By Jos Truitt • @jostruitt • 12 years ago

The feminist blog revolution will be paid

Courtney published a vital article in The Nation yesterday about the feminist internet’s money problem. I highly recommend giving it a read if you’re at all interested in the future of feminist organizing.

Online organizing is like the “women’s work” of the feminist movement – it takes an incredible amount of time and energy, it’s necessary work (if we want to win!), but we don’t put a monetary value on blogging.

Feministing is a labor of love – we all have the equivalent of full time jobs in addition to our blogging duties. This shouldn’t have to be the case. Online organizing needs to be sustainable so we can continue to be impactful, and that means we need blogging to be valued economically – we gotta get paid. But as Courtney wrote, “We’re too busy trying to make ends meet to figure out how to make ends meet.”

We do make some money from advertising. Revenue from ads keeps the main page of the site up for you to read, in addition to keeping our Community, Campus, and Events pages as platforms for feminists all over. And hosting this site is not exactly cheap when we’re reaching over half a million readers a month.

As we continue working to make Feministing economically sustainable, supporting our advertising is one of the best ways you can support the site. There’s a widget from Change.org on the top right hand side of the page that you can use to sign petitions – we make money when you take action via the widget. Below that are ads posted through Blogads. In addition to clicking on these banners you can buy advertising in this space directly from this link or this link. We’ve also got ads from Common Sense Media at the top and bottom of pages and between some posts. (And yes, we do work to keep offensive and anti-feminist advertising off the site, which definitely limits the amount of ads available to us).

You can also click on “Support” above the Change.org widget to donate directly to our PayPal account.

We’ll have more ways to support Feministing to share with you soon. Thank you to everyone who does advertise with us, clicks on ads, and shares the site with your friends – Feministing’s here because of you!

Boston, MA

Jos Truitt is Executive Director of Development at Feministing. She joined the team in July 2009, became an Editor in August 2011, and Executive Director in September 2013. She writes about a range of topics including transgender issues, abortion access, and media representation. Jos first got involved with organizing when she led a walk out against the Iraq war at her high school, the Boston Arts Academy. She was introduced to the reproductive justice movement while at Hampshire College, where she organized the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program’s annual reproductive justice conference. She has worked on the National Abortion Federation’s hotline, was a Field Organizer at Choice USA, and has volunteered as a Pro-Choice Clinic Escort. Jos has written for publications including The Guardian, Bilerico, RH Reality Check, Metro Weekly, and the Columbia Journalism Review. She has spoken and trained at numerous national conferences and college campuses about trans issues, reproductive justice, blogging, feminism, and grassroots organizing. Jos completed her MFA in Printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute in Spring 2013. In her "spare time" she likes to bake and work on projects about mermaids.

Jos Truitt is an Executive Director of Feministing in charge of Development.

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