Going Ad-Free questions and answers

Every since I posted my crazy plan to make the internet a better place and go ad free (donate here!) I’ve had a ton of questions from readers and fans about the project itself. I want to take the time and answer those questions with this post.

1. How do I know the site will get better?
Well, to be perfectly honest, you don’t. In fact, what I think of as “better” and what you think of as “better” may be two completely different things. However, what I can guarantee if we get this funding is more content from a more diverse stable of writers covering topics we’ve never really gotten into before. That’s pretty cool and you know it. Right now, the site is pretty tightly focused on self-defense/competition shooting with handguns. I can’t count the number of people that have asked about hunting articles, or even more stuff about cars. Money allows us to expand this stuff out to more people.

2. What’s the money going to be used for?
Coke and hookers, duh. I mean not really, but I felt obligated to post that as an answer. It makes me laugh, what can I say. However, I’ll break the money out in a little bit more detail than I did in the original post. Obviously, the site has hosting fees etc, but the two big costs are 1) writers and 2) travel. Right now I have one regular contributor, Tim, who does really great work, he needs a raise, and I’d like to hire two more writers as well. So right there we can call that 10k right out the door per year. Assuming we get the full funding, that leaves me with ~10k per year to cover travel and all other expenses. Because honestly, if I’m going to have staff writers, I should probably pay for them to go places and cover stuff. It only makes sense. 10k goes by pretty quick when you’re talking about airfare and hotels, but by paying for writers to go places the site gets better articles and content. In a nutshell, that’s pretty much what this breaks down: hire more people and send them places. That’s where the money goes, and that’s where the new content comes from.

3. Have you lost your damn mind? 100k is a ton of money.
Probably yeah, I have. But this was never my only option. There are plenty of other ways to grow and fund a business like this, but this is the one that I like the best. Because it allows me a ton of flexibility in how the site grows.

Obviously, I want to answer any questions you have, so feel free to post them in the comments or simply email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to answer your questions. In the meantime, make sure to donate!

8 Comments

  1. Your blog, your choice brother. I don’t mind the ads, personally. Some of them are pretty informative.

  2. Lets not be hasty. Have you considered doubling up on the ads so we won’t have to read about hunting and cars? For that I might endure pop up ads.

    Just kidding.

    Kind of.

    1. One thing I am working on in the sidelines is a deal with Media Lodge that would work out to everyone’s benefit as well. We’ll see how that goes.

  3. Five years in advance sounds excessive, personally. Why not just ask for $20k for this year, and then if you expand the site and decide you need more, then you can ask for $22k the following year?

  4. Without having to comply with Google adsense self censorship requirements, you can apply ‘Rule #5’ (tits and ass) which is worth it’s weight in traffic, especially from Muslim countries. I know, been there done that with my own blog. So you can have lots of page views or a limited audience and the paltry ad revenue it brings in.

  5. My thoughts are: You did a post on how the sheepdog mentality is bullshit and then basically signed up to be a sheepdog. Am I wrong?

    1. Yeah, you are. There’s a pretty big difference between some guy wandering around with his CCW badge pretending to guard the republic and actually joining the military/LE.

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