I Sold “Amptoons.com”
| September 13th, 2006UPDATE: See also (or see instead, really) this post.
Announcement: I’m not the owner of “Amptoons.com” anymore. I sold it a couple of months ago.
Five months ago, I was facing two problems. First of all, I was in real financial trouble - we were paying all our bills, but by a slimmer margin each month, and if things had kept on going that way it was only a matter of time before we’d come up short. Plus, one person in the house hadn’t been able to pay his rent in a long time, while another seemed on the verge of being unemployed (although as it turned out, that was a false alarm).
Second of all, I kept on having to beg my host not to shut down “Alas” for using too much server time - and in fact, “Alas” was briefly shut down more than once, and I was forced to remove a lot of functionality in order to reduce server load. My host kept on telling me that I needed a dedicated server, but the cost of that is well beyond anything I could consider.
Then a buyer approached me offering to purchase amptoons.com, so he could use it to improve search engine rankings for his clients (how that all works isn’t something I have any knowledge of). He offered a substantial sum of money - not enough to erase my money worries, but enough to ease the pressure for a while. Plus he offered to provide a free dedicated server for “Alas.”
The contract took months to wrangle, but here’s the bottom line: The new owner has absolutely no control over the content of “Alas.” However, “Alas” plus my cartoonist pages are the only parts of amptoons.com I have any access to or control over. The buyer also has the right to put in one or two inconspicuous links on “Alas,” positioned in a way that would make it unlikely that anyone but search engine robots would follow the link.
I was assured by the buyer that he would never host porn sites on “amptoons.com.” And I wrote into the contract that his link on “Alas” could never be a direct link to a porn site. But beyond that, I have no ability to control what the buyer does with his pages - the deal is that he has absolutely no say in what’s on “Alas,” but we also agreed that I have no say over what he does with his own property. And - as a couple of “Alas” readers have noticed - some pages I don’t own include links to porn.
I’m essentially in the same position as someone with a blog on “blogspot.com” - I don’t own the domain, and although I control what’s on my own blog, I don’t have any say over what’s posted on the domain other than my little piece of it.
I realize that some “Alas” readers will feel that I’ve sold out, or that this puts me beyond the pale. I’m genuinely sorry for that. For the record, I don’t feel I’ve been victimized (as one person suggested in email), nor do I feel like I’m a total sell-out. What I feel is this: I’ve made a compromise, one that I probably wouldn’t have made in a perfect world.
That’s all. And now, back to your regularly scheduled political rants.
(Comments are closed on this thread. If you want to talk to me about this, please drop me an email.)
September 14th, 2006 at 11:27 pm
sold his domain to a Search Engine Optimiser
This comment was written by Waffle.Report this comment to the moderators
September 18th, 2006 at 10:39 am
s back to school, back to work, U.S. election campaing smackdown, American football and Rest-of-the-World football, Pope-apologizing, Will-There-Be-Peace-In-The-Middle East Webcomics season. So I’m sleepy back! Reinder catches that Barry Deutsch has sold his URL (amptoons.com) to someone else who is using the URL for “search engine optimization”. Deutsch will still be able to use the URL for his blog “Alas” and his cartoons. Webcomics-in-Print blog has a great round-up of book news today including links to pre-orders for the new books from
This comment was written by The Webcomic List - Online Comics.Report this comment to the moderators
October 10th, 2006 at 9:58 pm
Pinko Feminist Hellcat is responding to the many opinions circulating in the blogosphere about this issue. Related links Breast Cancer: No More Breast Cancer Campaign Think Before You Pink Alas: Alas, a blog: “I Sold ‘Amptoons.com’” Well I’ll Go To The Foot Of My Stairs…: “[expletive deleted] and betrayal…” Angry for a Reason: “No, really, I’m a feminist*” Burka Photoshopped Picture: Punkassblog.com: “I was also unable to think of any western patriarchal traditions
This comment was written by BlogHer | Where the women bloggers are.Report this comment to the moderators
October 10th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
Pinko Feminist Hellcat is responding to the many opinions circulating in the blogosphere about this issue. Related links Breast Cancer: No More Breast Cancer CampaignThink Before You Pink Alas: Alas, a blog: “I Sold ‘Amptoons.com’”Well I’ll Go To The Foot Of My Stairs…: “[expletive deleted] and betrayal…”Angry for a Reason: “No, really, I’m a feminist*” Burqa Photoshopped Picture: Punkassblog.com: “I was also unable to think of any western patriarchal traditions
