Shameless Self-Promotion

I’ve never been paid to write.  On the contrary, I’ve spent lots of money to write.  I’ve paid for conferences and paid someone to edit my memoir draft.  Before I moved to Patheos, I paid for a domain name for my blog.  And lets not forgot all the money I spent in grad school so that I could write paper after paper that no one other than my professor would read – one of whom told me that my writing was telegraphic.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Mom died. Stop.  Come home. Stop.”

True. Stop.  $2000 advice. Stop.

When I moved my site to Patheos, I thought I might finally earn my first dollar from writing.  If I get fifteen thousand hits in a month on my Patheos site, they’ll send me a $50 check.  That might not sound like a lot of money, but it would be my fifty dollars, and I would have earned it by writing.

The problem is that I have never come close to getting fifteen thousand hits.  To do that, I would need to promote myself more.

Which stinks. Stop.

I hate posting my own stuff on Facebook.  “Read me. Read me,” I ask my friends.  “Hey you, the one who knew me when I had braces and Farah Fawcett hair, I’m really deep and witty now.  Won’t you please agree? And tell your friends to agree as well?”

I should learn more about how to write Google-worthy titles, and how to chose the right tags, and how to Twitter in ways that get reposted.  So many ways to promote my site, so little chutzpah.

Still, I want that check.  Call it a bucket list item.  Call it an identity crisis.  Whatever it is, I’ve decided to come clean about it; I want to get paid.  I’m even asking you to help: visit often for the rest of the month.  If I get the check, I’ll post a picture of it here.  And if you live nearby, you can come by and I’ll buy you a slice of pie.

Shameless bribery.  Stop.