Mercury Conjunct Eros and the $150,000 Question

Hello, I’ll be back Tuesday morning. This edition needs to stay up top one more day. I am grateful to my longtime reader Anthony Ocone for sending this Wikipedia link about the Canadian philosopher Harold Innis, apparently one of my ideological grandfathers on the role of advertising on our consciousness and civilization.

Dear Friend and Reader:

FOR YEARS, I have kept something secret from you, which as you know is not my style: it costs about $150,000 a year to run Planet Waves. In case you wonder why we market our services, experiment with new ideas and go out of our way to reach you, this solves the mystery.

Eric Francis

I’ve been telling this to a few people lately just to gauge their reaction, and most are pretty surprised at this fact. It sounds like a lot of money, but we have a full time professional staff that handles many of our daily routines; we do our own programming; we run a petty tight ship, with a full time business manager, an excellent accountant and two guardian angel lawyers who keep an eye on us and our activities. All articles that are published are professionally edited and proofread, many of them twice.

We manage our ideas, our visual materials and our content. We do research and we fact check. Everyone goes through a lengthy training process and we hold ourselves to the standard of professionalism you would expect from any of our much larger news colleagues. Like them, we are not perfect. But we make a valiant effort.

We pay our writers and photographers as much as we are capable. You would be amazed how far we stretch our budget; most people with business experience are stunned that we do all of this for so little. When you figure how much it costs to produce a 15-second TV commercial, $150Gs sounds like spare change.

For a freelance writer and astrologer (such as I am), it’s a good bit of money. We don’t have an investor; we barely have any debt; we’ve built Planet Waves on love and the pay-as-you-go method. Everyone who gets paid works above the call of duty. Some of our most creative work is donated. Chelsea, our business manager, could make a waterproof tent out of a dollar bill. (I want to co-write a book with her called Livin’ Lean — it could send her kid to college.)

In 2002, we created Planet Waves Weekly (now Planet Waves Astrology News) and began offering subscriptions. That helped get you involved in supporting and building the project and we began (as promised) a long, still-in-progress journey of improving the publication, its staff and its infrastructure. We have established our own post office and created a custom client database that processes orders and gives us product flexibility. We offer actual, on the phone customer service during the business week and online tech support nearly around the clock. We are very much a daily publication and take that commitment seriously. There is never a feeling of nobody home at Planet Waves.

There is an old expression that freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. Planet Waves is the modern equivalent of owning a printing press. Along with owning this digital press comes a daily yoga of how we handle our responsibility to the public, and how we respond to the spiritual instructions that helped us create this venue for art and ideas. We understand the uncertainty of the times we are living through. We understand how scared, confused, inspired, curious, hung up, excited and willing to grow our readers are, and we respond to that.

Free press is extremely important right now. It’s very difficult to get a straight story from the mainstream media. Journalists are compelled to mask their real views on important subjects, and they are often in the best position to observe what’s really happening. As my reader, I am committed to giving you the truth as I see it, and to fearing no issue, theme or subject. And there are exceedingly few professional journalists capable of writing about astrology fairly, or taking an astrological perspective.

When I was at the United Astrology Conference — which we covered in this space for all of our readers, including pre-subscribers — many people commented to me about the quality of the work we do. Some people noticed we are doing real journalism, which happens to be spiritually and astrologically literate. But in particular many commented on the quality of our photography. This is a conscious plan, to create an aesthetically pleasing environment for you to visit in.

As part of that aesthetic, we don’t offer advertising. This may seem ridiculous, but all of us at Planet Waves feel that it would be a serious intrusion on your reading experience. And it would make us beholden to somebody besides you; and we take the integrity of our relationship to our subscribers as a top priority. Instead, we depend on readers to subscribe to our premium services to keep the bills paid. At the time we began offering subscriptions, we also chose to offer comp subscriptions to those who cannot afford to pay. I jokingly describe us as a business that doesn’t discriminate against people without money. I think people use our comp offer responsibly, and I would not want to be offering anything for sale without also offering comps.

We have some firm guidelines about how we offer our work. For example, we don’t scare you (“click here to find out how to avoid making the biggest mistake of your life”) and we don’t make false promises (“I see love in your charts, but you have to sign up to find out when”). Nearly every other astrology site sells its services using these bottom-trawler kind of tricks.

When revenue falls short, I personally make up the difference. Let’s just say this gesture has taught me the extent to which I believe in what I am doing. My outside writing fees, astrology consulting fees and donated work make sure that we are here for you every day. I estimate that I put twice as much money into the company as I take out. And this, in short, is why I personally need you to subscribe to one of our services, and to stay subscribed as long as you feel it’s worth it.

You come here and dip into the spiritual and artistic well. You get straight talk about sex and the astrology of sexuality. You rely on the many ways we feed you. You rely on our dependability and professionalism, and if we make a mistake or misstep, we hear about it fast. You browse through our many archives and features — everything from Options to Hysterectomy to Lunations to Psychsound, our civil rights blog. I know you appreciate that we’re here every day, every single day approaching 10 years in December.

We offer all kinds of odd, useful things — such as the daily minor planet aspects that (trust me here) no other astrologers can calculate with any accuracy. We have pushed the edge of this field of research and continue to develop our Planet Wiki feature.

