Morning announcements


 Posted on May 6th, 2010

Have you noticed any changes around here lately, dear reader? I’ve slowly been sneaking stuff onto the site…that TwitPic flip book at the top of the front page, TCLand (current to August 2009, but now there’s Caribana :( ), TCL by Month, the Tumblr site for picture junkies (occasionally with exclusive stuff), various shuffles, re/moves, and additions.

And I’ve added paid advertising. For realsies this time. It’s high time I try to do this thing fulltime because, if I may be honest, a year and a half in I love this blogging thing more than my first day. I entirely agree with most ad networks’ policies that I shouldn’t be asking you to click on any ads. It’s crass, a justifiable reason to get booted off the ad network, and you being the intelligent person you are make the sole and conscious decision to interact with any advertising that appears on this site. I wouldn’t insult you like that.

In order to be entirely transparent about my reasoning behind this effort, you should understand that any revenue that TCL generates goes directly toward helping me pay rent, eat, pay for hosting fees, and all that other stuff that requires money.

Generally speaking, revenue on sites and blogs is generated through the sale of ads, many of which pay when they’re occasionally clicked on. In effect, a a simple click on an ad ends up, via various channels, supporting the site on which it appears. In a very indirect way, the site that loads when a viewer clicks is providing financial assistance to the site carrying the ad. I like to think of this as the credits at the end of a PBS program. Hope you find this information useful.

So yes, I’m selling ad space and I’m getting something together where folks can actually invest in the blog — the idea is for these investments to accrue in value over time (if you believe TCL will accrue value over time, that is), and I’m going to try to get prices down to as low as a buck a pop — $1 – so it might be affordable for you too. I’ll explain how it works later, hopefully it’ll make so much sense that it’ll make your head explode.

But wait, there’s more!

Wow, never thought I’d get the opportunity to use that, but it’s actually true. I’ve saved the best for last here – Toronto City Life has new talent!

Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to introduce Mister Zach Bussey, fellow Toronto urbanite living on the Danforth and blogging it up over at ZachBussey.com (no longer exclusively :) ), coffee lover (high on my qualifications list), social media master (seriously kicks my ass anyway), occasional video blogger (maybe if we ask him real nice), and I can’t believe he agreed to blog for TCL.

zach bussey, tcl, contributor, toronto, city, life

Zach’s subtle sense of humour, his video editing experience, his cooking abilities, his social media skillz, his opinions; I’m fairly certain you’ll dig him, dear reader. But don’t let me paint any pictures for you – I was pretty vague with Zach so he’ll do what he does however he chooses to do it, and I don’t know what that’ll be.

Until then, his blog might offer something in the way of a preview. I mean, the header says it all as far as I’m concerned:

banner, zach bussey, contributor, tcl, toronto, city, life

Huh? Yeah. :)

And a reminder, while Zach will forever be first, but you could be the second. We still got plans. ;)

What's on your mind?