I knew when I started this website it was a longshot. I had to build a steady readership willing to read text stories on postage stamps and not just picture captions. That readership would provide via Google Adsense, enough income to support a bare bones operation. That readership in place, there might of been the opportunity to make the big investment to monetize it via partnerships with stamp dealers, and even perhaps a new line of stamp albums and even if it really worked stamp clubs with premises, local salaried leaders, modeled on Hugh Hefner era Playboy clubs. All this might have coincided with the end of new stamp issuance, which would stop the draining off of the hobby’s revenue to the world’s post offices.
This has proved to be not possible. Readership was growing, short February was a record. It was at too low a level to meet goals. Adsense had many outages and high income days were not related any way I could see to viewership. It was obvious that it could not be counted on.
Then things got much worse. Somehow some sort of overseas network sent first 10s than hundreds nightly of comments to an Israeli stamp I wrote up last month. They were not related to the content of the article but rather generic statements like good point or your the best with a screen name suggesting buying masks or legal services, or what not. I deleted them manually without them posting to the article. The multitude of screen names made it impossible to block. I understand this to be some sort of SEO trick, though if my readership doesn’t support me financially, I don’t see how it could be doing much for whatever overseas network was targeting me.
To stop the onslaught, I very reluctantly made it much more difficult to comment on The-Philatelist. That ended it or so I thought. The next day I was informed by Google Adsense that I was being demonetized. They said I was partnering with low quality networks. This was not true. I really only partner with Google for the ads and a network called Feedspot, that publicizes new stamp articles. Feedspot has treated me well and the readers they bring in are of high quality. They even honored me by including me on their world wide list of best postage stamp blogs.
A lot of us are worried that the whole stamp collecting hobby is fading into obscurity. I think it is worse than that. We have already seen most print magazines fail. I think we are also seeing the collapse of internet writing. Broad subjects like history have to be threaded very gently or just avoided to avoid signaling a political team and thus receiving an onslaught from the opposing team. Then the big internet providers, who are all on one team, target you for destruction.
Below is a common meme of a real life torture of an autistic boy by street thugs who then posted what they did on social media. A clever person than reimagined the street thugs as the big tech monopolies and the crime victim as the USA. I very much relate to this.
In the three and a half years I have been at this project, I have written 900 articles that averaged over 650 words. I will be keeping the website online indefinitely. I encourage the readers to peruse the archive and to facilitate that I will set up the website to run two of the old articles at the top of the home page on Mondays and Thursdays. I am sure even regular readers will have missed many of them and as stamps are not current events they don’t date.
In closing, let me say how much I appreciate my readers and I would request that you keep collecting stamps and sharing your enthusiasm for the hobby with others. If you would like to contact me, my email is johndchapman@bellsouth.net.