This blogging business stinks. You can’t make any money at it. Advertising revenues are plummeting, readership is down, and those readers that are left only want to read heartwarming stories of human compassion or stories about 9.5 rated wines under $8. So what’s a blogger to do?

I’ll start a wine club!

But of course, I have my journalistic integrity to worry about. So to insulate this desperate move to generate capital, I want to assure you that I’m merely exploiting the Vinography brand and nothing more. To be honest, it’s not even me that will be exploiting it. I’ve licensed the Vinography name to someone else to exploit. I’ll just be getting all the money.

Here’s how it works. These people (who shall remain nameless, just to keep up the thinly veiled illusion that this wine club is actually run by yours truly) agreed to pay me a boatload of money up front, and then a cut of all ongoing revenues for the right to print Vinography all over some cheap cardboard boxes, a few glossy postcards, and to put my wine reviews all over a web site advertising the wine club.

I’ll be advertising the hell out of the wine club at every opportunity here on Vinography, too, yet all the while assuring you (with astonishing truthiness) that my editorial integrity is intact because I’m not actually choosing the wines that you get every month!

Yes, that’s right. This other company gets to figure out what third-rate wines they can buy in large enough quantities and at a great enough discount so that they make fantastic margins by shipping you an assortment of 6 bottles a month at a rate of $90 (or $180 for any of you who still have actual money to throw away).

My cut will be direct deposited into my Swiss Cayman Island bank account, providing an extra level of protection for my objectivity.

And what do you get apart from nice shiny bottles that some winery was incredibly relieved to offload to someone at a discount? I’m glad you asked.

You get the feel-good, ego-boosting, cultural cachet of knowing that you don’t just belong to any wine club, you belong to the Vinography wine club. My wine knowledge doesn’t actually translate into picking great wines for you, it translates into the warm, fuzzy, self-congratulatory feeling you get every time you pop open another bottle, as well as the chance to look down your nose at the leftist intellectual snobs who get their wine from, of all places, the New York Times, those rabid ultra-conservative warmongers who buy their wines from the Wall Street Journal, or the hippie pervert foodies in San Francisco who buy their wines from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Me. With a little bit lot of you your money. we’re changing the wine world the direction of my 401k.