About the Scottie News

I recently did a Google search to see how the Scottish Terrier and Dog News was ranking for the term Scottish Terrier and noticed something I hadn’t before.

Notice the image results

A photo of Rasmus (left, top) that I had published on my blog almost four years ago showed up on Picasa even though I had never put it there. What’s worse, Picasa said the photo belongs to me when the version on my blog, which I asked permission to use, is clearly credited to the photographer and owner of the photo Lars Odemark.

Picasa drops all the photo credits and erroneously says photo is mine (see top right)

In the original version, the photo was properly credited and linked with the photographer’s knowledge.

Scottie News properly credited photographer Lars Odemark after asking his permission to use the photo

Picasa has done this with more than 700 photos used by the Scottish Terrier and Dog News.

I suspect the fecal matter is about to hit the fan on this one that, as far as I can tell, has not yet been noticed.

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Scottie News apologizes for our unannounced absence. Posting will be a bit sporadic this month, but we have not gone away forever or anything like that.

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Available on Amazon for you and your Scottish Terrier to dance to.

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The Scottie News apologizes for not posting the recent photos our kind readers have sent us of their beautiful dogs.

We will do our very best to get them up as a special After-Xmas Scottish Terrier bonus.

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Clarification from a Scottie lover: My line about why I started this site seems to have been misinterpreted, which could mean I didn’t write it very well in the first place. So, let me clarify. I absolutely do love Scotties and other dogs. They make me smile and laugh at least once a day. But I didn’t start this site as a labour of love. As a professional writer, it was always my intention to see if I could make money from the Scottie News. As much as writing is fun for me, it’s also work. I hope that clears things up.

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Dear Readers,

If you’ve ever read my bio page, you know a bit of the history of the Scottish Terrier and Dog News and it might not be what you imagined:

Many people think I started this site because of my love of dogs, but that’s not the case. I actually began dog blogging because I thought I could make some money. I found most dog websites to be a spammy mess or dominated by dog extremists, who thought you were cruel if you watched a TV show your dog didn’t like.

I wanted to see if high-quality websites about specific dog breeds could generate an audience and, then, a profit.  I was highly influenced by the The Long Tail, which is all about niche markets.

My bio also explains how things have worked out since the Scottie News was founded almost five years ago:

As for my original business goals, well, my sites are  successful enough that I don’t know how to quit them, but not successful enough that I can quit my day job.

All this to say that if you’re interested in buying either a premium site about Scottish Terriers or Dachshunds, at this point, I’d be willing to talk.

Be warned though, the price will not be cheap. These sites are still of considerable value to me, not so much for the revenues they bring in, as for what they’ve taught me about publishing on the internet and creating a community of readers who contribute to making the Scottie News a great place to visit and find Scottish Terrier information. It’s kind of like owning a research lab.

At this point, unless someone makes me an offer that’s too good to refuse, I plan to keep the Scottie News going. Unlike during past crises and moments of drama, both readership and subscribers keep steadily trending upward. Earlier this fall, I also sold a number of lucrative ads, but, alas, those appear to have tapered off. For the moment, the only revenues coming in are from Amazon and Google AdSense, neither of which will allow the Scottie News to meet its original financial goals including rental of a winter world headquarters in the Caribbean.

For this reason, I’ve decided to approach my readers and say, “Yo, how much are you willing to pay for the Scottie News experience? Pretend we’re back in the pre-internet era when readers actually paid for most of their content, what would a subscription like this have been worth to you?”

Although, I  wanted to put a “subscribe” button here  and not a “donate” one, because of the charitable overtones, I’ve ended up choosing the latter. It’s not that I have any plans to halt the Scottie News, it’s just that I can’t commit to continuing it and I would hate for anyone to have a monthly charge going through if I ran off to Rio or some such thing.

So the “Donate” button it is, but I urge you to think of it more as a payment for subscriptions past.

As always, feel free to comment and thanks in advance to anyone who uses the donate button to make a non-donation if you know what I mean.

Yours truly,

Ann Brocklehurst
Aspiring Dog Media Magnate

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Check out the Scoottish Terrier News, updated several times a week with an archives of more than 2,000 posts.

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Yep, Westie Wednesday.

See you then!

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