Metapost: Monetizing Update

As has been previously mentioned, I've been having some major hiccups at work. Since I last posted on the subject, I received a 60-days notice at work (i.e., a notice that I would be laid off at the end of 60 days if I couldn't find steady work at my company). I then received two maybe-offers of the we think we can use you type, but without any real follow-up tasking yet. And my boss has pointedly reminded me that even if these persons can use me part-time now, the offer is subject to change at any time in the future, pretty much without warning. Neat! That is totally not stressful at all, lol.

So! In an ongoing effort to try to get the blog to pay for itself so that it's one less expenditure I have to look at cutting while we all tighten our belts, some changes have gone into effect:

1. There is now a Donate button under the comments widget. Right now the blog only accepts Paypal; I'm looking into other donation methods for the future, but right now there's not a whole lot of good alternatives that I can find.

2. There are now two Blog Ad widgets on the blog: one above the header post, and one at the bottom of the left column. Right now they are empty; BlogAds only serves up ads when people pay to either post here directly or when I am accepted into a group. (I'm looking into a couple of book groups right now.) The plus side to Blog Ads is that I theoretically have some control over what shows up in the ad space (though I haven't had a chance to test that theory yet), and can weed out the more pernicious triggery-at-a-glance stuff that we were getting with Google Ads.

3. There is now an Amazon widget on the left column; that contains hand-picked Kindle Deals that I select from the monthly deals on the grounds that I've reviewed them here on the blog, or we've talked about them in comments, or I thought the cover looked pretty. (Yes, I am capricious like that.) If you click the "See More..." link at the bottom of the widget, you'll be redirected to the Kindle page that shows all the deals, in case you doubt my pretty-cover picking methods.

Other changes that have taken effect (or will soon) but which do not have to do with monetizing but need mentioning anyway:

4. Most of the deconstruction posts will henceforth have a "Read more..." cut rather than just taking up the whole main page like they once did. This is for reasons of safe spaceyness -- it doesn't do a whole lot of good for me to warn for [trigger] if scrolling down to the previous post means you might land on that bit of trigger text accidentally in the process. So the cut is to let people actively decide if they want to enter and read the post.

5. I will soon be trimming the Blog Bounce down to only those blogs which are loosely affiliated with this one. (Shakesville and Slacktiverse because I am a moderator at those sites; and those sites owned by the Rambling moderators here.) This has been a difficult decision for me, because I know the blog bounce is very popular, but I've received some concerns about triggery blog-post-titles that have come up over the past few months, and I want to be receptive to those needs -- especially when it comes to hosting content I don't have control over, which is basically what the Blog Bounce does.

Once again, and as always, I do apologize for any inconvenience caused by changes. I don't really like change myself, so I'm very sympathetic to being on the receiving end of unwanted changes. I hope that I am and can continue to balance the needs of the readers here with the needs of the blog and, I suppose, my own needs as well. Thank you.