I've never bought into the numbers put out by Fictionmania. Fifty-seven million hits in the last dozen years seems a bit much by several fold.

I sometimes think our BC colony is made up of a LOT of duplicity. . .people who use multiple screen names. I know of several, but if that is their greatest sin, they're still on the way to beatification. At times I wonder if the actual count of those individuals who come here isn't much lower than apparently stated by Who's Online, like in the low hundreds, rather than thousands. Evidence to the contrary is the number of actual writers -- whose styles are sufficiently different to suggest they're not the same people. Either BC inspires everyone to write, or the normal .5% are doing the writing. My guess is a little of both, so that 3 to 4% of the total number who come here eventually post a story. Given an estimated 150 active writers, BC probably has 5 to 7,000 actual active patrons.

Why cares?

We all should.

Erin has a $1,000 a month nut to crack. Given the 80/20 rule and a 5,000 total patronage, ia grand a month would still seem extremely doable. One thousand people would have to each contribute about $10 a year, but let's get inside that number. We have a lot of wounded doves within our membership whose earning potential is slight. Either those with physical and mental challenges that reduce their ability to earn are the most outspoken of us, or an estimate of 50% of us being in that category is close. We are now up to $20 per able member. Quite a number of us are silver-tongued (and haired) devils on fixed incomes or pensions. . .maybe even half the remaining number, brining the annual needed contribution to $40. At the other end of the spectrum are those too young to have steady income. . .make that $50. Let's reduce the number of willing contributors by half again due to those who suffer from intense fear of someone discovering their secret. That fear prevents them from contributing, registering, etc. This number would also include those who have a strict aversion to paying for anything that is available through the internet.

All in all it would appear that the true number of contributors to BC is in the area of 100 making their share of the needed revenue somewhere around $100 to $120.

I realize the above is sand piled on sand, but the reality seems to be that this site needs several dozen benefactors to contribute over $100 annually. Any other way of looking at it is, in my opinion, unrealistic. Suggestions that if we all tossed in a dollar or two the problem would be solved doesn't pay Erin's bills.

Jill