Housekeeping: Joe's Reviews, Counting Cash, Popularity Contest

Here at Riverside Green, we're always looking for ways to

0. Bring you exciting new "content" 1. Milk you for cash

Starting tomorrow, we will be liberally stealing syndicating short book reviews from venerable multi-topic blogger Joe Sherlock. Each review will feature an Amazon affiliate link. If you click it and buy the book, we could make anywhere from two cents to 500,000 dollars, assuming Joe is going to review a solid platinum book at some point.

Which reminds me: I think I promised some sort of vague accounting regarding our advertising program, as well as a general State Of The Site Address regarding traffic. Let's get right to that!

Advertising And Affiliate Program Recap

It costs $1,800 a year to run the co-lo server on which Riverside Green operates. I could do it for about $400 a year in the Amazon Clown. There are some advantages to not doing that which don't bear discussing here but which you might discover if, like at least one fellow out there, you have a habit of posting hate-filled rants about me and my kid from your work computer.

On January 1 of this year, we received an offer from Bitcoin impresario Pete Dushenski to sponsor our 2018 hosting bill. It was exceptionally generous but we turned him down because I suspected that we could eventually beat those numbers. So how are we doing? The answer: so far, not as well as we'd have done if we'd taken the King's shilling. Total ad revenues for 2018 are $1,127 against total hosting cost so far of $1,425. Should we have accepted Pete's offer? In the long run, I'd rather carry my own weight. Furthermore, I expect that in 2019 we will more than break even, for reasons to be discussed below.

Our Amazon Affiliate program has thrown a few hundred bucks into the till as well. Unlike the advertising money, it's wildly inconsistent. One of you bad-asses managed to get us $37 with a single affiliate order a few months back, but our total Amazon earning so far for October is three (3) cents. I'm hoping to level that out a bit with additional links.

Overall, if you put the ad money and the Amazon money together, we're just about level with expenses. Thank you for that.

Traffic Report

Here's our daily average for visits since changing the site to a Wordpress blog:

2013: 269 2014: 965 2015: 1,448 2016: 1,592 2017: 1,753 2018: 2,361

That's what you'd call a pattern of improvement, right there. I credit the tireless work of our Twin Tom K Force (Klockau and Kreutzer) for the big climb in 2018. We have a growing roster of guest contributors. Some mild irony: TTAC's traffic has been diving off a cliff recently and we are now at the point where the average post on this site does about the same reader volume as the average TTAC post. Obviously they are still a lot bigger than we are, because they have a long tail of reviews and other content that brings people in from search engines on a daily basis... but if you wiped both sites clean and made us compete heads-up on what we publish tomorrow, it would be a close-run thing.

Even more amusing: TTAC has traditionally drawn more traffic than Autoguide.com, its parent site under the VerticalScope umbrella. I used to brag about the fact that I beat them with one full-timer (Derek K.) and a couple of part-timers (me, Ronnie S.) against their glossy Toronto office and their full-time staff of between six and twelve people. Well, now I'm beating them with 30 minutes a day of my time and a few volunteer articles about Broughams. AutoGuide probably spends close to a million dollars a year so they can run even on a new-content-traffic basis with Riverside Green (budget: $1,800). Somebody should give me a million dollars a year and see what I could do with it.

Actually, I know what I would do with it: hire Ronnie and Thomas Klockau, get Sam Smith to write one freelance big-think piece a month, then spend the remaining $800k a year racing IMSA prototypes. It's besides the point.

The Incels Respond

Alright, enough gloating. The ads are working pretty well, thanks for your patience with them. Traffic is up, thank you for reading. I appreciate the civility and decency shown by pretty much everybody in the comments. Yes, there are a half-dozen people who cause trouble. They won't use a consistent email address or ID, so the system puts their stuff into the garbage can by default and I don't bother to take it back out. Nevertheless, since I believe that everyone deserves a voice, we will wrap up this recap by quoting some of Riverside Green's Greatest Commenter (s)Hits:

(Jack) and his crew are going to be first ones on plane to South Africa and train white farmers to be special force operators, because if he can be pro race car driver, Nobel laureate writer, GQ sexiest man in world, motorcycle payday loan courier, billionaire, most interesting man alive, he can sure raise army of special forces operators to go and fight in South Africa for complicated cause having nothing to do with him . He is like Tony Stark with lot of money and free time . He is full of shit just like we all know

Duhhhh, me jack baruth

Me objectify women

Me caveman who was frozen and just thawed

DuhhhhhhM

Jack Baruth has wasted a shitload of money on stupid shit and now begs like a panhandler from his 9 strong core readership here.

Woe be unto Jack.

Editorial comment on the above --- I am highly offended by the idea that ordering new guitars with custom abalone Zodiac inlays is "stupid shit", it employs the people who make custom Zodiac inlays!

Claptrap Jack’s recycled garbage!... Jack should check and see of his Chinerado’s main engine control module has one of these Trojan Horse rice-sized chips in it.

Editorial comment on the above --- it probably does and now the Chinese know that I drive the Silverado to YOUR MOM'S HOUSE every Tuesday afternoon to get my salad tossed.

Me Jack Baruth,

Me childhood prodigy.

Me need work.

Me now explain Kavanaugh story.

Catch me busking at fast food restaurant some afternoon and give me work for the day!

Editorial comment on the above --- Busking at fast food restaurants is a lot of fun!

Jack Baruth meets all the criteria for a batshit crazy, far-right, conspiracy theory driven, extremist):

Anti non-Caucasion tribalism (Oh Noes! The darker skin people are carriers and harbingers of the things that will kill of the Caucasians, by government and corporate intentional design and edict, of course);

Jack Baruth is a nutter by ANY definition and has gone of the fucking deep end. He is literally right there with the tiki torch carrying fascist crowd in Charlottesville

Editorial comment on the above --- Props for spelling "Caucasian" two different ways in the same sentence, you must be really angry.