Howdy, all. Special guest post today by me, Matthew Steinhoff.
If you like Ken Steinhoff, the CapeCentralHigh web site and want to support them both, please click the above magical button and go about your regular, online holiday shopping business.
Great Photographer, Writer; Lousy Money Extractor
My father, Ken Steinhoff, is horrible at making this photo and history web project pay. I keep telling him that people love his work and want to support his continued efforts. I keep telling him that if, just once and a while, he’d go ‘hey, folks, the next time you do some online shopping, click through from my web site‘, they’d do it.
The thing is, Dad hates trying to get people to part with their money. He won’t sell ads. He gives away photos as if they were water. I had to twist his arm and drag him kicking and screaming just to get him to put the passive Amazon.com links on this web site to begin with.
How Amazon.com Helps Dad
If you click any of the Amazon.com links on this page and then buy something within 24 hours, Dad makes 6%, give or take. You spend $100: he gets $6.
(It doesn’t cost you anything extra to buy through his links. In most states, Amazon.com doesn’t charge sales tax so there is an extra savings for you. Most of the time, the price you get from Amazon.com is less than you could buy the product locally. In most cases, the shipping is free.)
[Ken Steinhoff aside: I encourage you to spend your money with local businesses, but if you ARE going to buy on line, then listen to The Kid.]
$6 Doesn’t Sound Like Much
The average American will spend $854 on Christmas this year. Of that, $384.30 will be spent online. In the last 30 days, 8,272 have visited CapeCentralHigh.com. Of those 8,272 visitors, 4,460 have visited his web site more than 26 times in the last 30 days. (They’ve read 25,000 to 35,000 pages in that time.)
If I could just talk 500 of his regular visitors to do half of their online shopping through his Amazon link — about $200 each with $12 going to Dad — he’d make $6,000.
That $6,000 would just about cover what it costs to spend three months a year in Cape Girardeau, camera and computer equipment repairs and upgrades and pay the site’s web hosting bill.
Save My Parents!
You’re gonna shop online anyway. You’re probably going to shop at Amazon. When you do, please click any of the Amazon links on this web site. It’ll help keep the heat on and the parents off my sofa. Thank you!
Cheers,
Matthew Steinhoff
Help Ken and help Sharon. Order Killerwatt and Killerfind here, and they will both thank you!
Sharon is right. Click on her ad in the upper right-hand corner to order her books and we both make a tiny amount.
Hey, kid. Do you think this is an order house?
If Ken wanted to be a store, he would open one. And I would buy from him.
Ken doesn’t want to sell you shit. He puts up stuff he thinks is good.
What he does mostly is put up stuff you can’t pay for. He puts up what we used to call art and history. And we used to call it journalism.
The profit in that is not dollars. It is understanding.
Ken is making his own museum that will live through all of time on the internet, ready for anyone who wants to partake and understand.
The idea that this can be capitalized is so juvenile that I can only forgive you because you are young.
Ken is now a pioneer and you want him to snake oil.
Drive back home and think of the carbon it took. Your children will.
Keef,
I don’t WANT to pitch Amazon links, but I’ve had very little luck chasing advertising (and really hate doing that). I enjoy putting this site together, but it ain’t cheap. It costs me $400 in gas alone to drive to and from Cape, and that doesn’t count another $100 to $150 while I’m cruising the countryside. I’ve had to buy a new drive array at about $500, plus another $600 worth of drives to fill it. My film scanner cost $1,800. I’ve had to buy a newer, faster desktop computer in the past 18 months, and one of my two monitors took a dive not long ago.
I enjoy sharing my pictures and stories, but there are a lot of expenses associated with doing it. It’s one thing to donate my time; it’s another to actually have to write checks for hardware, supplies, travel and services.
You’ll see another post tomorrow listing suggestions for purchases. The Click Here button will make an occasional appearance.
Just think of it as one of those annoying PBS fund drives.
Matt is just better at asking for money than I am. If his post had been a political ad, I’d have had to say, “I approve of this message.” He wrote it. I published it, so cut him some slack.
Correction to second to last graph.
Ken is now a pioneer and you want hit to “sell” snake oil.
Guess I’m going to have to learn to shop on line. Can’t let family starve:)
It’s important for folks to support local businesses (and I don’t mean Big Box stores that happen to be in your town), but if you ARE going to order from Amazon, I appreciate you taking the time to click on the link on the blog.
You mean…they….don’t WANT us moving in with them?? Well there goes my retirement! Definitely going to check out the Amazon thing.
Use Amazon a lot and always use the link on here–doesn’t cause any pain and doesn’t cost anything and if it’s helping Ken and Lila keep their warm toasty home, try it! It works!
Happy Thanksgiving Ken and Lila!
Thank you, Miz Nancy. I see what people order, but not who ordered it. Are you the person who ordered the tattoo outfit with the plastic practice skin?
Gosh, I was hoping no one would guess who did that, oh well, hang around pictures coming!
Ken, what you do is priceless! In this age of “at your fingertips” people often do not think about the money it takes to keep this going. For those of us who appreciate your time and efforts – Thank You to Matt for reminding us! For those who don’t order through Amazon, they can always show their appreciation for a story or tribute by hitting the “donate” button as I have done and it is painless!!
Again thanks for all you do in this endeavor. You allow me to go “home” nearly every day and I love that ability to “escape”. Happy Thanksgiving!
Thank you for your donation. It’s always a pleasant surprise to open up my email and see one of those come through.
I make 1 or 2 yearly sweeps of Amazon and always go through this website. It doesn’t change the process in the slightest and helps a brutha out!
Does this also perchance work for foreign Amazon sites, Mark?
Steve
I don’t know the answer to that. I would assume that anything except third-party sites would give me a cut.
Steve,
I would guess that foreign would also work. Matt, it’s your entry today, care to weigh in on this?
What a coincidence. I shopped Amazon thru your link just yesterday- not much this time but likely more to come.
I keep a note in front of the computer to go thru your site to make our Amazon orders. It is easy to be so focused on the ordering process and forget the entry direction. Just finished the book order for Christmas and all the birthdays of 2013.
@ Charles Keefer
Do you honestly feel that Ken or Matt is out to make a buck off of you?!?! I hope not! This site, Ken’s outlook and Matt’s support is enought to make me want to purchase Christmas presents through Amazon. How dare you degrade someone for wanting to keep his father’s passion for JOURNALISM alive through this site. Matt is simply asking that purchases people are planning to make online be made through this site. @ Matt, this post was just a helpful reminder to add to a worthy cause when I might have just given the money to some corporate joeblow. Thank you for this site(an insight to my hometown)! Merry Christmas to the Steinhoff family. Without your hard work and dedication I would not know the in-depth history of the building that now houses my family business.