Past Daily - that feeling you can enjoy history and culture and not get hassled to death.
History With No Hustle – Nostalgia Without Migraines – Past Daily Is Now Ad Free!
If you’ve been wondering the past few days why your iPad, iPhone or desktop isn’t overwhelmed with ads every time you click on the site, it’s because we decided to dump them.
People have complained – you have complained – practically everybody who spends more than 10 seconds on Past Daily has complained.
But for a long time they were a necessary evil if we were ever to make the site, and all the work we put into it, pay for itself.
Doing the quarterly fundraisers was getting on everyone’s nerves – you were all (as was I) suffering from Crowdfunding burnout. It wasn’t just my site, it seemed like everyone on the planet was hounding everyone else for money. I was starting to feel like the guy with the cardboard sign at the freeway offramp.
So the idea of running ads on Past Daily seemed like the logical solution. Newspapers are (mostly) ad driven. Magazines are ad driven. So why not a website? There are tons of online ad sites and you can run as many as you want and you get your income based on how many people show up each day and what they click on. Sounds good and sounded like the perfect solution.
But . . .as I’m sure you’ve all heard about the fiasco with streaming Music online; the Spotify’s, Soundcloud’s, Apple Music’s and thousands in-between and all the horror stories about the paltry realities of microscopic returns, I quickly realized that, even with upwards of a half-million visitors to Past Daily each month, it comes out to around $10.00 a week (ten DOLLARS A WEEK). Not even enough to pay storage for all the soundfiles we’ve posted these past 8 years and continue to.
And I was running the grave danger of chasing away visitors; you, the people who come discover history and listen and find things. You were showing up and leaving in droves after a few seconds because every time you clicked on an article, a veritable tsunami of ads would follow. Plus, cross-posting to related sites was hard because administrators labeled Past Daily as Spam and click-bait. Two things we’re definitely not. I’m here to turn you on to things, not hustle you for car loans or Russian girlfriends.
So the ads are gone and will most likely not come back in the foreseeable future – and even if they do, they will be very limited and with a lot of restrictions.
In the meantime, if you like Past Daily, history of Pop Culture and what we’re all about and want to help – you can help by subscribing via Patreon, donating via Fractured Atlas (for a tax writeoff) or a quick chip-in via PayPal. The links are all there and have been all this time. And frankly, those of you who have shown your support via Patreon are doing a hundred times better than the ads – and a whole lot less obtrusive too.
On Patreon you get the opportunity to download all the audio you hear on the site as a perk for your help – so there’s that. Eventually we’ll get around to doing the other perk-oriented things (t-shirts, coffee mugs, books), but since this site is only me, I’m stretched a bit thin in the multi-tasking department.
But beyond everything else – this is about you making discoveries, finding out history you didn’t know before, being turned on to information or music or people that could, ultimately, enhance your life. Or being reminded of events and people and genres you may have forgotten about or missed the first time around.
I’m trying to make this a place you can spend hours in – like your favorite library, book or record store.
Like I always say – I’m here because of you and I’ll be here as long as you are.
Stick around and enjoy the show,.
Gordon
