Updates on selling out
As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m working hard to sell out (kidding,) – at least turn Pocketables into something that can make enough that I can actually pay the editors (who are all volunteers,) here after paying for the plugins, hosting, etc.
TL;DR – some under the hood stuff, nothing other than some updates.
Pocketables as noted is pretty small these days playing in a field dominated by sites that have full time dedicated rebloggers, brand managers, and make some pretty great deals to promote products.
We generally get products for free, but yeah, no money to promote… which if we ever do get will be noted over and over again per article.
I’d agreed recently to entertain offers from a site that promised to connect brands with bloggers on the condition that, you know, anything we posted about said brand if paid for would be tagged six ways to Sunday. There’re evidently quite a few places that do that.
I initially said no guest posts but was asked if I’d reconsider for about a $500 deal… whoo yeah, as long as I had approval… and I got SEO spam. Turned it down. It looked familiar. Same basic format as some things previously contributed here, mostly not used, words that made sentences, sentences that told you what you probably already knew, and a link to a site that for reasons unknown just was there.
Really, want to know 5 great things every AppOpsDev should learn? Go somewhere else.
$500 was the price to take Pocketable’s domain authority on some keyword and point it toward a couple of companies, both oddly known. Nothing really fit however and I turned it down. No further offers showed. Oh well.
We were also contacted by a company that had a signed contract from 2013 or so for distribution of our content. Their contract was with the previous company (Crowdgather,) so they’ve been syndicating our content for the past few years without current owner’s permission.
Discontinued that as that was not our deal, and when you make a guide and content and it can be sold out from under you and used elsewhere, that’s not particularly a great thing. They’d reached out trying to pay us, but as this contract was with CG, CG’s gone, and we might have to potentially take legal action, couldn’t take the $157. Womp womp.
Worried things like our most popular articles would get snagged and reproduced/syndicated on other sites on that one. Actually a bit worried they have already because nobody at CG checked contracts in force before selling the site.
So we’re about to enter the second half of 2021 having still not sold out or having been offered any deal worth looking at.
That’s about it – the dangers of 20-year-old small (now) tech blog.
In other news, in person school started again which means I’ve been playing catch up for roughly 6 months of at-home school for the kiddos and dealing with an office rental space that lost a ton of tenants last year and is gaining a ton of tenants this year. Fun fun times.
