Dear friends,
As I mentioned yesterday, I have come to the conclusion that I need to share with you the problems which I and my blog are having and, frankly, to ask for your help. I have been trying to avoid this, but several good friends have strongly urged me to do so and time has proven that they were right.
First, I will begin by a short “state of the community” mini-report so we can all see how far we have got and where we all are now.
Since 2007 this blog has been a “one-man show” where one anonymous dude shared his thoughts with an abstract (and very small but also very nice) Internet audience. The war in the Ukraine changed all that. From a blog which almost never even mentioned the Ukraine (I was focused mostly on the Middle-East) the Saker Blog rapidly became a 99% Ukraine-centered blog. Along with that, an explosion in the number of readers happened: while for years I had maybe a couple of hundred visitors (on a good day), this spring it went from hundreds, to thousands, to tens of thousands to the absolute record of just under 70’000 in one day in August. Then, it slowly tapered off back to a more reasonable 20’000-30’000 per day, depending on the events in the Ukraine: the worse the war, the more readers I got (-: which made me feel like a “war profiteer” :-). The second huge change which suddenly happened was the the small community around this blog suddenly massively grew in size. It all began when a wonderful French lady (“C” – encore merci pour tout!!) wrote to tell me that she thought my blog should be translated into French. I replied “great – but I cannot do it myself”. She said that she would try to find somebody.
A few months later there are now six, soon to be seven (Latin American is almost ready!), independent Saker blogs – all tremendously successful, all with their own large readership and attached YouTube channels.
Then there are the guest-author’s SITREPS: Ukraine, Iraq, Nigeria, Transcarpathia Transnistria and Gagauzia, and Latin America. Two of them come directly from a war zone and thus depend on the author’s personal safety and access to communications. All of them provide an insider look which is simply not to be found elsewhere. I consider these SITREPs a fantastic asset to our community.
Furthermore, there are two more recent developments which I am delighted with and which deserve special mention here: Alexander Mercouris has agreed to post his (always excellent) FB commentaries on this blog and I am now a regular contributor to Russia Insider with whom the Saker community can now also collaborate on various issues. In other words, our community is rapidly growing. And what all this means is this:
We are making a real difference. We have established a presence in a record time and the future prospects look nothing short of fantastic. Furthermore, in this current war the information aspect is at least as important as bullets and guns. In fact, the Empire spends a lot more on information warfare then on the military hardware actually used. In other words, while a diverse community of like-minded people like ours has neither the goal or the means to beat the big heavyweights like the AngloZionist media or special services, we are big enough to make a difference and they cannot completely ignore us. At the very least, we can serve to crash their propaganda about a consensus in their support. Finally, we can be a people-to-people bridge between the people living under the AngloZionist Empire’s rule and the those living in the (truly) “free world” lead by Russia.
I still have to pinch myself from time to time to check whether this is ” really real”, or this is just a dream (the regular contact I have with the wonderful people working on the other Saker blogs and that I now consider as friends, proves to me that, yes, this is real).
Finally, because of the very high risks of censorship and/or legal attack, I have agreed to move this blog to a new server in a safe(r) jurisdiction (Iceland) and on a privately owned server. As you know, this important and necessary step has, so far, been less than a success (More about that further below) So let’s turn to my problems now.
They can all be summarized in a simple expression: time and money.
The huge growth of this blog and the other independent Saker blogs and of our (now truly worldwide) community did not just happen “like that”. At each step of the way, I had to find the right people, discuss an immense array of issues and, of course, make mistakes and try to learn from them. I had to cope with at least one major crisis which took a lot of energy to mediate and resolve and I had to deal with a lot of people who promised much but delivered nothing. I am not complaining about this, but I want you to understand that it all entails a huge number of hours of work to organize and fix. All the while while producing analyses of the civil war in the Ukraine and moderating one to several hundred comments each day (I had asked two friends to help me with that task, but one concluded that the philosophy of this blog did not make him feel comfortable while the second one simply dumped me with less than a week’s notice).
As a result of all these developments, my daily workload for this blog has been exponentially going up throughout the spring, summer and fall. At the same time, however, donations have been going down. So let’s talk about these donations (sigh, deep breath, plunging).
