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OK, this is it, the annual shameless self promotion post. This is the time of the year when I toot my own horn and ask for your help. Here we go…
2025 has been a challenging year for me and mikecalabrese.com . On the personal side I gave up one of my four gig economy jobs. I was a mystery shopper for the last six years. It was a fun job and I probably ate over 200 of a certain burger chain’s little hamburgers during that time. I had numerous other shopping assignments. Most were fun. However, I noticed that in the last year the fee that they paid along with the meal cost reimbursement was slowly shrinking. And the shopping company was asking for more and more info. So I was making less money and doing more work. When I factored in the time, gas and the paperwork involved, I discovered that it wasn’t worth it any more. So that went away.
On the website side the tariffs had a big effect on affiliate marketing. I probably either lost or had to quit about a dozen advertisers that I contracted with from other countries because they would no longer ship to the United States. I got “fired” by one affiliate network based in Europe for this reason. And I quit an affiliate network in Australia because only a few of their advertisers shipped globally. I checked with these advertisers earlier this year and all of them have stopped shipping to the U.S. because of the tariffs. I had to quit another affiliate network in this country due to a security issue and subsequent action on the part of that network. This left me with about 85 less mostly outdoor related advertisers in the U.S. So I probably lost about 100 advertisers because of these factors.
Therefore, I humbly come before you to ask you to help me out by doing these four things:
- Shop the store on mikecalabrese.com . I am presently displaying about 130 of the roughly 250 advertisers that I have forged affiliate relationships with. I change out a number of slots in the store every week. So please at least check out the store on a regular basis. Who knows, you may even buy something. If you do, I possibly make a small commission.
- Click/tap on the various ad banners that are on this site. I do have over 200 ad banners in the store that rotate randomly. And this year I also started experimenting with medium sized ads at the bottom of almost every screen. Even if you don’t buy something, if you click/tap on one of the ads, it helps me out.
- Donate to mikecalabrese.com . There is a yellow Donate button at the bottom of most screens on this site. This allows you to donate via PayPal to my website. Every little bit helps out.
- Use the Contact form on this site. Talk to me, give me suggestions, just say hi, whatever. I sincerely appreciate your feedback.
Now, I have to be honest and up front about this. My website contract is coming up for renewal in July, 2026. It was about $350.00 in July, 2023 for the website and about $30.00 for the domain. It will probably be a lot more next time. In the past, ad income has helped pay for and, a few times, has completely paid for the site and domain renewal. This year, at this point in time, it hasn’t. So there is a chance that I may have to sunset this site in July, 2026.
The most popular areas on this site are the trail distance calculators and the outdoor trip logs of my various adventures. In the event of not being able to renew this site, I have shared the code with my fellow hiker Randy Rowell of Raleigh, NC for the 13 trail distance calculators that I have written. If I have to close the site down, they hopefully will be available at:
Unfortionately, if this site goes bye-bye my 100 plus trip logs will be lost. So, I appreciate the likes, hits and revenue that I have made with this web site so far. And I am asking the reader to please help me out by buying something or just visiting some of the advertisers in my store, clicking/tapping on some of the ad banners, donating a small amount via PayPal and just giving me feedback.
Thanks,
Mike C
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