Entertaining conservative ranter Udolpho comments here on the subject of blogging and donations. He argues that few conservative bloggers are sufficiently productive or intelligent to enough to warrant adding a donations option to their weblogs.
Udolpho states that Steve Sailer is probably the only non-mainstream conservative blogger who deserves to make money from blogging.
Personally though, I think that’s a somewhat negative assessment of the quality of conservative weblogs coming out of the US.
Other conservative bloggers such as Parapundit and Eunomia may not write as engagingly as Sailer but the quality of their analysis is certainly in the same league. Indeed, Sailer himself has acknowledged that he isn’t necessarily the smartest man on the Internet even though he is undoubtedly one of the most entertaining and probing.
If bloggers such as Parapundit and Eunomia wished to add a Pay Pal to their sites it would hardly make them the laughing stock of the blogosphere.
A possible reason why a number of talented bloggers don’t ask for donations is because the number of people willing and able to make donations is rather limited. The traffic gap between top mainstream bloggers like Instapundit and leading politically incorrect bloggers like Steve Sailer is (unfortunately) massive and unlikely to narrow much in the present political climate.
“The blogosphere” (God I hate that word, can anybody come up with something better) is still in its infancy and if a large number of bloggers asked for donations then the money might be spread too thinly for leading non-mainstream bloggers like Sailer to make a modest income.
Not only are blogger’s like Sailer important in their own right, but they also provide vital links to other “edgy” sites that would otherwise be starved of the “oxygen of publicity”.
Furthermore, there are many bloggers, who, while not in the same league as the best US bloggers, may still be the best blogger in their country or are a de facto leader in a particular field.
If a blogger of moderate ability happens to be covering important issues that other bloggers aren’t then why shouldn’t they ask for donations? - Good luck to em’ I say.
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3 comments:
RP does have a paypal link. I've donated to him multiple times. I'm glad he gives me a way to renumerate him for the insights and news he provides so tersely and clearly to me.
That Udolpho would have a problem with it is bemusing more than anything. Who cares?
Ooops, Randall Parker does indeed have a Pay Pal, which is certainly fair enough.
I don't know how I managed to overlook it.
I've been readings his posts a fair bit but obviously haven't been looking in the margins.
I guess my main point with this post is that are various criteria by which you can define the quality of a blog and Udolpho, being a witty entertaining type, is perhaps a little over-critical of less "charismatic" bloggers.
There's no doubt that if he was more 'mainstream', Steve Sailer's writing would be seen in more places than the Amcon and his blog. It was for this reason that I sent a donation to him.
But there are other less - for want of a better word - talented bloggers, who still produce interesting work. If they asked for a donation I wouldn't see it as being pretentious. In fact, I applaud any dissenter from this liberal epoch. To read views of sanity, especially after listening to and reading the mainstream media, is worth a donation
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