Those who have been here long enough know that the entire idea of donations came from readers who literally demanded that I create some kind of donation option. I have to tell you that I have always been extremely uncomfortable and embarrassed taking about money (even writing this makes me feel absolutely terrible) but that I decided to give it try. To my most absolute amazement, donations began coming in and even in amounts sufficient enough to make a difference in my family’s budget. In fact, without these donations we could not have made it through the summer without sinking further into debt (full disclosure: we have a house and 2 old cars, but no savings, no pension, and plenty of credit card debt). Over the past couple of months, however, these donations have been steadily decreasing and, frankly, my family and I only pulled it through thanks to one individual from northern Europe who has been helping month after month and without whom I could never have maintained this blog. Clearly, many supporters are suffering from “donor fatigue” or are also maxed out.
From the beginning of the existence of this blog I always have been reluctant to create categories of readers or to offer some products/services only to paying subscribers. This is still something I don’t want to do. Still, I am told by friends that I should consider such an option. In practical terms, we are talking about the possibility of writing a book about Russia based on some of the articles I have posted here and/or making a podcast. Right now, I have way too much to do just to keep things running, but I could consider these options in the future, especially if my financial situation continues to deteriorate. At this point in time, however, I cannot add any further activities or ventures to what I have to do every day, not unless I find a way to squeeze 36-48 hours of life into a 24 hour day. Worse, if I have to take on these ventures just to make ends meet, I will have to dramatically decrease the time spent on this blog and this, right at the time when the Empire’s war against Russia is heating up and the Ukraine is about to explode again. This makes no sense to me.
By the way, I am often accused of being a “paid Putin agent”. Every time I read that I sigh in think “if only that was true…”. The reality is that Vladimir Vladimirovich has not contributed a single kopek to this blog (yet?), nor has any other Russian government, corporate or even private entity. A few Russian readers have, but I can count them on the fingers of one hand. Considering the absolutely dismal Russian performance in the current PR war against the western MSM propaganda machine, I am at loss for words to describe this apparent indifference. I can only surmise that this the “not without honor, except in your own country, and in your own house” phenomenon at work.
If I had a magic wand, I would go back to doing what I think I do best and what most of you would probably want me to do: write analyses for this blog. But in order to do that, I need to be honest with you and admit to you that I hit a kind of a “wall” and that I need your help. If you value what you get on this blog then please help me work for this blog in conditions where I can at least preserve my mental health and focus on my writing rather than on my ballooning debt. I am sorry to be so blunt about this, but at this point I have no other choice.
Then there is the issue of the new blog.
Fundamentally, I think that the decision to move the blog to Iceland is a sound one. Furthermore, I personally like the new blog a lot, both the design, the visual appearance and the work on it as an author and administrator. Simply put: WordPress is infinitely better than Blogger. Furthermore, there is a real risk of being shut down here, on Blogger. So I see no reasons to question the original idea. The implementation is, however, a different business. Here I personally responsible for a number of mistakes. I will spare you all the technical details, but the bottom line is that for the time being the new blog needs to go back into testing and until it is fixed we all have to only use this blog here, on Blogger, for the foreseeable future. The new blog will be back and, hopefully, the next time around it will be more solid than the first one. But for the time being – Blogger is the only option.
The bottom line is this: I need your help.
First, if you have not contributed to this blog in the past, please do. Right now less than 0.25% of the readers of this blog have sent a donation. If you have, please consider contributing again or even increasing your contribution.
Second, please let me know what you think of the idea of creating “for purchase” products as opposed to keep everything for free. Specifically, please let me know if you would be interested in purchasing a book and/or a podcast. My own preference goes for the former, but you might think otherwise.
Third, do you have any ideas about fund-raising/crowd-funding? Are there any amongst you who are knowledgeable about this realm about which I know nothing? Would any of you offer your time as a volunteer fund-raiser of some type? What about this idea: can the community support my work by raising funds for me not by sending donations, but literally by creating some kind of fund-raising mechanism? Seeking out donors amongst friends? Organizing some kind of mailing list or dedicated website? Write to Vladimir Vladimirovich and ask for his help (just kidding!)? Seriously, if you cannot donate or are maxed out – can you help with your brain and, especially, your time?
