My quarterly request for donations

It is now officially summer, and so therefore it is time for me to ask my good readers to donate to EoZ.

I spend a great deal of time on the blog - research, writing, creating graphics, making videos, corresponding with readers via email as well as Twitter and Facebook, maintaining the site, and reading comments when I can. All of this is in my free time after my job, a couple of side projects, and a family.

Over the past six months or so, I've been actively working to take the blog to the next level. I created two successful poster series that went viral. I gave two lectures on Hasbara, and made them available online. I started a partnership with StandWithUs to help create original material for them, all of which are available on the blog.

(I was also a regular writer for NewsRealBlog, where I got paid for articles, but that site closed, ending a source of revenue.)

My short-term goal is to increase my readership and help spread the truth about the Middle East to a larger audience. Since the beginning of the year that audience has gone up about 50%, and now I regularly get 5000-6000 hits a day. My Alexa ranking went up from #219,000 in December to #131,000 today, and my Technorati ranking is regularly in the Top Ten or Top Twenty for all world politics blogs.

When you donate, you become a partner in this endeavor.

The easiest way to help is to donate with the PayPal buttons in the upper right of the page. You can give a one time donation, or, if you are a regular, you may want to subscribe to pay every month. If you think that the information you get here every day is worth more than what you get from a newspaper, please consider a donation comparable to what you might pay for a subscription to your local paper. I'll even try to increase the number of comics I publish!

There are other ways you can help. You can buy products from Amazon using the search engine on the right sidebar, and I get a small percentage of what you would pay anyway.

You can also buy products from the EoZ Store at Printfection.

Finally, if you are strapped for cash, you can click on any ads you find slightly interesting. Each click is worth between 15 and 50 cents and it costs you nothing. (Don't just click away for no reason; the ad system cannot and must not be abused.)

Thanks to all those who have donated or subscribed, and as always thanks to all of you for reading EoZ. It still amazes me that so many of you enjoy the blog and I will continue to try to make it as informative and entertaining as possible.