Mortaine’s Blog

I received lots of very good and useful feedback to my previous question (about leaving LiveJournal and the impact it would have on you all), and I very much your opinions. I haven’t decided on if I will leave LJ or not– probably not, and especially not if I do the following. I would especially like to thank halfawake, for reminding me that, while I love my WordPress blog, it’s the community of friends at LiveJournal that keeps me on the site there.

Anyway:

I am thinking about bringing ads back to my blog. LiveJournal posts would be truncated to the first paragraph or so, and require you to click to the ad-sponsored post to read more. The RSS feed would have small text-only ads at the bottom of the page. I might even participate in pay-per-post, which is a “Sponsored review” scheme– in that case, the posts could not be cross-posted to LiveJournal, and opting out would be difficult, since the whole post would be an advertorial. They pay pretty well, though, which is why I’m considering it. Ads would probably not interrupt the flow of text, but they would surround the posts like an army around a besieged fortress.

Why, given my previously-expressed opinion of advertising in blogs (I hate them), would I deface my blog this way?

No, it is not the howling of the wolves at the gates. Or, rather, not at my gate.

It’s to raise money for charity.

See, I figure in the 9 months between April and the end of the year, I could possibly raise enough funds, through ads, fundraising drives, affiliates, and direct donations, to make a very generous donation at the end of the year to Childreach. All proceeds would go to the charity, all expenses would be donated by me. My pie-in-the-sky goal? $8,500, to build a school and furnish it.

I think we could do it, and if not, maybe aim for a more modest goal of drilling a well for clean drinking water. We could call it “The School that Blogs Built” or “Blogs Dig Deeper” or something witty like that.

But wait. There’s more.

Anyone willing to “sponsor-out” of the ads would have that option. A modest direct donation (probably $20) would result in receiving a subscriber login to my blog, with which you would be able to read the blog indefinitely for free (and yeah, I’d figure out something similar for an ad-free RSS feed and possibly a FO cross-post for people on LiveJournal– I’m not sure, but I have a week to figure it out). Anyone running a similar campaign with the same goal on their own blog would also get the ad-free sponsor login. LJ users would be able to participate by having a donation link (but apparently, not click-through ads or banner ads).

So. What do you think?

Would ads on Stephanie’s Blog, with truncated “read more” cross-posts on her LiveJournal, frustrate you enough that you would stop reading? Would you participate (assuming the ads didn’t suck, of course)? Would you consider direct donating to remove the ads? All these questions assume, of course, that the proceeds go to charity– I know attitudes are different if the ads/blog are simply for-profit.

We switched Alladin to a commercial raw cat food diet just about a month ago, for weight loss (it worked– he’s lost a pound). Since Friday, he had been having litter box trouble– going often, and eventually, not getting much out. By the time I got him to a vet yesterday, his urethra was completely blocked with crystals, and needed the catheter surgery to remove it. But his bloodwork came back great. He’s been acting fine all along, but definitely seems better today. We still have to watch carefully this week, and give him a follow-up urinalysis in 2 weeks (when, of course, we plan to be out of Jacksonville). He also has an infection, which is uncommon with crystals/blockage.

The vet wants us to feed him the commercial anti-crystals food. Our research indicates that stress of any kind, including switching from one food to another, can trigger the crystals to form, and that raw food is usually the best diet for cats with this problem. We are probably going to go against doctor’s orders on this one and keep him on the raw food, and keep the case of prescription food in case we are wrong down the line. In all other ways, he is a healthier cat on the raw food– more energy, losing weight, and his already-soft coat has turned into silk.

Sigh. Anyway, that’s what’s going on with the cat. He is right now trying to figure out what kind of mischief he should get into while his breakfast defrosts.