And the beat goes on

I had a crisis of conscience in the night. At about 4am whilst answering a diabetes fuelled call of nature I suddenly had a horrible thought. I managed to convince myself that my email inbox this morning would be full of people complaining about my post yesterday morning appealing for volunteers to help the CFZ. After all, amongst the categories of volunteers I was asking for were...

BLOGGO PIMPS who can do all the chicanery which every blog seems to have to do in these debased times. If we are to compete with some of the other kids on the block, we need to use the same tactics they are.

If we can quote from our friends at the Nature Blogs Network: "Nature bloggers have yet to effectively leverage the power of social promotions networks like Digg, del.icio.us, or StumbleUpon. Yet, as anyone who's been on the receiving end of this level of publicity can attest, social promotion makes a difference. Publicize quality nature blogging by joining one or more social sites (We recommend StumbleUpon) and bookmarking posts you enjoy during your daily browsing".

This is something I know little about, but is something that we are going to have to start doing.

And I started to worry that this would imply that we were just like every other self-absorbed internet pundits - obsessed with our daily figures and trying to make money out of those people hapless enough to be drawn into our web.

Well I wouldn't put it quite like that, but of course we are!

This isn't about the money, and never has been, but running the CFZ is a ridiculously expensive business. I am very pleased with the daily viewing figures for the bloggo. This week, for the first time, we broke 1000 twice, and you can see from viewing the ratings on the Nature Blog Network that we are slowly but steadily rising up the rankings.

But I want to get the sort of viewing figures that other blogs, albeit blogs with a different agenda than ours, can get. Because when we do, we can get sponsorship, and we can sell more books, and we can raise the money to do all the things we want to do.

This is not about paying my own personal bills. That is not a problem, and my income more than covers my family expenses, but it is about continuing the CFZ programme of publications, research and expeditions, as well as our burgeoning animal rescue and educational activities.

So am I going to continue to ask for help, so that I can raise money?

Hell yeah.