Today is day No. 2 of “Save FrontBurner Week” (see an explanation after the jump, if you still need one). The first day went well. Honestly, we had no idea how the concept would go over. Look how many new Friends of FrontBurner signed up. In all, about 40 people contributed money yesterday to keep FB up and running at full speed. Thanks to every single one of you.
But let’s look at it another way, shall we? Yesterday, about 2,000 unique visitors came to FB. That means only 2 percent of them cared enough to contribute at least five bucks. Viewed that way, the first day of “Save FrontBurner” was a total failure.
Come on. If you visit FB at least twice a week, is it not worth $5? Click that buttton. Give till it hurts.
Yes, we’re for real. Here’s the thing: jokes aside, the blog now eats up a bunch of our time and resources–way more time and resources than that Press Box Grill ad can ever justify. Our bean counters don’t get it. Our managing editor, Jennifer Chininis, would prefer that we stop it and get back to work on the magazine. So we needed to generate some revenue to prove FB’s worthiness. That’s the tough part. We talked about making it subscription-only; that was unattractive for several reasons. Traditional advertising is tough; we don’t generate enough traffic for national ads, and our site software isn’t sophisticated enough to handle smaller, local ads the way they need to be served up. So we’re asking for donations.
