Online Panhandling

I’ve seen a lot of people lately asking for cash online. And even stranger? They’re getting it.

The girl asking for breast implants is probably the biggest example (no pun intended). I first linked her site a loooong time ago, and last year she actually raised the $4500 and got the new rack installed.

Another woman got herself buried in credit card debt so asked for donations. I can’t find her site, but I seem to remember her succeeding. In searching, though, I found an entire site devoted to online begging called CyberBeg.

My Lockergnome boss, Chris Pirillo, will write your advertisement on his chest for $20.00 and post the pictures.

Tauhid Bondia, the creator of the Spells and Whistles online comic strip, recently asked for $200 for an emergency, and wound up with that and more. He said he received enough to pay for the hosting for his strip for a year, which can be quite a chunk of change if he gets a lot of traffic.

Scott Kurtz, the guy behind online and print comic PvP, got sick of people telling him he should produce his strip on a Mac so told them to send him a dollar rather than an email rant. In a month and a half his posted meter had him just shy of the moolah to buy a 15″ iMac. Then he took the meter down (I’m not sure what that’s about).

Horror genre friend/fan Larry Keyser and legendary writer Charles Grant are ill and sought money for medical bills. Both have received donations (Larry actually used his to pay a bankruptcy attorney) and Charlie’s are ongoing. Their situations speak as much of community as charity, but in effect are the same. And it certainly beats just taking anthology payments and putting in a new sewer system like another asshole editor who shall remain nameless.

Meanwhile here I am trying to be a good guy by shilling shit on eBay and place stories with editors and publishers who may or may not pay me on time, if at all. Heh. That’s not to say the people above are doing anything wrong or that I don’t approve of it, only that I don’t know that I’d actually feel comfortable doing it. My credit card debt sucks and my garage needs a new roof, but I don’t figure that’s the problem of any of my readers.

Is it modesty? Shame? Don’t know. Hell, I thought about putting Google AdWords in the right-hand pane of this website to see if it generates any income, but was afraid they’d look tacky or be viewed as tacky and the minimal return (I don’t get that much traffic) wouldn’t be worth the tradeoff.

Am I just being silly? What would you guys think of a small ad below the books in the right-hand pane? Folks viewing the site via RSS wouldn’t see ‘em at all, but the rest of you would only see them if you scrolled down. If you’re not familiar with Google AdWords, they’d be text-only and would be contextually relevant to whatever I talk about on the blog. So, if I mention my Spyderco knife, there’d be links to knife vendors and similar sites.

Don’t expect a beggar button anytime soon, though. I might put more shit on eBay, but I’m definitely not ready for a beggar button.