Update, 08/26/10: Thanks to longtime RRND/FND supporters JM (whose $25 contribution yesterday got us to our $2,083 fundraiser goal), TH (whose $20 was icing on the cake), and to Jon Jay Ray who contributed $100 yesterday … for the second time this week!

You’ll notice that I used one person’s full name. I normally identify our contributors by initial only on the assumption that unless they say otherwise they’d prefer to remain anonymous. However, Mr. Ray dropped me a line allowing as to how he’d be willing to donate another $100 above and beyond what he’d already sent if I’d mention to y’all that he runs Gun Watch (gunwatch.blogspot.com), an excellent source of news on armed self-defense.

I immediately added Gun Watch to our sidebar links and stuck a text ad in the “sponsors” section of our email edition templates. These are things I’m happy to do on request for any of our financial supporters (the text ads on a “space available” basis); and I also let Mr. Ray know that I’d be happy to mention his site whether he sent another $100 or not. And then he did it anyway. So it should go without saying that we think a lot of Jon Jay Ray around here. Visit his site!

Ladies and gents, this fundraiser is OVER. We’ve received $2,203 in value returned for the freedom movement’s daily newspaper, $120 more than our goal. Thanks to all of you who helped out, and I’ll shut up about fundraising now until AT LEAST October - TLK

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Dear readers,

It’s that time again … fundraising time. I’m taking the “one swell foop” approach and putting up a fundraiser for the entire 3rd quarter of 2010, set to put at us at the $1,000/month revenue target I’m always mentioning.

At present, our “subscribing contributors” — those of you who send us something each month, from a buck to $20, and we love you guys (click here to become one!) already have us at nearly 1/3 of the way to target: $305.50 per month, $916.50 for the quarter.

That leaves us $2,083.50 short of the goal, and ChipIn doesn’t do partial dollars, so I’ll take a 50 cent pay cut and call it $2083.

As usual, I’ll ping you with daily updates and quote all kinds of interesting statistics, etc., until this thing ends. It ends — the graphic comes down, this fundraising appeal stops topping your daily edition every morning, etc. — as soon as we make the goal.

Here are some quick statistics to get the ball rolling:

- If we make our revenue goal of $1,000 a month, myself and my fellow editors will take home about $4 an hour.

- RRND/FND has a total of 3,915 email subscribers, 3,456 Twitter followers, 1,176 social network members/subscribers, and probably somewhere upward of 2,000 daily web readers (in June, RRND averaged about 1,400 unique visitors per day; I don’t have web stats for the ISIL Freedom News Daily page). Going with only the verifiable web numbers, that makes for an estimated total of 9,947 readers of RRND. Let’s assume huge overlap (people who follow us on Twitter and get the email, or follow us on Facebook and visit us on the web, etc.) — call it 33.3x%, reducing the number of individual people who read RRND/FND each day by 1/3 to 6,631 (and a third of a person; sounds painful). All those stats boil down to this one: We’re trying to shake each reader down for a whopping 15.x cents per month, 47.x cents per quarter, $1.89 per year.

Keep that in mind if you think that your contribution would be “too small to matter” (or if you’re one of those who has actually apologized (!) for “not being able to send as much as I’d like”): If we got a little less than two bucks a year out of each reader, you’d never have to fidget through these damn fundraisers.

So … let’s get over that line ASAP so that I can get out of your face, and thank you in advance for supporting the freedom movement’s daily newspaper!

Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Publisher
Rational Review