If you don’t need to be persuaded to give but simply have not gotten around to it, please proceed straight to our fundraiser page to chip in!
Thanks to your generous and speedy responses, we’ve achieved our first five targets: tech investments to improve your experience and our defenses, bonuses to our loyal guest writers (who given their expertise and caliber of their work, deserve better than underwhelming standard writer pay levels), travel and site coverage expenses for meetups and conferences; funding to improve the comments section; and providing the staffing to provide our 24/7 coverage without burning out of yours truly. Let me stress again: your donations have and continue to make all these critical items possible. And at 1305 donors, we’re within striking distance of our new goal of 1350 contributors for this fundraiser. So we are raising our donor target to 1600!
Because this fundraiser is going so well, we are introducing a new goal this year: that of funding for expanding our reach. We’ve mentioned that our traffic is holding solid despite being downgraded in Google, like many independent websites like The Intercept, Truthdig, and Counterpunch. While the good news is we are holding our own, the bad news is that despite the fact that our content has only gotten better (and we think more relevant) over time, we are working harder than ever just to stay in place. And this is despite the fact that many readers tell us that they promote our work to friends, family, and colleagues, as well as on Facebook and social media.
So whether you are able to contribute financially to this fundraiser or not, spreading the word about Naked Capitalism is also absolutely essential for us to continue to thrive. Churn is a fact of life in any field; once-loyal readers drift away because their priorities or tastes change. So encouraging people who might like our work to check out Naked Capitalism is critically important (as is chipping in via our fundraiser page if you haven’t had the time to do so already)
We’ve considered and even spent hard dollars to go the path of SEO optimization with the supposed industry leader Yoast. The advice we got was not only largely canned, but implementing it would not also have been destructive to reader experience but it would even have broken our plumbing (see here and here for details; it’s quite the case study of poor vendor conduct). We do take some bare minimum steps with every post, but we’ve concluded that SEO may work for product sites (but see even here why not) but is generally a poor fit for financial and smaller news sites (although we might bother at some point to clean up that our categories and tags don’t work the way Google wants them to work, but even that is probably more cost and brain damage to fix that it is worth).
And please do not use this mention of SEO to spam us! We already get spammed all the time by SEO providers (and virtually all of them do a terrible job with their pitch missives, to add insult to injury). Any e-mails about SEO go straight to trash.
So what might work? We wish we had the time for podcasts, but doing anything in addition to what we do now introduces a lot more complexity (for instance, podcasts require not just specialized equipment but sound editing, and so more people which means more people and tasks to supervise, which lands on Yves’ desk and takes time away from producing content).
The best short-term move would be to find the time to write for New York Magazine regularly. Not only would this introduce Naked Capitalism to new readers, but as important, every article at New York Magazine links back to the site. Links from “authoritative” sites elevate our standing in Google and over time should somewhat offset the downrankings we’ve suffered.
We think this is an important defensive move given the increasing hostility of search engines and social media towards independent news sites.
In addition, those of you who encourage people you know to read the site might encounter some raised eyebrows when you recommend *horrors* a blog, while an introduction first to a New York Magazine piece and then to the site can counter knee-jerk skepticism.
Our New York Magazine editor has confirmed they are still keen to have us as often as twice a month. The problem is I found it difficult to carve out the time because New York Magazine is a different audience (more liberal than left wing) and thus the articles require different framing and a different voice than I use here. They also often require more backup, since I can’t just refer to things we’ve run or linked to here. So they take more time to produce than a similar-length post at Naked Capitalism.
Even though New York Magazine does pay for each piece, it’s not enough to make up for the time I’d need for coverage by Lambert and Jerri-Lynn to make up for that. So we are setting a target of $7,500 for this goal and we are already $535 towards it. Notice we have kept this goal modest compared to the others.
The “extra coverage” would consist largely of having Lambert and Jerri-Lynn do Links more often (Lambert is also very fast at putting Links together; I am jealous of his speed). So rest assured, this plan will not lead to fewer original posts by me, just a rearranging of other work duties at the site. It is also possible we could hire a researcher to help with posts and New York Magazine pieces, but finding someone with the right skills and schedule flexibility is a tall order.