In other words, while advice about what I could/should do is great, it would be even greater if some of you could actually take it upon themselves to help directly. Right now, I am so overworked that I stopped writing my thesis, stopped all my recreational activities and my daily reading is down to 15min a day max: I have 3 books in the pipeline to review for this blog, and I had only enough time to read 3/4 of the first one…
Fourth, please forgive me all the problems with the new server and the back and fourth between the old and new one. For the time being, let’s stay here and if suddenly I get shut down by Blogger – then go to any of the other Saker blogs (which are all safely hosted in Iceland) until the new blog is fixed.
Fifth and last, but most definitely not least – do you have any other suggestions or ideas? I really hope that this appeal to the community will generate one (or several) solutions. So far, what I call the “spontaneous self-organization of people” has been nothing short of miraculous for me and since the friend I mentioned yesterday did write “We can fix everything except you” I have decided to honestly lay out in front of “all of y’alls” (as they say in Florida) the stuff I am struggling with and which destroys my peace of mind.
Right now, I have the feeling that I am swimming against a Tsunami and I am losing the strength to do so very fast. Please think about it all and if you can help, in any form, please do.
I would prefer if you posted your reactions/ideas/suggestions here, but feel free to also email me if you prefer. I will probably not have the time to respond individually to most (or even any) of your comments/emails, but I will try as best I can. And I will definitely read every single with the greatest attention.
For the rest of the week, I will probably post less as I will be working on many of these behind-the-scenes problems, but since I left you with two *truly* world-class articles to consider (Strelkov’s reply to Khodorkovsky and the Glaziev – Khazin press conference) and since the “questions to Khazin” are still being collected until Friday, I trust that this is fair enough. Of course, in case of critical developments I will set everything aside and keep you posted as best I can.
Okay, readers and friends, your turn now. Please help in any way you can.
Thanks and kind regards to all,
The Saker
All this is business, and Saker is not a business man – as some of us are.
Artists? Design an attractive T shirt. A contest with a prize for the winner?
Who of us can organize this? with Saker the judge.
The idea being to free him from the drudgery that any art or business requires.
There’s gotta be people into marketing out there. Who can set up an online store? Whereinell are ya? Front and center.
Geeks? Betcha bunch there’s a bunch of them here.
Anyone want to take on a project for Saker?
I’m surprised that Mrs Saker has not put her foot, I mean claw, down about the disruption this causes. It’s time for the community to start functioning like one.
You know what to do and how to do it. So. If not you, who? If not now, when?
re: Paypal
I’ve tried to set up a monthly 10$ donation several times with Paypal and it always ended up as a single (non-recurrent) payment. When I complained I got no answer – so I finally decided to send 50$ at a time as single payments. Anybody had the same problems?
re: $$
A monthly subscription of 5-10$ for the quality of the (!honest!) information that you provide seems reasonable to me – and you could avoid the repeated logins with a button “remember me”. But for security reasons (maybe soon a problem in many Western countries) several possible ways of contributing would be necessary (just like now)
re: new readers
Posts older than say 10 days could be made freely accessible.
re:special cases
f.ex. readers without jobs, with security concerns and others: maybe you could leave an opening for them like “if you have reasons not to contribute to the expenses of this site please state your reasons” – yes this might be abused but maybe the overall feeling of honesty on your site will help.
re:moderation.
Maybe moderation could be replaced by either a “spam” indicator or an overall valuation (say 1 to 5 stars) given by the accepted users.
re: your thesis.
I worked with somebody once who had not finished his thesis – and because of our workload he never finished it – and it made a crimp in his career. Take good care of yourself, Saker
Thanks for all your work. It’s been extremely interesting to me to read your writing and to gain some understanding of what’s been happening in the Ukraine and what’s behind it. I think whoever said you should focus on your health and your thesis is right, when your thesis is finished a book would be wonderful. I would buy it. Meanwhile, a very small monthly payment is a good idea. I really think btw 1-3 dollars, not because you aren’t worth more but because that is an amount that most people wouldn’t hesitate to spend. SO you would have more readers and more money. At 10 some might quickly calculate the cost of a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk and do that instead. Again I thank you for your great efforts.
