Thanks to a ton of generous and rapid responses, we’ve achieved our initial five goals: funding vital technical plumbing, bonuses for loyal guest writers, adding staff to continue expanding our links, supporting our comments section, and providing staff to cover 24/7 without exhausting our writing team. Let me emphasize again that your donations have made and continue to make all of these important items possible.
Your support in our Small Donation Challenge helped us reach our fifth goal, and now we’re taking steps to attract new readers and focusing on a new goal: expanding our reach.
But we’re not where we need to be yet! I need to have enough cash saved up for next year, and I don’t have enough yet. Please do your part by donating to the tip jar.
While our average per donation is very good, our total donations are down significantly. That said, we’re just under 1,000 donations away from our original goal of 1,100, and we’re increasing our goal to 1,250. However, in past years, we’ve been hitting our donor goals much faster.
If you haven’t donated yet, Visit our donation page now And dig deep! Anything you can give will help this site thrive!
As in recent years, we have a goal of raising funds to expand our readership. This is a tough environment for small, independent sites, so we need to spend more time finding new readers.
Despite repeated downgrades by Google, our traffic has remained strong, putting us on par with independent websites like The Intercept, Truthdig, Jacobin, WSWS, and Counterpunch. This year, we’ve made even greater efforts to control our message. For example: YouTube disables monetization for MintPress channelsand Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson’s channel deleted. Meta banned The Cradle, which had 107,000 followers, from Facebook. And that was before the FBI searched Scott Ritter’s home on the dubious grounds that he was an unregistered foreign agent, conducting a search and seizure far beyond what was permitted by the warrant.
Many readers have told us that the site has gotten better and better since the start of the year, but traffic-wise we’re working harder than ever to stay where we are.
So what can help raise awareness? Before we move on to new things we can do, consider sending the Naked Capitalism Songbooks as a teaser to your friends, family, and colleagues, especially those who are fans of pop music and/or have a sarcastic sense of humor. Grab a copy of this year’s release. here.
So whether or not you can contribute financially to this fundraiser, spreading the word about Naked Capitalism is absolutely essential for us to thrive. It’s so important that you encourage people who might be interested in what we do to check out Naked Capitalism (Donate via the donation page (If you don’t have time yet, check it out.)
Readers tell us how important Naked Capitalism is to them. For example, here’s a comment from Lynn H:
Greetings from Portugal, Eve!
As you probably know, I’m a long-time reader and really value the information, education, and sense of community (even for a casual reader like me) that Naked Capitalism provides.
Due to the time difference, NC is no longer the first thing I read in the morning, but it’s still the most important thing I read, so I (impatiently!) read the Daily Links at 12 and wait to read the afternoon Watercooler at 7.
Thanks again for all your hard work, and a huge thank you to Lambert, Nick, Conor, the moderators, and all the NC readers for their knowledge. I don’t know where I’d be without the resources that are Naked Capitalism.
And Jerry Y:
I’ve been checking into NC almost daily since about 2007.
The best and most diverse research, reports and comments section available on the web!!
I hope NC lasts as long as possible.
Please pass on my heartfelt thanks to you and all the staff who helped make NC a reality.
And Susan R:
A check for $500 is on the way in the mail, and if my husband can subscribe to the Arts, Entertainment and Food section of the New York Times, I can match it and donate it to Naked Capitalism so we can all gather news and opinions we can use.
And dftbs:
Thank you and the entire NC team for all you do. Even though I have less time to be an active member of the community, I really appreciate all your hard work. I now look forward to NC as the 10th thing in the morning after diapers, bottles, etc.
Best of luck to you and the NC crew.
Last year, your donations towards this goal were put to good use, but not in the way we intended. One of our big priorities was to restart the newsletter and somewhat expand our mailing list from current readers to potential and actual allies in the media, making it look less low-key. We were about 80% there, but our efforts were halted when Yves had to deal with Google’s threat to monetize some of our ads. If we don’t back down from this threat, it will happen again. While this fundraiser is our largest source of income, we are very tight on funds and cannot afford to lose any revenue stream. Thanks to the help of Matt Taibbi, Rajiv Sethi, and ad services, we were successful.
So we are excited to get our new and improved newsletter finalized and published.
The second approach is to get Yves to accept more interview requests, which I have to turn down because they come too close to the “hit time” for me to respond and I end up missing posts.
But even if we took advantage of every quality interview opportunity that came our way, we can’t guarantee that it would happen often enough to raise our profile.
The third is book reviews. Again, this takes more time and site resources than a regular post, but it helps raise the profile of other writers. They may refer to and link to Naked Capitalism more often. This doesn’t mean pandering, though; that’s against NC. A scathing, negative review of a deserving subject often piques the interest of like-minded professional writers, even if it offends the subject. This is something other good writers can take up if they find a book that’s right for them.
And of course, our loyal readers are enjoying a more diverse diet too.
We have a goal of $11,000 for this one and we just started with $985. Notice how we’re making this a more modest goal compared to the other goals.
If we don’t spend all of our funding on external exposure, it will go towards supporting more independent journalism, so help us get bigger and stronger. By going to the tip jar Please donate as generously as you can, whether it’s $5 or $5,000. Every donation helps keep this site running.
