[In case you are wondering — I’m continuing to post new stories, they appear after this one.]
When I first started this site, I never expected it to become so popular. In fact, I thought people would lose interest after the election, but instead readership has kept going up (and up!) I list total visitors in the footer of every page, and you can click on it for more detailed statistics.
Unfortunately, my hosting provider is now telling me that I have outgrown shared hosting. You might have noticed that the server on which this is running has crashed several times recently, so they may have a point.
I’m looking for alternatives.
What would be nice would be to become part of some larger content site. For example, a while ago the political humor site 23/6 became part of Huffington Post, and CQ has “Politics (Un)Seriously“. If anyone knows of a content site that wants some political humor and commentary, please let me know. I sent an email to Politico, but haven’t heard back from them — does anyone have an in with someone who works there?
If that doesn’t work out, I would need to move the blog to a service that can handle more traffic. Currently, I’m running my own copy of WordPress on a shared server, but it is a constant battle against spammers and hackers. So I’m looking at services that specialize in blogs.
One example is Google’s Blogger (also called Blogspot). I’m looking into that, but since they aren’t using WordPress, it would be quite a bit of work to move my existing content over to their system, and probably impossible to keep inbound links the same (so all those people who have links to my blog entries would have broken links). Blogger does have the advantage of being free, which would be nice since I already lose money on this blog (anyone who claims that you can make lots of money with Adsense ads is delusional — typically my daily take wouldn’t pay for a trip to Starbucks). Another problem with Blogger is that the blog name “politicalirony” (and pretty much every variant I’ve been able to think of) is already taken (sadly, mostly by blogs that have no posts in them).
If anyone can help, or has an idea I haven’t thought of, I would deeply appreciate it. I love doing this blog, but moving it to an expensive dedicated server is not an option. I would hate to have to shut it down, just because it is too popular.
Wouldn’t that be ironic?
17 Comments
My husband has only good things to say about NearlyFreeSpeech.net. He hosts several websites there.
Have you thought about squarespace.com?
I’ve heard many good things from people within the tech sector regarding their services. If you need dedicated hosting of wordpress, they would probably be best since they would take care of patching and everything.
You might consider contacting Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com, or Taegan Goddard at Policalwire.com. Both of those sites could use a light touch.
Political Wire (which I love, btw) is part of CQ Politics, who already have Politics (Un)Seriously. But who knows, maybe they need a little irony.
You have a great site here. I have a site myself where people come from around the world to debate on popular issues. I’d like to exchange links with you to help spread some traffic around between us. If you would like to, please leave a comment under my “Compadres” page letting me know when you’ve added my link and I’ll return the favor.
Keep up the good work.
Jason
DEBATEitOUT.com
A geek friend of mine was bragging about the power of geeks using Slashdot as an example.
http://slashdot.org/
Post your request on that site and I’ll bet you get excellent ideas/solutions to problem.
I have really enjoyed your site, hope you stick around.
Padra Utgaard
Bellevue WA
You can actually have your blogger site under another url fairly easily (in particular do Settings->Publishing->Advanced Settings)
Sorry to say I don’t have any connections with any larger sites.
But is there no way to limit the amount of traffic you get? Like having your datacenter run a script that pulls the plug or blocks traffic or puts up one of those ‘The website is experiencing too much traffic right now, please come back later’ messages once it hits a certain level? You might even put up one of those graphs showing what time of day or day of the week are peak traffic periods and should be avoided.
Also, I saw your visitor counter, but can you also give a rough estimate of how much traffic you’ve been getting in GB or TB in recent months?
Also, have you ruled out doing a Wikipedia-style plea for donations? Perhaps a sticky post or a banner at the top (or bottom) of the main page? You might even post a progress bar for how much people have given vs. how much more is needed and include in the post user-supplied reasons for why they donated to politicalirony, just like Wikipedia does. I don’t how much Paypal might charge you to open such an account. But speaking for myself, I have a monthly slush fund reserved for donating to enlightening/civic endeavors such as politicalirony, and you could count on me for $100 a month if you were to do such a thing.
I enjoy your site very much and I hope where ever you move, you keep it simple like this one and clean like this one.
I’m not sure how tech savvy you are, (I’m not), but you could consider hosting your own server, and getting some one to create a site with out a 3rd party. It could be expensive at first but you wouldn’t need to go through this again or rely on someone else’s server.
Good luck!
Yo, I’m running PBH on a pretty good set up on SliceHost. I could probably throw you onto my server if you were interested 🙂
Must say that I do enjoy reading your posts, and look forward to my daily dose.
Blogspot works for me, though I can’t speak to their traffic policies. My site is particularly slow since I began blogging.
http://effisland.blogspot.com
Mainly because I have no followers!
Basically, besides Jon Stewart, your site provides some balanced perspectives on American politics and some social issues. I find it interesting, ironic and funny! Though I fear that you don’t get many comments because of the ‘fear’ quotient about speaking out. Considering your traffic, I wonder what the critical mass needs to be before you really take off and get noticed. Hmmm.
You have all those viewers, and the site doesn’t support you? I don’t know this business really, but I’m surprised that the site doesn’t pay for itself.
Then again, I could be typical of why you aren’t finding this site paying for itself. I’m on FireFox and have adblock going. I literally see no ads on this site.
I would also be willing to contribute. Seems to me that all you need to do is set up a postoffice box to get contributions, get your own domain of wmironknee.com. Bet no one has used that yet. I rely on you ever day to give us good commonsense.
I actually did have a tip jar on Political Irony for a while, but I think I got a total of $20 in it over 3 months. That’s when I put in the AdSense ads. AdSense is notorious for not paying a lot. If I really wanted to make money, I would need to find some sponsors, which I could do, but it would be a lot of work. And if something involves work, I can think of more lucrative AND more enjoyable ways to make money than selling ads. I’d rather spend my time posting stories!
So I guess what I really want is either a very cheap or free place to host the site, that keeps spammers and hackers away. Then I’d might even take the AdSense ads off of it. Alternatively, what would be really cool (as I mentioned before) is for some big content site (Politico?) to take Political Irony on as a blog. A friend of mine pointed out that sending them an email is worthless. Unfortunately, I’m out of town right now working, but as soon as I get back, I’ll probably start making phone calls to content sites.
Yeah I had never heard of the tip jar and went to donate $5 but then had second thoughts when it prompted me for my credit card. If there was a better way maybe that would help.
Oh! I hope you figure this out… I take your daily dose of irony with my coffee every morning. I have a blog on Blogger, and like it there, but my following is a small, dedicated niche of people who like textiles. I helped a friend with squarespace and don’t like how it’s set up. It seems to me like you should have a donation thing set up (I have one that links to Pay Pal) and appeal to us whenever you need some funds. It helps to let people know how much you need, like the NPR fundraisers. I also have Project Wonderful ads on my site. Since I am a nobody, they don’t generate much. I also advertise there and my goal is to cover my advertising expenses. I bet your ads would bring in some good income. Have you looked into them? I would advertise here if you went with them.
I have an email subscription to your posts, so if you do move somewhere, make sure you let all of us know where we should go.
Your fan, Rachel
How about wordpress.com? It’s easy to move your content there and they have a variety of plans including totally free ones.
I doubt you’re worried about permalinks since your content has time value but no doubt you want your url and RSS to remain the same. WordPress.com might be able to do that for you.
That said, many high profile bloggers move and change RSS and other feeds and as long as you let your audience know what’s happening and overlap urls (so as not to lose anyone) you’ll be fine.
http://wordpress.com/