I’d love to have a good book on Russia to read, but seems like the amount of time and energy it would take for you to write one would make it prohibitive, since you might not get much return.
Donation on the way!
A number of people have expressed concern about PayPal, Amazon, or pointed out that these services can be complicated to use in some countries.
As an alternative, it is possible to buy prepaid VISA cards at convenience stores, and then use them more or less anonymously online. Those of you who would like to donate money to the Saker, but who are also concerned about security might find these a workable option. The Vanilla card is a popular one, and can be fairly simple to use.
Typically, you buy the card with cash at a store, then visit the card company web site to activate it. You need to provide an e-mail address, but anything will do. Hotmail, or whatever. No other ID is necessary. Once the card is enabled, you can go to the PayPal site, enter the card number, expy date, any random name and address, and submit. It works just like a regular VISA card, payment will go to Saker via PayPal, and none of your ID is needed for the transaction.
http://www.woothemes.com/woocommerce/
Woocommerce is a way to enable ecommerce on your WordPress site.
I use a different software for my site, but have a Worpdress blog running off it, so have basic familiarity with it.
With this software you should be able to sell your own etexts, or even others in a different section of the site (or even a seperate WP link) which would permit both real and virtual merchandise for sale. If you contack LightningSource you can even have your works published in print as Print-on-Demand.
Payment would likely need to be via PayPal for at lease shared-SSL certificates. Sull SSL will probably require and abridgement of your privacy.
You may be able to sell related items to your blog, which can be done as a *service* rather than an imposition of your viewers.
A classic or expert text on Russian Orthody and/or its struggles with catholicism and Islam in Galicia to the Black Sea may be of great interest, for example.
NotSoFast said…@ 22 October, 2014 20:42
“if you have reasons not to contribute to the expenses of this site please state your reasons”
Being not so fast again?
Why?
Anonymous said…@ 23 October, 2014 04:28
“it is possible to buy prepaid VISA cards at convenience stores”
Location and market specific.
” then visit the card company web site to activate it. You need to provide an e-mail address, but anything will do.”
If security is the purpose the suggestions are self-defeating.
Keep the full blog free please, do not use a “private section” for those who pay it would miss the whole point of an alternative kind and not-mainstream information, news and analysis. You just have every two month or so -depending on your financial situation- tu remind the community to contribute financially to this blog. See if that work please before to take a step toward “privatised section of this blog”.
Seeing your desperate call, I have just come to realize how hard it must have been for you and I just sent you my first donation – not much, but something. Thank you again Saker fot all your work
@ Anonymous at 23 October, 2014 11:41,
Totally agree.
I will not tie any personal data to my ideas or activities on the Internet, in any way. So clear.
Some even said he does not care to say his real name here. Very brave of you, have you 70, responsible of dog and a confotable life, probably debt free.
Some of us left a life ahead, people who partially or totally depend on us, and have huge debts to pay, as Saker, so we can not afford to lose our work.
Believe me, sir, if it were not for all of the above, not only each one would have their input, but I would already be in Novorussia offering my services, which is what the body asks me to do.
Not to say that in case of a possible world conflict, I would not like to fall into one minute of the first half, they came to my house, gave a knock on the door (something around here are used to, other times ) and end in any ” army school of mechanics ” or “secret prison”, subjected to the most unspeakable tortures to tell what I do not know.
I would simply like to survive free to keep fighting and have some hours ahead to hide in the subsoil.
Of course, in person, to my friends, family and work colleagues, even with not so known people, I always make campaign for Russia and Novorussia, announce the actual and real events in The Ukraine and try to uncover the ins and outs of the “Empire”, to anyone willing to listen.
That’s all I can do for now, besides lost my health stealing time from sleep to disseminate information here in the network.
Re elsi said…@ 23 October, 2014 18:25
You may find helping create situations where others ask questions both more productive and more secure.
Doubt is also a very useful condition, as well as a potential catalyst: certainty is always a disadvantage.
As to “answers” – give a person a fish they eat today, help a person to learn to fish they can eat everyday.
As to sleep, like patience it is not only a virtue, but of more use when its restriction is laid on to your opponent rather than on to yourself.
