General: October 2004 Archives

Destiny Travels, a Tulsa-based travel agency, is the first advertiser on BatesLine. Travel agent Brenda Holt will do the legwork to find you the best possible deal on the travel experience you're looking for. Brenda can book hotels, air travel, cruises, rental cars -- anything that you need for your trip. And if something comes up that throws a kink in your plans -- as it often does -- Brenda is there for you to get your trip back on track.

I'm pleased that my first advertiser is a Tulsa business, and one run by folks I know and respect. Brenda and her husband Bobby are active in the Lewis Crest Neighborhood Association; Bobby is the webmaster. (The blog currently features some interesting election trivia.)

Support this site by supporting our advertisers. And buy your own ad -- only $20 for a full month. We've had 33,000 visitors this month -- that's a lot of eyes for just a little bit of money.

Bobby Holt and my dad alerted me to a problem with viewing individual BatesLine entries under Internet Explorer -- the vertical scrollbar would be disabled, preventing the reader from reading the whole entry. If the reader happened to resize the Internet Explorer window, the scrollbar would start working.

The problem seems to date back a few weeks to when I changed the individual entry template to include a SiteMeter icon (for tracking the number of visits to the site). The fix involved including the following code right before the closing </body> tag:

<br clear="all" />

There is still a problem with some text on the home page that disappears and reappears, the result of the non-standard way in which Microsoft implements web standards in its browser. Hope to get that fixed soon. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Most of the world will be able to see a total lunar eclipse tonight -- the last one until 2007. Totality begins at 9:23 pm Central Daylight Time and ends at 10:45 pm.

This sign in the heavens can mean only one thing: The Red Sox will finish their sweep of the Cardinals tonight.

At right you'll notice that I've signed up to sell blogads to help pay the cost of running BatesLine. I hadn't planned to sell ads, but I was contacted by an organization (one I support) which was interested in advertising on the site, so I set it up. It is a great advertising buy -- only $10 a week, $15 for two weeks, and $20 for an entire month. According to Webalizer, BatesLine is drawing about 1000 visitors a day. The ad runs near the top of every page on the site, so it will be seen whether a websurfer comes to the home page or links directly to an article. It takes about five minutes to set up an ad like the one you see at right -- just click on the "advertise here" link, and off you go. Once I get notice of your interest and approve the ad -- I reserve the right to reject any ad I deem incompatible with my values -- you'll see it on display.

This last week I've received some very welcome encouragement at a time when I've been feeling pretty worn out and discouraged. I'm grateful to those of you who came up to me at last week's rally and other events to say hello and tell me that you read and enjoy BatesLine.

I'm also especially thankful to the four folks who have supported this site financially, both in person and via the PayPal link on the right side of the home page. It's enough to cover a few months of hosting fees and to cover a nice evening out for me and the missus. (Shh, don't tell -- it's a surprise!)

September was a record month for traffic, with an average of 799 visits a day, and rising over the course of the month. Many thanks to everyone who visits and visits regularly. Many thanks, too, to blogs like Spot On, Dustbury, Wizbang (responsible for the RNC Bloggers aggregation), Dead to Self, OkieDoke, the Tulsan (which I realize is not a blog), and the unofficial Coburn for Senate blog for linking to BatesLine and driving a lot of traffic this way. And for some reason, I got over 100 referrals in September from the website of the International Atomic Energy Agency. I could never find a reference on their site, but thanks for the referrals all the same.

No thank you list would be complete without Michael DelGiorno, Program Director Brian Gann, and the whole team at Talk Radio 1170 KFAQ. I'm grateful to have a weekly opportunity to chat with Michael and to speak to Tulsa's largest talk radio audience. A lot of people have found me through the station and its website. (I have heard from a few people who found out about KFAQ through BatesLine.com!)

So how can you help keep BatesLine running strong?

Although the direct cost of running the site is pretty low, the time I spend researching and writing imposes an indirect cost -- those are hours I'm not working overtime, and some chores I might do myself, I pay others to take care of if they're urgent (or they just don't get done).

It wouldn't take much to make a difference. If everyone who visited the site at least once in the month of September dropped $10 using the PayPal button, I could quit my job and do this full time for a year. Well, I don't know that I'd quit the day job (I like my coworkers, the work is interesting, and the benefits are good), but I'd feel a lot less guilty about spending more time working to keep you informed.

If I could raise enough funds, I'd love to be able to subscribe to some online research services, which would help me dig into things without having to find time to get to the library.

Whether you can donate financially or not, one of the ways you can support this site is by visiting every day -- I've been posting something new every night -- and encouraging your friends to do the same. As the number of visits rises, so will the rates I'll be able to charge for ads. I hadn't considered advertising before, but I've been contacted by people who want to advertise on the site, promoting messages and products that are compatible with my values. (You will not see a "John Kerry for President" or a "Carrie Bradshaw for President" ad on this site.) So I'm in the process of getting that set up.