Five Reasons to Contribute to Pistols Firing in 2018

New year, same blog. After a 14 million pageview year in 2017, we’re fired up for 2018, the Spencer Sanders Era and, uh, all the recruits Mike Boynton is *hopefully* bringing into Stillwater.

One of the things I’ve been preaching over the past six months is diversifying revenue streams. It makes me sound like I wear a suit every day and am pretending to run a Fortune 500 company, which I know is not the most compelling trait for a sports blogger.

But this site has, I think, been good for everyone. It’s great for us because we love making #content and earning money. And it’s great for you because you have a free place to receive wall-to-wall coverage for Oklahoma State athletics. Win-win.

Last year I wrote a two-part piece on the future of websites like ours and why it’s important that we become, at least in part, reader supported. Here’s Part 1. Here’s Part 2. I spent a lot of words there to essentially say, For us to survive and thrive into the future, we need to be financially supported by our readers in some way.

You guys stepped up in 2017. Close to 20 percent of our revenue came from readers, which is awesome. But we have a long way to go. Here are five reasons you should begin contributing.

1. Free Gear and No Ads

Contributors at three of our four levels receive a gift card to the PFB Store. The least we can give you for supporting our site is a free shirt with a grown man’s mullet on it. Contributors at our top two levels also receive ad-free browsing of the site. So the days of wondering how you ended up on Amazon perusing wireless workout headphones when you though you were reading an article about Calvin Bundage are over.

2. We’re in this for good

I’m not going anywhere. There is no next job for me. This is it. One of the shortcomings of other outlets is that there’s always a better gig. Once somebody obtains proficiency in covering O-State is about the same time they move on to ESPN or The Oregonian. That makes us unique and it allows us to operate in a way that other outlets can’t.

3. You can effect change

We are currently a paid staff of 11 with several other part-time contributors. Guess what? That doesn’t happen if you guys aren’t supporting us. You have literally funded better PFB coverage of Oklahoma State. We have some ambitious goals in 2018 that include wanting to send a writer and photographer to every football game as well as potentially a new website and a few other things that cost money. In a lot of ways, this site can be as strong and as effective as you choose.

4. No paywalls

We are not interested in putting up a paywall because we believe the #content should be available as widely as possible and to as many people as possible. You know what keeps away paywalls? Reader contributions (shout out NPR). Think about this: If every person who visited this site in a year gave $1 one time per year, we would never have to run an ad ever again. Of course with 2.6 million visitors last year I would also probably be living in a boat off the coast of Spain and there would be no site, but you get the point.

5. Think of college you

Paying it forward for poor college students devouring ramen noodles and consuming 2,000 words on why Mike Yurcich is kind of underrated. Think about how much college you would have appreciated that!

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