Alienation, autonomy, and ideology
These are posts on blogging from the blog Base and Superstructure. Mostly these are meta-blogging posts, where I’ll be writing a bit about what it’s like to run a blog.
In one sense, it feels a bit quick to already write one of these end of year reviews (see also 2019 and 2018). They always creep up. And yet 2020 dragged on. I mean, it really dragged. While the end of summer moved pretty quickly, I think it took about 5 years to get through March.
How long did 2020 take? If you recall, back in January we were talking about the Bernie Sanders campaign. Now that seems like it was…what, 10 years ago?
Anyway, let’s take a look at 2020!
Yes. Is that a problem?
After more than 2 years and a couple hundred posts, there’s a lot of content here on Base and Superstructure! Occasionally people ask me where they should begin. They want to know what to read first.
I’ve got enough anarchist in my political background that it’s a weird question. I think anywhere works. But that’s pretty unhelpful. Posts here cover related issues, and more recent posts build on earlier ones. Later posts where I use words in novel ways might be a bit disorienting to people who didn’t read the earlier ones.
And so, here’s my best recommendation. I’ve used the ‘categories’ function to sort the posts in this blog. I included a category called ‘Foundations‘ for those background posts I repeatedly build upon. Just click ‘Foundations‘ and then start reading from the beginning. Luckily there aren’t too many posts. I think only 7 or 8 at this point. So, it shouldn’t be all that large a reading load.
Not much? Blogging hit its height about 10 years ago. But people can still make money on it through affiliate marketing, ads, etc. I do these things. And I have both a Patreon and an offer for freelance work.
However, blogs that make money tend to be ones that hit solid marketing topics or topics that are widely popular. Leftist blogging is a bit narrow, though. I cover topics with a good audience, but a relatively small one. If you’re looking to make big money, you should pick a different topic.
OK, so I actually get this question more than I expected when I started the blog. The short answer: No.
The longer answer: Not yet, anyway. So far, I’ve written all content on the blog. I’m open to the possibility of a guest post. In fact, I’d love to see it. But I believe writers should be paid for their work. Even for more causal blog writing, I’d like to see writers getting paid 5-10 cents per word.
So, if I invited someone to do a 1000-1500 word guest post, I’d want to pay them $50-150 to do so. At the moment, I’m not really prepared to pay that kind of money for guest bloggers. I’ll probably say a bit more about the blog’s financials in a future FAQ. For now, let’s just say I’m not pulling in the kind of cash needed to pay people that much to write. Since I can’t pay, I’m not yet allowing guest posts.
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