Well, in a very fortuitous start to the day, Uncle Bear has decided to see through the tons of my annoying ads and bestow a “Superior Scribbler” award to me anyway. What is a Superior Scribbler award? Is it one of those chain letter meme things that websites fall into when they want to post something but don’t feel like being creative for five minutes? Could be. Is it something designed to drive traffic back to the point of origin? Could be that as well. But beyond that, it’s an honor and a privilege.
And now I have to come up with five people to pass it to.
I will say to Paul and Storm, because even though they sing more than they scribble, I’m assuming that they scribble the stuff down on paper before they sing it. Regardless, it’s quality. And yes, they are two people, but let’s face it, you can’t have one without the other. It’s like having Zan without Jayna. (I’ll let them fight over which is Jayna.)
I will also say to Len Peralta at Jawbone Radio, because he scribbles fancy art things and is the only artist who we could talk into working with me.
I will also say to Ken Plume at Quick Stop Entertainment, only because it gives me an opportunity to remind you he’s up for Secretary of Geek Affairs for the Obama administration. Which is at…huh, Paul and Storm’s site. We are such an incestuous pit of vipers.
I will also tap Wolven, just because he entertains me by hopping onto Twitter and yelling “Who the fuck are all you people? Huh? TALK TO ME!” like a madman. In fact, everyone go follow him right now just to freak him out.
And lastly, Jhayne, the Lady Porphyre, whose stuff I have always loved.
And now, the fine print.
The Fine Print:
- Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.
- Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award.
- Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to This Post, which explains The Award.
- Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we’ll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!
- Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.
And now, the post-script.
Uncle Bear mentioned my annoying ads, so let me just take a moment to explain how this works. What you’re about to read (if you read it, of course) isn’t a pity party or oh life as a blogger is so hard, it’s just reality. One of the problems with being a webmaster is that you do it because you crave attention. But once you start getting that attention, you crave money–not because you’re trying to get rich, because it’s not like that’s going to happen. You crave money because with attention comes bandwidth costs, and offsite backups, and getting a dedicated server, and paying for postage on contests–because all of that costs money. It’s a lot easier than it was back in the late 90s when we were trying to figure out how the fuck to afford Corona’s Coming Attractions being as popular it was, but it still costs money.
Now in a perfect world, I would be rich off my arse and be able to do all this without breaking a sweat. In fact, some of you think Needcoffee is my full-time job–which is both terribly amusing and I guess flattering–but it’s not. At the moment, this site is paying for itself. It probably would be making more money if I monetized the shit out of it, but the really annoying shitty ads like pop-ups and pop-unders and interstitials I simply won’t do. Because they are pretty goddamn annoying. And my rule is that I would never want to do something on my site that would annoy the shit out of me on somebody else’s site. The Webmaster’s Golden Rule, I guess.
But just for the record, I resisted going to ads for a long time. I even tried putting up a tip jar for a while there and got nothing. I even tried to sweeten the deal by giving away the chance to win $100 in prizes each month to people who donated–so you could feel like you were getting a little something for helping out–and got a couple of people who threw in some money, but not enough to even warrant doing it a second month. And these days, seriously, if everybody who turned up on the site just handed me a dollar each month, I would never have to work at a day job again. No shit. And listen, this is the content I come up with when I’m doing it on the side–imagine what I could get done if this was full-time. Hell, I could finish a third book.
Anyway, again, look, I’m not saying this to say oh woe is me and nobody loves me because I don’t make any money off of this or even beg for money. I might think that, but I would never say it out loud. I figure if you like the site–and many of you do, bless ya, seriously–you’ll buy stuff you were going to buy anyway through the site. You’ll throw up a link on your blog to us or even buy a shirt so you can be a walking billboard. You’ll do it or you won’t. I’m just posting this because I really have tried to balance paying for the cost of keeping the site open with annoying the shit out of you and because I want there to be no misunderstanding about that. But just know that if I could afford to have no ads, I would. If there’s any sugar parental unit out there that would like to sponsor us so that I can support the site to the point where I can quit my day job and make the ads go away, would love to hear from you.
Thanks for reading, everyone. Back to moderate hilarity and goofy shit momentarily.
