A Few Matters to Discuss

 It has been a busy week for me, revising dissertation chapters and dealing with another potentially critical issue that has been looming over me for the past couple of months. I need your prayers for both of these, as they are a source of a lot of decisions to be made and also a lot of concern with the latter one.  It has also been a busy week here as well, given that I am actually doing three posts here this week.  After some thought as well as updating my blogsites and such, I am going to do an announcement here for something very important.

I know I have had readers for all three of my blog sites over the past 14 years, and I appreciate all of you who do follow me. I also had to restrict comments due to scammers and spammers who were posting idiotic comments into my pages, and I took actions to stop those. My policy here is that I only will allow those who subscribe to my blogs to post comments.  I don't get a lot of traffic, but if a comment catches my interest, I will definitely respond to you and can also provide you with any information if you have questions about things I post.  I am understandably careful regarding how my blog is propagated, as I want to avoid conflict with those individuals who inevitably have something to grouse about and who tend to get offended at the stupidest things.  I have no time or patience for trolls, Karens, and other troublemakers, either in my blogs or on social media where I am present.  I have addressed these unsavory topics before, so no repetition is necessary here.  That being said, I mentioned last month that I am streamlining my publishing activities and want to consolidate them all into one site, which I am exploring now.  It is much easier to keep up with in all honesty, and I feel as if it also makes it easier for those who actively follow me to stay abreast of my various ramblings and musings. Along with that, I am also exploring monetization of this particular site in order to generate a bit more income for myself, and I am doing that three different ways.  Let's detail each of those now.

The first means of monetization is perhaps the easiest, and that is allowing advertising on my site. I spent the time this morning setting that up, and we will see how it works.  Eventually, I do want to include custom ads for services and products I use regularly and can endorse to a degree as an influencer maybe.  I am actually looking into that now.  As that comes together, I will post more here about it, but you should also be able to see those ads soon.  If you see one, please click on that, as it will help me generate some income.  

The second means of monetization has to do with publications.  Over the years, I have published for myself compilation books of blog posts for a given year.  The first five years were published in two volumes back in 2015, and since then I have printed a bound book of blog articles every year (or recently, every two or three years as I have not been as active in the past 5 or so years).  Given they are already published, I am planning on making those available to those who would like them, as well as copies of my other books over the years. I will be working on a sort of catalog or even an ad link to my publishing page on Lulu.com and will make those available for sale.  Right now, they are printed as on-demand, and thus an order would have to be placed to get one on that site.  I am also planning on publishing a recipe book as well as making my Genesis study I published a few years back available as separate books, and the latter I will be working on upon completion of my doctoral degree in a few months.  The Genesis articles will need formatting and also I have a lot of new material I want to add as well as a discussion question section at the end of each lesson.  I will let you know at a future date when this will be available for purchase. 

A third means of monetization I have in mind involves podcasting.  I have the equipment for that now, and have done a test run on Spotify of my format, but I haven't invested the time into developing that further yet.  I am actually planning on expanding these blog posts into podcasts and thus making my content more multimedia, and I feel it will carry more impact later.  As I refine that, I also want to add broadcast collaborations and interviews to it as well, and when I do, I will be posting here about it.  Obviously, many of the blogs are not quite designed for podcasting, but several are, and I want to make sure that they are showcased properly.   As an official historian now, I feel that the time to expand my "brand" is upon me, so I am looking into those options.  If I can manage to get more adequate settings and some equipment, I may also extend into special video productions.  

This shows where I am at, and what I am working on, and I have one further item of interest.  My dissertation will be completed and defended by the end of the summer by all indications, and once it is I will be conferred my Ph.D. I have been working on for the past four years or so.  In addition to the formatted dissertation I am going to receive as a bound copy, I am thinking of actually making it into a paperback book and having it available to a wider audience. Again, I will keep people posted on this as everything starts to coalesce,

Thank you for allowing me to share these news items with you.  There is a lot of change happening right now, and I am having to reconsider a lot and find ways to not only make the income I need, but also to create a sort of "brand" for myself to increase my personal following.  I feel I am doing a service for many, as one thing I have learned is that God calls us all to evangelization, but many of us are uniquely destined to reach a certain audience.  There are people out there that only I can reach, and likewise, there are people only you can reach.  Our mandate for evangelization is to be that witness to that particular individual who may resonate with our testimony, and in doing so, we must also exercise a degree of empathy and openness.  You never know what your experiences - both good and bad - will do to impact someone else.  A person unknown to you could stumble across a blog post like this, and it is a way for them to get answers to their own situation.  We need to pray for those unknown souls, as they are out there somewhere, and we may be the hope they have been seeking. 

On that note, I will conclude and hope to see you all again soon.