State of the Site-January

So it's been a slow January for posts here, as I've been concentrating extra-hard on Hero Go Home. I'm worked ahead for two weeks on Movie Monday and about to hit a section of the novel that will allow me to reuse a lot of material from the previous drafts, because it's the big 2nd Act climax.

Still no real income from the site. I did get one donation, which was awesome, not only because of the money, but because of the validation and the sense that if one person's willing to donate, others might be, too. I tried putting up ads from Project Wonderful, but that didn't work so well; it runs on bids, and if no one bids to be on your site, you end up with a big hole on your page.

So Project Wonderful is history, and I'm back to building up traffic as I try to figure out a new approach to monetizing. The Girl Genius ads are bringing in a small, but steady amount of traffic, and a few people have actually stuck around to read some chapters, which is good. Now I just need to kick it up a level to get more eyeballs in. I'm thinking of upping my advertising budget (which would not be hard, since so far, I've spent less than $5.00), and I've also added a widget to make it easier to share the posts on social media. So if you are active on Stumbleupon or reddit or delicious or Digg, and anything I've written catches your eye, please feel free.

I'm also thinking of putting Part III behind a paywall. In other words, you can read almost 30 chapters for free, but you'll need to pay to see how it ends. Not unfair, I don't think, but when I was considering the idea before, it was all academic speculation because almost no one had read more than the first two chapters. Now a few people are reading through, so I'll see if I can't get a couple of donations for the ending.

And in the meantime, I want to put otgether some T-shirts and/or other merchandise, as well as another couple of secret projects that I'm trying to fit in around the edges for other revenue streams, and seriously, it's hard keeping my mind moving in all the many directions it needs to go at once. So not everything's getting done, which is another reason why I'm pushing to get worked ahead. I just hate the sick feeling that all this work I'm doing is never going to pay, that I'll never be good enough at this for more than five or six people to actually like it.