Using Donations To Support Your Blog

There's no begging involved, you itinerant choad farmer.

Why am I getting dragged into this? I've avoided this thread, for good reason.

When you first asked for advice on blogging, I gave it you. Pointed out that your blog was failing in one of the two major requirements of a successful blog. It'd be one thing if you just ignored my advice (hey, I only do this for a living and on the side as a volunteer for two different orgs) but you then posted a bitchy fuck you "This isn't THAT kind of blog' post on your page denouncing my advice.

Why should I give more advice if that is how you are going to treat it?

Although I do find it funny that a year later, with your blog failing you've adopted my advice.

I do know that at least one guy here is a human being with a soul. That's something, at least.

And I'm not gonna name who that one guy is, but he knows that what I'm working on is worth supporting. And to you (you know who you are) it's comin' along, man.

I've done some Kickstarter-type of things with a couple of bands that I like. With that, I'm basically paying up front for an album that I'll get once they raise enough money to record it.

I wouldn't mind doing the same for a book, but I read almost no fiction these days.

I've yet to find a blog that I'd be willing to pay for.

^^And all that you said, right there, is extremely fair, and easily respectable. I've got a novel in the works that you might -- I said 'might', cause I don't know -- like to support. Near-future Western. It's a new take on an old genre. I think i'm doing a hell of a good job with it.

As for the blog, couldn't say whether you would or would not find that to be something worth supporting. If you're not a smoker, and you're also not somebody who has switched from combustible cigarettes to electronic cigarettes, then probably it's not a blog you'd follow or want to support. And that's okay.

As I said in the thread that started this, if Castle really must beg then I don't see why he can't run a kickstarter project for his "book". They why he'd be obliged to use the funds for the project only and he'd also be obliged to give the donator something in return (sign copies, invites to book launch, that sort of thing). The problem I had with what Castle was doing which, to his credit he has now removed, was overtly begging for money alongside his book preview telling the reader, prior to the story, that in order to finish the book the reader had to supply him with his living costs. To me that crosses the line from being project finding to overt begging. If he's got enough money to survive without a job and pay for a computer and the internet then he doesn't need to be begging others for food in my opinion, especially begging the people here, which is effectively what he did when he linked to his preview page with the "give me food" intro. I have to put food on my own table and pay my own mortgage, I sure as hell aren't going to pay for the food on someone else's table because they have convinced themselves they can't do any form of employment.

--then there would be begging. There is no begging. Chup is a judgmental, elitist fucking cockholster, is all there is to this.

Chup is the type of skinheeled motherfucker who would have been paid a visit by Jacob Marley, too, the fuckin' shitspinner.

Chup is the kind if man who gets off his arse and works for a living. What's your excuse?

...thinks he has the right to judge other men by HOW they work for a living.

But Chup is wrong.

So how do you earn enough money not to have to beg?

Did you suddenly get coronated King? Did you get hired for the position of God Al-fuckin'-mighty?

No? Then fuck you, you sissy bitch, you don't get to fuckin' judge me.

'kay? Did the message reach you that time?

Why won't you say how you earn money? Are you living off an inheritance or sitting on welfare like a total workshy, or do you actually have a job? I would expect it's one of the former because unless you work nights and your job is getting drunk at 4am it seems to me that you aren't in employment right now.

Will you, you fucking curry-stinking turncoat? Huh? How many decent fucking English families have you turned out of their homes, hey? How many decent Christian Britons have you displaced with your shameful fucking doings, you turncoat fuck. Back the fuck up off my case, you fucking traitor to England. Shut the fuck up and back the fuck off, you fucking traitor against your own countrymen.

So why won't you tell us how you earn money? In the past few weeks you've directly begged people here for money. Yet you have no sense or morality to even confirm to them how you presently pay the rent?

What sort of person does that?

Why won't you?

Where? Link it.

[admin edit]Redacted[/edit]

You put a paypal link directly in a post, which gave rise to a debate on it in the Shelter, started by @gul.

You then posted the extract of your writings, which contained an intro which begged for money. You then deleted it when it was pointed out how poor that looked, which you acknowledged in your post in the Workshop thread.

So, how do you earn your money?

I have a neighbor with a front garden that looks like shit. Recently he put out a support this garden box with a slot for donations, and a sign explaining that he has great landscaping ideas, but needs some money first, to pay for it. The implication is clear -- if I and other neighbors want a tidy, groomed look to the houses and yards on this street, we need to pay this man off. Is he begging? Or would we be paying him for the service of neighborhood beautification?

I honestly don't know. But what I do know is that it makes him a bit of a cunt.

Castle, no personal info from other sites. Next time it's a warning or worse. And don't get the idea of trolling staff by trying to match transgressions by others just to see whether you get an equivalent punishment.

Almost everything you write on Wordforge reminds me of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

I believe you've nailed it.

Without question.

Are you saying we can pay Castle to log off?

Where's this box?

That would be a worthwhile investment... until every other troll decided to get in line for the pay-off.

I've read a bit of it.

I don't necessarily dislike what I've read of the story, but I really don't care for that type of first person "dialect narration" in book form. At all.

I didn't like The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress for similar reasons.

It reads...unnatural...and affected to me.

My internal dialogue doesn't sound like that, so I can't relate to it.

Other people might like it, though.

But it's not lies. When you first asked for help with the blog I pointed out that to be successful you had to be posting quality content regularly. At the time you were going a week, week and half sometimes without a post and then dumping 3 posts in 2 days. That's not how you build regular readership, regular readership requires regular posting. I even pointed out that most of your posts were 'evergreen' meaning that it didn't matter when they posted, you could write all of them up when you wanted but then just schedule them out. I said this a couple times in your advice thread and while you never responded there, that day you posted this:
http://johncastlewriter.com/2013/10/26/so-heres-the-dealio-emilio/

Which is why I have never given you another piece of advice on blogging or social media.

Although as I said earlier, I find it humorous that you've come around to a regular schedule (posting M-W-F) 9 months later. Too bad you're undeserved machismo meant you had to give the middle finger to the guy offering you a hand. Looks like you wasted the opportunities to build a permanent following that your book release and editing jobs could have been used as a springboard for. Shame...

Don't go blabbing my plan, you... plan-blabber!