p2pnet comment | P2P:- I’ve had several emails and a couple of comment posts on the text ads – words underlined by a green, dotted line.

They’ve been around in most posts for a few weeks, but it looks like they’ve only just been noticed by some people.

“I would not have known had you not mentioned the intext ads,” says one Reader’s Write, going on:

“Nice to know I am missing them. I understand ads pay the bills. Bills or no, I detest ads.”

I do, too, but as the comment post says, the ads pay the bills, or some of them, at least.

‘I’m not getting rich from p2pnet’

It’s like this: In the late 1990s I started getting interested in the concept of peer-to-peer sharing communications, thinking they’d ultimately become the primary means for people to communicate with each other and distribute various kinds of electronic media online.

I used to be a full-time writer and when my wife, Liz, and I discovered we were about to become parents, we decided instead of leaving our child’s education up to people we didn’t know, we’d find a way to be his/her guides during the most important formative years.

We’d always liked collecting old things so for four years we sold antiques in a tiny village in Ontario, Canada.

I enjoyed finding the stock and haggling for it, but I hated the retail end and within a couple of weeks, I had a computer on the sales counter.

Customers thought it was for business but in fact, to stay sane, I’d started p2pnet and I was soon spending more time on that than on our chosen means of earning a living.

We moved from Ontario to Vancouver Island in British Columbia and after the year or so, I gave up all pretence of being an antique dealer and, backed by my wife, started working on p2pnet full-time. We lived off our savings for a long time before it started pulling in enough advertising revenue to pay for the hosting, our mortgage, and so on.

But we’ve never done more than break even, and more often than not, barely that.

In other words, I’m not getting rich from p2pnet. Not even nearly.

With p2pnet, I’m doing my best to present points of view I don’t see on too many other sites in the hope they may at the least spark, or add to, discussion on topics which need to be discussed.

Freedom of online speech is one, and it’s possibly the most important.

That we don’t need the corporations, but they certainly need us, a critical reality they’d rather not see included in any kind of groupthink or discussion, is another.

And the terror campaign being waged by the entertainment cartels against their customers around the world is a third.

Bypassing the corporate controlled media

Every day, hundreds and thousands of new people open Net accounts and many of them – experts in their fields – go on to launch blogs and other kinds of sites providing information and data that had never before been widely available.

In other words, thanks to the Net, ordinary people are completely bypassing the corporate controlled mainstream media which have until now been used as vehicles for propaganda, misinformation, disinformation, spin, and all the other essential elements of corporate and government communications used to keep us heading in the wrong direction.

p2pnet isn’t entrepreneurial: it isn’t a business venture. Corny as it may sound, it’s a commitment and to stay online, the money has to come from somewhere.

With the exception of Blubster, a supporter since the beginning, all the advertisements you see today are freebies or trades for services I’d otherwise have to pay for. They’re not bringing in any money and were it not for an American supporter who, since the beginning of the year, has generously been paying most of the bills, p2pnet as it exists now would have disappeared.

I can’t, though, expect this support to last forever ……….

So that’s where it’s at

Cheers! And thanks. And all the best …

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 5:47 am and is filed under Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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