“Thank you for your swift response and wise counsel. It is good to see that we are like minded.”
“I will feedback the results of the survey to the healthcare services company who asked me if we had ever considered allowing sponsored posts on our blog. They had proposed us using a format similar to Google’s for sponsored search links.”
“We want our blog to be organic and free of commercial bias. On the other hand we need resource to support the blog. In particular, we need to employ a blog administrator to help curate the site and to expand our guest blogging programme; the editorial process of inviting guest posters and collating all their information, i.e. their mugshots, biographical sketches and disclosures, takes time.”
“Further suggestions on how we can evolve the blog would be welcome. I have left the poll open if you didn’t get to vote on the issue yesterday.”
I think this is the right decision. Some people are already desperately trying to out you as spokespeople of big pharma and if they found even a single "suspicious" add you wouldn't hear the end of it. Plus, the content of sponsored adds is often determined by algorithms and can end up seriously contradicting the message of the blog – just look at the bottom of https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ to see what I mean.However, I also think you shouldn't be forced to pay for all this yourself. Like others I suggest you look into Paypal donation buttons (https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donate-intro-outside) and maybe ask your readers for money once a year. Personally, I'd be more than happy to contribute.
They ought to seek funding from the Welcome Trust.
The problem is one of sustaining oneself once you get funding and obtaining enough, an this can be seen by a number of sites that fold sooner rather than later.
Dang I was looking forward to new "Abuse to trolls feature" sponsored by Bioartisyme-o
Bad decision. Could have spent the money on paying off the mouse doctors, closing down the EAE lab, and completing the Inspire Project. Can't believe the latter is taking so long – give 25 MSers some antivirals, take two MRIs, publish the results. Inspire is like the Chilcott Inquiry… Taking way too long.
The Inspire project is complete…and you will have to wait until the results are published, I say yet again. As for your level of support….cheers…,,,a Frankie Howerd salute to you. Hope you can feel your ears are burning as we rant about you:-)
Thanks for the kind thoughts, always welcome. Though you're probably not interested, there was a lot of interest in our latest EAE work at MS Frontiers.
Just an idea but what about applying for funding with national lottery Good Causes or Big Lottery Fund.
The National Lottery fund quite a few online support forums including brain injury (Brain Injury Matters) and pospartum mental health (postnatal).
Why not just ask for anonymous donations? I'm sure plenty will contribute. Instead of keeping it open all year around, just open it up for one month each year – a campaign let's say. Keeping it anonymous will be great. That way the pharma companies can contribute should they wish, they just won't get any recognition…ha.
Kudos little mouses on a good decisionHowever you will be damned should you not deliver on time because of lack of funding!As for charcot, I think that theory will be boom or bust, it could turn out to be your legacy and good God I hope it will be, and not in the til distant futureAgain kudos
If you have a local university with a communications department, and or a training center for web IT languages, you might find help from students looking to build their resume and skill set. (I am not a programmer, but work in Silicon Valley in California, US. Experience working on a world renowned website has value.) Also, depending on the time demanded, you might find volunteers who don't need the income, and want to donate their skill although coordinating those also takes time and energy. I know of one blog that is maintained to a very high level by a retired programmer who is a regular reader and fan of it's mission. Please continue identifying needs and wants regarding your work in this space.
I'd rather ads over sponsored posts, if we had a choice.
There have been several good ideas on the blog about crowd funding/fundraising. I suggest you might contact one of the many social enterprise support / consultants and get them to help you with a model. You might as an incentive get them to fundraise their fee as part of the deal. In fact that might be something that pharma might be tapped up to do. Thanks for everything you do.