy things online--which I don't recommend doing--or know people who do? Would you or they ever buy Zazzle merchandise? Do all of you live in places where a local shirt shop can do similar designs for a much better price?
Please use the comments or the e-mail, Gentle Readers.
Fashion
That Brian Coyne song steered me back to his YouTube channel. For most of the day, with liberal use of the "pause" button, I listened to his song parodies.
"She Comes in Colours" might not be the song Melania Trump brings to mind, considering how well she wears those "Spring" tans and khakis, creamy whites, and smoky off-black. But she does also own all the bright colors most of us find so hard to wear...the pale smoky blue, the tomato red, the yellows and bright greens...For those who can enjoy exotic beauty for what it is, the Rolling Stones song has been spliced into a video highlighting some of Melania's most memorable looks. This is not a parody; it's a "cover" of the original song in a new video.
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