So the Bugle has been live for over a year, with a focus on being entirely community funded instead of taking gay sponsorship money which influences our journalism, as well as sets up our readers for rug pulls. It's been a really interesting experiment so far, and I'm convinced that there is a path forward to have a full fledged media company operate this way.
There are a few ways we generate money:
- direct donations on our site
- direct donations via Geyser
- Selling merchandise in person (Haven't been very consistent at this)
- Allowing people to point hashrate at our mining pool account
- Nostr Zaps
- Allowing readers to tip each article's author via LNURL at the bottom of each article
- Selling black market cigarettes at Bitcoin conferences
There are a few ways we could expand ways to earn sats from readers:
- Premium subscriptions
- Gamefy what articles are written next
- Migrate from ghost to a custom site with lightning payments integrated, maybe built on nostr
- Actually sell merchandise seriously
- Physical book sales
- etc there's probably a lot of ways we expand here
- Fountain podcasting stuff
Stacker has been a pretty consistent way to generate sats. When I post articles on here, I forward sats to the authors who wrote the content. In the future, I could see splitting percentages making more sense but I don't pay anyone who contributes so until that changes, I'll just give 100% of tips to authors. The lightning network is so slick for stuff like this.
I think if you have a compelling mission, you can solicit donations. People have really gone out there way not only to send us sats, but also promote our content on their podcasts, at conferences, and word of mouth.
The Bugle's mission is to do a few things:
- Push back against and criticize the influencer circle jerk in Bitcoin related communities
- Promote freedom and human dignity
- Educate people on why smoking is good for you
- Earn Bitcoin in the process
- Open source new ways individuals can earn sats
- Be the best damn journalists in the business, free of corporate overlords
- Promote new communication channels and communities that further our goals.
Anyways, just thought I would do a post here and see what happens. I'm really curious to see what ideas the community has on this topic.
I like this idea. I could see it being competitive. People spend to force your hand to write something. They could spend a lot of money to get a takedown article of their favorite or least favorite bitcoin celeb, etc.
It reminds of the photoshop request guy that takes requests super literally. Or, apps like Cameo but that might be too personal/specific to the requester.
Guy Swann has done this on his site for which articles he will read next and it's super cool. I'm not smart enough to build this
@supertestnet built a plugin for Guy's webpage. https://github.com/supertestnet/articlevotes
https://m.stacker.news/15988
hahaha that's true. maybe @supertestnet could build one for TBB too.
Dope I'll take a look
You could run it in a SN comment thread if you're crafty, but it might suck too much.
@jarednxx of @getmash did a voting thing once. I'm not sure what the status is now. That was a year ago and they might've moved on.
Mash might have a lot of stuff in this lane too that might be a great fit for the bugle
What's Mash?
https://mash.com/
Dope I'll take a look
yes I think it fits well.
TBB is the most underrated news publication and I love it at first sight. Why? Because I like good humor and satire. My life meta is "smile tomorrow will be worse" so TBB fits exactly into this.
I don't know why did you put me in FW zaps, I wrote just a single "guest" article for TBB, long time ago and sometimes I give you tips for the next articles. But I think I do not deserve the honor to be mentioned as TBB contributor. It's an honor anyways and I humble accept it.
Keep it going! TBB have great future in Bitcoinlandia!
Appreciate your free advice
Are you self-hosting Ghost? on the same node you run your node?
My advice:
Now invest your time to do it or DM me on nostr if you need help for points 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6
I think there's a lot of options. I hate wordpress but might have to go that route. Definitely will take this all into consider. Will take some time to reflect on this.
Why do you hate WP? it does the job and there's much more flexibility and customization enabled than Ghost. I do not agree with this comparison marketing page as there are plenty of alternative plugins that cost zero to enable those functionalities
I'll look into it. Might be the best option. I would prefer to have something cool and custom like Ungovernable Misfits has though which I'm pretty sure is not wordpress
They actually use WP!
https://image.nostr.build/0b3338b0b283eee4091cd8d0b8f5894b42012e9ffd1df939d8ac8ad20b75dd6b.png
you'll be surprised to see what's possible with WordPress. There's a reason why it's the CMS behind the (growing) 63.5% of the CMS marketshare
I just figured that out too lol. Yeah Wordpress may be the way to go
It is a bit of a security nightmare.
Yeah that's the big downside. Will have to use minimal plug ins and get people who are web literate to audit the site.
I'm also a big WP fan. Little learning curve...then awesomeness.
The way forward is for us to support one another within our own networked community, just as @DarthCoin says.
V4V is a method that works, and it grows exponentially as our own network grows.
And the sats we make today only get more valuable. Our old Stacker News posts increase in value 🆙 with time. It’s not always obvious on the day you post it, but each Bitcoin Bugle article posted on SN is infinitely valuable because the value of even a modest amount of sats in Feb 2024 will just go up and up.
🎺 🎺 🎺
Yeah it's pretty wild to watch my shitposting value go up
Exactly. In fact, I just inspired myself to up my own shitposting even more. I'm sure Koob won't mind 😆
Ideally, sure. The trouble will be gatekeepers.
Keep it up, you're doing great
Well thanks Ben. Glad to be your exclusive news source!
"gay sponsorship money"... I like you.
I'm not clear on whether you are using staff for articles or if you are taking submissions?
We take submissions. We have a handful of writers that regularly contribute, as well as individuals who do one offs from time to time.
Did I miss the link to this Bugle?
https://bugle.news
You should fix your SSL certificate:
https://bugle.news/
Unable to communicate securely with peer: requested domain name does not match the server's certificate.
I think I fixed it. Let me know
yep, looks good!
Yeah I get a SSL notice in Librewolf
Let me check on how to do that.
This is very clever!
Yeah Pod 256 did a good job of this. We currently have 25TH pointed to us.
https://app.lincoin.com/user/dashboard
Nice, that's awesome!
Hey @thebitcoinbugle – jared here from Mash (mash.com). Keen to get time to see how we can help. Have a lot of things launched that are always on (see tftc.io, cryptoslate.com), some that are more campaign style (e.g., bitcoin reward giveaways) and a bunch more coming in the pipeline shortly that we're testing with a bunch more partner sites. Just pinged on twitter.
what was the point of this 'Educate people on why smoking is good for you' above, was it to check if we were actually reading your post?
Smoking is good for you. It's a fact.
smoking what? nicotine?
Marlboro Reds to be particular.
LOL!
Yes yes good 👍
https://m.stacker.news/16009