This comment was written by Sour Duck.Report this comment to the moderators
October 10th, 2006 at 11:19 pm
d rather burn this site and plow salt into the ashes. Barry at Alas, a Blog has probably done more for women in weblogging than any other man I know. Recently, he got into some financial difficulty and had to sell his domain, keeping his weblog and asking that the new owner not host porn. The new owner hasn’t, but he has posted a page that links to several hardcore porn sites–using Barry’s accrued Google ranking to drive up the rank of these sites. I can understand Barry
This comment was written by Burningbird.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Regarding the sale of Amptoons.com (which I posted about last month), Hugo writes: Barry, you owe your readers a public forum where you can further explain your decision, and offer those who are stunned and hurt an opportunity to express that to you directly. It’
This comment was written by feminist blogs.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2006 at 11:04 pm
d like to give you an opportunity to comment before I do. I also promised to give him notice before publishing. Since I hadn’t given him that notice, he was under no immediate threat when he posted an explanation on Alas. As he pointed out in that post ‘a couple of “Alas” readers ha[d] noticed’ - me and at least one other person. So he probably realised that it was only a matter of time before it became public. Better for him to do it at a time of his
This comment was written by Creative Destruction.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2006 at 2:28 pm
to the index of reviews, which, yes, contains that “ethnic” subcategory, as well as “lesbians,” “mature,” “teen,” and “ass.” MILFs appear to be a particular specialty. Regardless of your feelings on porn, pro or con, the way that Amp handled this
This comment was written by Feministe's Journal.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2006 at 10:07 pm
to the index of reviews, which, yes, contains that “ethnic” subcategory, as well as “lesbians,” “mature,” “teen,” and “ass.” MILFs appear to be a particular specialty. Regardless of your feelings on porn, pro or con, the way that Amp handled this — not telling anyone of the arrangement until long after the sale, not allowing for comments when he had to reveal the arrangement — does not speak well of him or of his commitment to feminism.
This comment was written by Feministe.Report this comment to the moderators
October 16th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
On September 13th, well-known feminist blogger Ampersand of Alas, A Blog announced that he no longer owned the domain name “Amptoons.com” because he’d sold it a few months earlier: Then a buyer approached me offering to purchase amptoons.com, so he could use it to improve search engine rankings for his clients (how that all works isn’t something I have any knowledge of). He offered a
This comment was written by AlterNet: Blogs: PEEK.Report this comment to the moderators
October 18th, 2006 at 7:14 pm
the purists; the fact that he is a man is more than enough for them. Well, that…and the fact that he sold his domain to a porn portal didn’t help. “Say wuh???” I hear you thinking. It goes roughly like this: Last September, Amp posted a cryptic message to the blog saying that he was under some real financial strain, and due to that he had decided to put his domain name “amptoons.com” up for sale for some quick cash. What he did not mention then, though, was that he had sold to domain to what
This comment was written by The SmackDog Chronicles.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2006 at 3:24 am
search engine optimizing” company which, apparently used his traffic to help pornographers get higher search listings for their sites, and didn’t inform his readers of the sale. Here’s some background reading on this from Amp himself, his cobloggers Rachel and Nick, Zuzu at Feministe, Tom at the Comics Reporter, Fred at Stone Court, MB at Making Light, Hugo Schwyzer and Tekanji. My opinion on all of this is as follows: First of all, I have always believed that blogs are
This comment was written by Pen-Elayne on the Web.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2006 at 6:39 pm
ve probably already heard, Ampersand at Alas A Blog has sold his domain name to a search engine optimizing (SEO) company (See the explanation of this here.) that promotes several sites. So last month Amp wrote a post telling readers that the domain for Alas (amptoons.com) had been sold, but this was only after Daran at Creative Destruction and another anonymous reader noticed the porn links which are well hidden in the site. Amp said two factors influenced his decision to
This comment was written by Rachel’s Tavern.Report this comment to the moderators