CHANGES FOR INSTAPUNDIT IN 2023: Don’t worry, the blog isn’t going anywhere. But we’ll be getting a major rebuild in the next couple of months. That’s mostly under-the-hood stuff that you won’t see, but that makes the site more stable and secure. It’s overdue, not least because it’s not cheap. I’m also going to be looking at new revenue models. Ad revenue is down about 75% over the last couple of years, and Amazon earnings are off by a similar amount. The former is partly the general decline in ad revenue across the digital world, and (I think) partly the result of big outfits deliberately steering ads away from right-leaning outlets. The latter is partly deliberate, as we’ve reduced the Amazon promotion on purpose because of the Parler business. Discontinuing it would have been nice, but it’s a major source of income for Helen, and efforts to replace it with Helen’s Page, Books-a-Million, etc. have all failed. And one of our friends who works for Parler didn’t boycott Amazon, saying it would make their life worse without Jeff Bezos noticing, which is true.

I started InstaPundit as a hobby, but after over 20 years of pretty much every day work, it needs to do more than occupy my idle hours, of which I don’t have enough. Donations have helped, but of course PayPal has become problematic and will have to go. I’m going to experiment with Stripe for donations, I think.

I’m also considering setting up on Substack. I wouldn’t move the blog there, but it might be an alternative to writing columns for other people. I do sort of wonder whether I’d do as well without a deadline, but on the other hand, I’ve been writing a weekly (or sometimes twice-weekly) column for over twenty years as well, and maybe it’s time for something different.

Anyway, none of this is dramatic and none of it will happen tomorrow, but just FYI.