I look forward to this post every year about as much as I await the next 40-something birthday. I grit my teeth and suffer through it. I remind myself it could be worse — I could be getting another C-section. So *holds breath* here goes …
Truthfully, Cybils has very few financial needs. For the last two years, we've bought beautiful fountain pens for our winning authors and illustrators:
We printed up bookmarks and mailed them to many of you. And I paid a designer — our own Sarah Stevenson — for a permanent logo. All told, we raised a terrific $2,000 last contest season and we don't need much more.
You can thank the BlogAds people for much of last year's largesse, but the ad money simply isn't there this year. That puts more pressure on our Amazon sales.
You know how it works; you click on an Amazon ad and it takes you to their site, but with our affiliate ID embedded. Any shopping you do is credited to us and we get a teensy commission.
For you, it's much, much better than braving Black Friday crowds. There are no parking spaces to fight over on the information highway, and the Intertubes will never glare at you when your children start to fuss. You can munch on turkey leftovers at the Amazon store, and even if the bathroom facility isn't spotless, at least you know who's been there before you.
We have a widget, which you should feel free to customize and install on your own blog or website, or just enjoy ours. I've installed a "donate" button on the top right so you can just funnel money to Cybils' PayPal account.
Or outfit yourself with Cybils gear and stuff:
Thank you for your support, and we now return to our regular programming …
Regards,
Anne Levy, Cybils Panhandler-in-Chief