Some on the blog have not yet learned the uses and wisdom of quiet. Why not delegate to them the role of worrying the opponents?
Hunter Biden cokehead sinecure of Kolomoisky’s Burisma
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bidens-son-discharged-from-navy-over-drug-use/
re: moderation (correction to my previous post)
Maybe a “not acceptable” button could be used to eliminate trolls and other unpleasant messages – you would only have to decide whether you wanted to bar the IP numbers related to those messages.
re:$$
You should’nt be too wary to accept some contribution from the Saker community because
– you most certainly deliver good value
– you will need $$ to get your new blog up
– you will probably need $$ to defend it against attacks
– and if some $$ should be left for your personal use this would be a justified reward for the huge lot of time that you spend on your blogs.
re: your thesis.
If you don’t look after yourself nobody else will – this is not egotism but simply a law of nature.
Cheers
You have to VERY careful in banning IP address!!!!
Large number of people in new Zealand lost connections because an IP number was banned a while ago. So people are a lot more careful now.
I used to have a dynamic IP number and I found out I was banned at many places. Ended up I was considered as an undesirable from some country.. I spent a lot of time tracing this and found out entire blocks of IP numbers were dynamically allocated to routers which then assigned them to those who would then connect to the net. From some place in Italy or something. So I could show up living in any one of different countries. I ended up not using that ISP which used that particular trunk line but its such a huge network that other ISP’s also use the same trunk line. But their IP blocks are smaller and hence does not change so much and does not get banned so often. Although they also use dynamic IP’s it does not change but it does change.
Just saying.. You should not just ban without thinking. Entire networks use a single IP and you deny access to large number of people. Like if you ban the Wifi of JFK, no one who is waiting for flight would be able to connect. Because someone got that IP banned.. This banned thing was so bad that it made me change my Internet habit and made me take alternative routes. It was really frustrating that some places would only ban posting but not reading. It made me paranoid as if I was being targeted. I have posted more in the last couple of months than the last decade. And this made things a lot worse and made me stop posting entirely.
Since the US takes up more than 50% of all IP numbers while having 5% of the worlds population.. And US corporations taking majority of those numbers its a problem even in the US. Imagine the problem in places like China and India which would use up the entire IP range each. And then many entire ranges are used for special purposes so that number goes down even more. So the tricks they use to give users more IP numbers are a lot more complex than they were a decade ago but since most technology implementations are done in the US who never experiences this they are very slow to fix things. Heck I could not even send a letter to the admin to get my banned IP removed because I could not get past their security system and this was only 1 system.
If I was troll I would try to get as many IP’s banned as possible to make sure I could prevent others from connecting.
Hi Saker,Keep it simple or you will burn out.
I have just finished reading ‘Oceana’ and rarely does anyone comment.
Brilliant content that no one writes about,perhaps ‘AE’ could help moderate,taking part of your load??
all the best,
retired in the UK.
Hi Saker, I suggest to integrate many crypto-currenices donations to your blog. There is few solutions to wordperss:
Bitcoin
https://support.bitpay.com/hc/en-us
Multicoins
https://www.gocoin.com/
https://www.coinpayments.net/home
http://www.edigicash.co/
I advise to add e-shop to your wordpress blog where you could sell your articles as a digital magazine, books etc. WP has lots of plugins hepling bloggers to do it.
Copy the business model from very successful podcaster James Corbett from http://www.corbettreport.com/
Cooperate with other alternative medias like http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/about-us/
Hello,
I am a professional programmer with 25 years experience, having tested and worked with lots of web application scripts, like WordPress etc.
My advice is NOT to use any of those scripts for a fast and lightweight blog. The scripts are too complex. Too many ways to fail.
Rather use a CSS framework, like Semantic UI or Twitter Bootstrap, and build a simple blog in PHP. It is done in a few hours by an expert, and then you can add functionality as you go, like comments. Let them make you a desktop app to update the blog, and that will make it even easier on you.
Avoid complex technical solutions. It is my experience that they take a lot of energy. Why? Because one does not have competence to evaluate the process, and that is exhausting – being dependent on “experts”.
I know what I am talking about.
Kaj
kajronnynilsen@yahoo.no