Which is why I’ve been a monthly donor since a few months after I signed up. I question the value of the (not) spam. Just my opinion.
Well, thank you very much, but in MY opinion, the reminders on the threads help tremendously.
And I’m extremely grateful for our FReepathon team who work tirelessly to keep these fundraisers moving, especially during slow days like today. Thank you ALL very much!!
Don-o, we appreciate you and all of our monthly donors and ALL of our donors very, very much. FR could not survive without your loyal support.
But here’s what’s happening. We have about 800 loyal monthly donors who contribute a good portion of our funding needs. And then another 1500-1600 donors who make up the rest. And many of our monthly or regular donors end up donating twice or more during the FReepathons too.
And the FReepathons are taking longer to complete. And for many reasons. One is the economy. Many of our members have had to cut back on expenses just to get by. Another is lack of enthusiasm. As the godless liberals take more and more control over our government and our society, and as the Republican party continues failing to slow it down, and worse are actually becoming part of the problem, our members are getting discouraged.
And the members who are not super pissed at the Republicans lack of ability to get the job done, get super pissed at me for no longer supporting the obviously failing, ineffective RINO candidates.
So, even though we’ve always been able to raise the funds we need, it’s taking longer to do so. Out of the 200,000 or more people who visit FR every day, sometimes many times a day, we have less than 2% of them who actually donate to help keep the site going.
It does get very discouraging at times. This fundraiser happens to be running a couple days ahead of the pace set by the prior fundraisers this year, and I hope the pace continues.
We’re getting real close to the yellow right now and then we’ll be on the home stretch. The “300 FReepers with $50 challenge” issued by I_be_tc last week was hugely successful and I suspect the next batch of checks received at the PO Box will have several more of those. When Amy next picks up at the PO Box, it’ll be the first batch received since that challenge was issued.
God bless our monthly, dollar-a-day, and mail-in donors. When we process their batches of contributions as received, they keep our FReepathons bumping along nicely.
And the efforts of our dedicated FReepathon teams on the threads help urge new members to become donors. If more of our members who use and enjoy FR daily would help support the site, these fundraisers wouldn’t take so long.
Plus, we have the New Monthly Donor campaign going strong. TheOldLady and her team of generous NMD Sponsors and our dedicated FReepathon teams are doing a terrific job of keeping the number of monthly donors from falling off as discouraged people drop out of that program.
So, please do not give our hard working FReepathon team members a hard time. As I said, if we had to depend on commercial advertising, we’d probably have to have 5 or 6 ads on every page. And that would be 24/7, 365 days per year.
And commercial advertising is very intrusive. I’m noticing lately that when I visit news sites and the blogs that are posted here I’m seeing more and more ads that are personally aimed directly at me. I’m noticing that if I search for something on google, or look at something on Amazon, etc, they’re placing tracking cookies on my computer and whenever I visit news sites or blogs, even the friendly conservative sites, I’m getting ads for the products I just viewed.
Now, a lot of people are not going to like that. They’re going to turn off the cookies or find ways to block the ads in the first place, then the revenue falls off. And don’t even want to talk about the demands the advertisers will put on us regarding content and commentary. Chick-Fil-A, anyone?
It’s a never ending vicious cycle. Thank God for our loyal FReepers!!