A few things I want to get off my chest. Ignore me.... you do read these posts, right?
I have again been told how much money I must be making from CBO. Can someone explain to me HOW I am making money? I started CBO in 1997 and it has moved through various platforms after those were ended or sold on.
I heavily promoted the Bristol International Comics Expo each and every year. The belief that I was being funded to do this is unfounded and looking back at it now I wish I had been paid. As soon as the new organisers took over and destroyed it in the first year I was, I was told, not welcome??
I also promoted other UK comic events and again never paid to promote but asking to book a table event organiser after event organiser told me "none available" -basically because the UK comic bully boys scared them. Now, if you do not get reciprocal support from people then you drop them and I made the decision a few years ago that I was no longer promoting UK events. But the long and the short of it is that no money was made.
Reviews make me money. How? I did try for several years to get the companies whose books I was promoting to take out paying ads or even sponsor CBO but they all had excuses.
If you were around in the early 2000s I was heavily promoting Archie Comics and even went to UK stores to try to get them to stock the titles. Daily news, reviews and promos and they were happy with that. Then, Archie Comics became "cool" and I was dropped like a hot stone. No more review books, no more promo material and the interviews planned to follow up after the first few....silence. That is the sort of "thank you" you get in comics. No money.
The video reviews I did.... no money. The Indie music...no money.
Someone suggested Adsense. No. I did have adsense at one time and made £120. Then I got a message that one of the ads put up led to a porn site. I checked. It did. About 30 minutes later Adsense sent a message to say my account had been suspended due to "suspicious activity". I asked what suspicious activity and I was told that I had clicked on an ad. I said yes I had and sent them the message I had received about a porn site. I had "admitted" to suspicious activity and the money made so far was withdrawn. At the same time two other bloggers had exactly the same thing happen. Suspicious?
You might think that having gone over 10 million views and with 2-3k views from around the world that someone might want to take advantage of that -paying ads, promos or whatever. No.
The thing is that people refuse to accept in their little minds that I am not paid for all the time and effort put into CBO. "Hey, my company is producing a new series of titles and we'd like to take advantage of all your audience" does not even happen. It's almost a joke.
So if you see on any UK comic forum the claim that I say I make no money but I make a few grand each year ask for the proof. Seriously, if I am making a couple or a few grand each year I want to know where it is!