We’re the only astrology website that I know of that is professionally accredited press; Planet Waves is recognized as a news service by the European Union, and I am personally accredited by the writer’s unions in England and the United States. That’s a fancy way of saying that I have this thing called access, and that when truly significant news breaks, you’re going to read about it here. Meanwhile, you can follow the news daily with Judith Gayle’s Political Waves feature. We do some pretty meaningful public service work as well.

I read your astonishing letters of goodwill and gratitude, and I try to return them all. (Click on this link and see what our subscribers and clients have to say.)

Now I am asking you to put your money where your love is and sign up for one or more of our services. If you are already a subscriber, thank you — and I trust that what you’ve just read is a reminder of how important your subscription renewal is, and how important it is to get your friends on board. Your subscription makes a difference. If we doubled our subscriber base, we would become a profitable company. Given how many people forward our materials to others, it certainly seems that the interest is there.

If you cannot afford the full fare, call up Chelsea at (877) 453-8265 and make her an offer. If you can’t afford anything right now, write to clare – at – planetwaves.net and request a comp. If you’re one of those folks who walks around spending money and buys the things you want and need, and if you show up here on a regular basis, please sign up and enjoy the benefits of our truly excellent services.

If you are feeling visionary, and you’re in a position to offer a major gift, which you may earmark for a special project (for example, photography, investigative journalism, astrology education or sex education), that would be most welcome — please call Chelsea directly.

Whether you sign up or not, whether I’m kicking in tens of thousands of dollars a year or making a good income from this website, I’m going to come to work every day. I’m going to recruit, hire and train the best people so that the work you get is top-quality professional stuff, and so that the people leave Planet Waves with a portfolio and real editorial training. We will be here even if you’re not.

But while you’re here, let’s be here together.

Yours & truly,

Eric Francis

PS, you can help by posting our link from your website or blog, and by consistently referring us readers. If you want some banners to use, write to anatoly – at – planetwaves.net and he will send you some. We encourage linking to and blogging about our stuff; we appreciate it if you send our links around to your friends and tell them what we’re up to. So yes — please spread the word, and contact me directly at info – at – planetwaves.net if you have any ideas for how we can convey this message better.

PPS, today Mercury is conjunct the asteroid Eros. That sounds like a lot of fun; it sounds like a love letter. It’s also my mother’s birthday, so hi Mom!Minor Planet Aspects for Saturday 31 May 2008

Apollo (2+ Leo) quintile Sedna (20+ Taurus)
Venus (7+ Gemini) trine Sisyphus (7+ Libra Rx)
Juno (24+ Sagittarius Rx) quincunx Admetos (24+ Taurus)
Mars (11+ Leo) semisquare Hades (26+ Gemini)
Venus (8+ Gemini) opposite Pholus (8+ Sagittarius Rx)
Mars (11+ Leo) sesquiquadrate Galactic Center (26+ Sagittarius)
Pandora (10+ Scorpio Rx) septile Logos (19+ Virgo Rx)
Jupiter (21+ Capricorn Rx) square Eris (21+ Aries)
Venus (8+ Gemini) semisquare 1992 QB1 (23+ Aries)
Mercury (20+ Gemini Rx) septile Mars (12+ Leo)
Eros (20+ Gemini) semisquare Asbolus (5+ Taurus)
Psyche (14+ Scorpio Rx) quintile Saturn (2+ Virgo)
Vesta (18+ Aries) sesquiquadrate Hylonome (3+ Sagittarius Rx)
Venus (8+ Gemini) quincunx Hidalgo (8+ Scorpio Rx)
Eros (20+ Gemini) quintile Saturn (2+ Virgo)
Pallas (4+ Taurus) sesquiquadrate Logos (19+ Virgo Rx)
Apollo (3+ Leo) sesquiquadrate Quaoar (18+ Sagittarius Rx)
Mars (12+ Leo) sextile Atlantis (12+ Libra Rx)
Mercury (20+ Gemini Rx) conjunct Eros (20+ Gemini)

Today’s Oracle takes us to March 20, 2006

Libra – daily from the Jonathan Cainer series. It’s interesting how many of these columns from the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror are in the database, and how infrequently they come out. This appeared in the Daily Mail.

You may be concerned that someone else’s changes are going to spill over into your life, even causing you to lose control of your affairs. You can always distance yourself. But that would be sending a false message that could complicate things. It would seem the real difference you need to work out is that you’re a lot calmer under pressure, and are willing to take bigger risks. But you may be surprised over the next week or two how willing certain partners or loved ones are to rise above their own fears and take a real chance on life, and on you.

1 thought on “Mercury Conjunct Eros and the $150,000 Question”

  1. From someone who has volunteered for this publication, the sense of connection and accomplishment is beyond compare. The sheer thrill of seeing something I’ve photographed, used with an article or as a cover brings joy I cannot describe. Even proof reading or researching is a blast when you know what the outcome will be.

    Thank you Eric, and Planet Waves for allowing me to be a tiny part of your family and journey.

    With Love on a perfect Saturday morning,

    drexcel

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