For a couple of years now, two to three dozen readers of Bacon’s Rebellion have been contributing faithfully to the upkeep of the blog through small monthly contributions. I want to thank them for their loyal support and report to them what I’ve been doing with the money.
Twitter fail. In concert with a push to build a Twitter following, which I hoped would drive more traffic to the blog, I spent several hundred dollars on a variety of Twitter-related promotions. I succeeded in increasing the number of Twitter followers, but I could see no impact upon the number of click-throughs to the blog or the number of blog readers. It was a worthwhile experiment, but it did not yield meaningful results, so I pulled the plug on the campaign.
Improved user experience. Since then, I have resolved to use the contributions to improve the reader experience.
First, I want to protect against the disruption of another Denial of Service attack like the one that knocked the blog offline a year or so ago, and I want to guard against the threat of a ransomware attack. Accordingly, I have subscribed to a service that regularly backs up the blog content. If another attack occurs, I should be able to recover more quickly than I did last time.
Secondly, I have subscribed to a service that purports to speed up the loading of Bacon’s Rebellion pages to your browser. This, too, I regard as an experiment. Let me know if you notice a difference.
Party time! Finally, let me toss out an idea.
A top goal since the inception of the blog has been to maintain a civil dialogue between readers across the political spectrum. Given the polarized state of the nation, never has that goal been more important. I’ve always felt that it’s harder to be rude to someone you know in person. Accordingly, I have been thinking of hosting a get-together in Richmond for Bacon’s Rebellion readers and contributors who would like to meet one another, promote civil dialogue, and/or provide input to the Big Bacon himself on how to improve the blog.
Naturally, alcohol and bacon-themed foodstuffs will be involved.
If you would like to participate, please respond publicly in a comment or privately by emailing me at jabacon[at]baconsrebellion.com. If there is sufficient interest, I will organize an event.
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