Support The Site

Thank you for finding your way to this page!

As you may know, ShakespeareGeek.com (and all its associated properties) is run voluntarily by one person.  I do not have a full time Shakespeare-related job.  On the contrary I have a full time job in a completely unrelated field, so every effort you see me putting into my site(s) comes whenever I can find a moment, often late at night.

It doesn't have to be that way. If I could support myself doing nothing but Shakespeare related things, I'd take that in a heart beat.  Until that day, however, it must remain a hobby.  And hobbies have expenses.  Every time I spot a new book or DVD (that a publisher hasn't sent me a promotional copy for), I have to shell out of pocket if I want to share it with my readers.  My goal has always been to have a petty cash fund for the site so that I can more freely dip into it in such situations.  The last time I ran a contest giveaway I had to limit it not because I didn't have enough prizes to giveaway, but because I was cringing every time I had to pay the postage to ship out the winners!

If you've gotten this far then maybe you're interested in helping to support what we're trying to do here.  I appreciate that, thank you.

Here are some ways you can help out!

* Link.  Link link link.  Web sites run on their "organic" traffic, which means "how many people find you after searching for something in a search engine."  The more links a site has, the higher "page rank" it has in Google.  In other words, links are up votes.  If more people link to Shakespeare Geek, Google and the other search engines will send more traffic my way.  So if I ever post something that you enjoy, please take a moment to hit any of those share buttons, email it to friends, link it from your own site.  Everything helps!

* Affilate Links.  Typically when I put up a book or movie review, there'll be an Amazon affiliate link attached to it.  Even if you're not interested in that particular item, you could take a moment to click it.  This gets me affiliate credit for driving you back to Amazon, so that the next time you *do* by something, whatever it may be, I could get a few pennies for that transaction.  The more of those, the merrier.  I've spoken with email marketing experts who told me that this is the secret to the universe, always having your affiliate cookie be the one that gets credit when somebody buys something.

* I wrote a book!   Hear My Soul Speak : Wedding Quotations from Shakespeare is available for your Kindle for just 99cents.  Selling those bad boys may not make me rich, but the success of my first will definitely be a motivator to write a second!

* Merchandise!  You do know that we have a store, right?  Some of my best inside jokes can be found on t-shirts, coffee mugs and mouse pads.  Ideally this is one of the best ways to support the site, since the largest portion of the profit goes right back into the site. Plus it always give me a thrill when I get that email saying "Someone just bought the such-and-such t-shirt!"  Not just because I made a couple of bucks, but because the odds just went up of me randomly bumping into someone on the street wearing merchandise that I made.  (I actually did once randomly spot somebody wearing my "Mercutio Drew First!" shirt on Facebook.  That was a great day!)

* Got an Android device?  I recently released my first app, and am currently gauging interest in whether I should do more. Why Android and not iPhone?  Long story, but the short version is simply that I've got the skills and equipment to do Android at this particular time.  If I ever built something that caught on, I could invest in iPhone versions. But you have to start somewhere, you know?

* And of course there's the good old fashioned tip jar. I feel very uncomfortable about having one of these at all, which is why this is buried at the bottom of this page.  But the truth is that for some people they do work, because this is how they choose to show their support, and it would be bad business for me not to include it.

Thanks again for supporting Shakespeare Geek!