Housekeeping: It's Sellout Time
In the summer of 1997, I started the "BMX Basics" website. It started as an Apache subdirectory of a local internet provider (there's a 1998 snapshot here) and ended up as www.bmxbasics.org. Once I realized that Internet newbies only understood dot-com I opened www.bmxbasics.com. At one point I was serving over 560,000 pages a month --- even though I only wrote one new piece a week. I closed that site and opened squidcar.com around 2005. Finally, I closed that site and opened this one up a decade ago, eventually moving it to the WordPress site that you all know and tolerate today.
Over the past twenty years, I've never had a single banner ad, promotional tie-in, sponsored marketing piece, or any for-profit content whatsoever on any of my sites. The most I've ever asked you to do is to use my referral codes for Club Eaglerider (thank you for that, I'm up to 18 free days in the bank!) and Massdrop (28 referrals so far, they sent me some very nice notebooks and pens.) That's about to change and I'll explain why in terms that I hope make sense to all of you.
I've spent about $30,000 on the servers and bandwidth that have hosted my various sites since 1997, but I've always been able to share that cost with my various endeavors in technical consulting, website hosting, and software development. In 2009, I began winding down my tech-consulting business and earlier this year I said goodbye to my final support client. I currently host just one client on my co-located server and I've asked them to make a transition plan to leave next year.
In other words, I no longer have a way to pay the rent here.
By running some ads, I'm hoping to recover the $1800 or so I'm currently spending every year on my co-location. This will save me from having to move the site to a "cloud provider". In the unlikely event that I earn more money than $1800 a year, I'll be funding the race team with the extra money. You can expect that there will be some general transparency regarding how I use the revenue and why. If you have questions, or if you see something you don't like in the ads, please let me know.
As always, thank you for reading this site and for supporting my writing. I know it's not easy to read me --- I don't flatter the readers, I don't engage in false humility, I don't communicate at a fourth-grade level. I also know it's not easy to support me --- I've been an arrogant, entitled jerk who likes showing-off bespoke clothing and sleeping with other husbands' wives. When I meet and communicate with my readers, and I see the (genuinely) amazing things they've accomplished in fields as diverse as international real estate and foster parenting, I don't feel entirely worthy of them. It's no surprise that I would eventually try to monetize this demographically golden group in an attempt to feather my grungy nest!
Last but not least, if you're really angry with me, I want you to know it was Bark's idea, not mine. PEACE!