If we wind up not using all the funds in the goal to help produce New York Magazine pieces, they will go to support more original reporting. So please, help use be even bigger and badder by going to the Tip Jar and giving as generously as you can! Whether $5 or $5,000, they all help us make this site hum.
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doing podcast would be way too much work. but appearing on other poeple’s podcast might be manageable. I am sure there are some that would like insight from Yves.
That is a very good suggestion, thanks!
This is a great suggestion. For example, Rogan’s reach is enormous, and cascades beyond people who agree with him. Yves is disciplined enough to not get twisted, and the interviews can last for hours.
A personal case: I’m on the Board of the local community theater, and our flagship is the free Shakespeare in the Park one weekend a year. We cancelled a show due to weather, and pulled a total audience of 280.
We had expanded our reach and provided umbrella support for a show of aerielists and flow artists in a nearby state park. The audience was about a third who knew someone in the show, a third through social media, and a third were people who were staying at the park who came for the amusement. They had about 500 people in the audience, who then heard of MCCT’s sponsorship.
This gives us credibility, for one, but even more reached a wider audience than we were able. Especially people who would’ve never known they were interested. Lots of kids were there, which are needed for future growth and to keep us from getting moldy, as we have consistently had participation from people who did shows in their teens, and then came back ten or fifteen years later. Some with their own kids, some because they realized how important it was to them when they were young. They bring people with them when they come back.
You can’t know who you’ll touch when you reach wide, and every one of those is a seed for further growth.
Donated!
I’ll also support the suggestion to go on other podcasts.
Chapo Trap House would be a good fit I think, They’re popular and pretty leftist. They have many recurring guests that serve as correspondents for their area of expertise (Medicare for all, middle east geopolitics, etc.), but don’t have a lot of in depth coverage of financial/economic issues. I think their audience would be interested and pretty receptive to much of your original reporting, though not as informed as your audience here, and probably less interested in regional topics like CalPERS.
Their contact info is at the bottom of http://www.chapotraphouse.com/
You can see a list of episodes and prior guests here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chapo_Trap_House_episodes
Plus they have listeners who pay!
https://graphtreon.com/creator/chapotraphouse
This is a great idea! But even better if you ask for us to be interviewed than we flog ourselves (hint, hint!)
Yes! Would love to hear you on “Useful Idiots” with Katie Harper and Matt Taibbi.
If you’re gonna do a podcast, do the War Nerd with Mark Ames and John Dolan.
Perhaps you could speak on the economic warfare currently being waged on Iran and Venezuela amongst others.
Yves, I really do understand the effort to get a podcast going, and then actually do one (my mother of 85 does one). Then I think about guys like Kunstler, who actual is way better on his podcast then his recently brand of manic writing. There’s probably enough people here in NC community to finance it, set it up, and keeping it going. And if it was part of the right network there’s some money in it. I for one would love to hear you, Richard North, and Clive. I’d pay extra for that. So maybe, something to think about. Be the show runner, maybe here and there do one. Start slow and all that.
“You do not merely want to be considered the best of the best. You want to be considered the only ones that do what you do.” – Jerry Garcia, possibly paraphrased.
Back when Lambert was the only co-moderator, someone made a suggestion about the commentariat helping comb through spam. That has it’s own issues, but it’s true that doing this has a very low roi for the mods. The less NC becomes ignored and ridiculed, the worse the problem can be expected to get. Email bombing and DoS attacks are too easy.
Yves has been beyond excellent in who she brings on as co-moderators. Enough that their time is valuable too. With the meet-ups having provided direct contact, could it be a time to look at some members of the commentariat to provide help? It takes a moderators time to co-ordinate, but volunteers providing an hour here and there might relieve pressure by eliminating non-content communications. Triple parity could help ensure the judgment calls are adequate.
I’m speaking from a point of ignorance here, but I’ve seen many times that it takes hours of work to do this job. Even more, it numbs minds which could be better used. Again, it may not be time yet, but at some point, with wider reach and influence, there will be more to wade through.