On This Site & Financial Stability

13 Jun 2024 | ~3 minute read

I've been thinking about the future of this site recently, and I wanted to pen down some of the thoughts that have been rattling around my grey matter.

This all came from a posts by people like Manu and Jarrod. After reading those posts, I started thinking about what my future goals for this site were.

Sustainability

While thinking about the goals for this site, a recurring theme was sustainability.

Over time, this site has become my gateway to the internet. As well as blog posts, I post my notes here, which are distributed to my socials automatically. It's the same story for my watch log. Then there's things like my projects and my guestbook.

This is the single source of truth for pretty much everything I do online. So making this thing sustainable is very important to me as the site grows.

Part of that sustainability is financial sustainability. Now, I have a full-time job that pays me very well, so making money will never be the primary driving force for me and this site. However, if I can make a little bit of extra money on the side that; a) pays for the ongoing costs for this site, and b) gives me the warm and fuzzies that people are enjoying what I do enough to give me a bit of their hard earned cash. It would be amazing.

Taking Ko-Fi more seriously

I've had a Ko-Fi page for a few years now, but I've never given it much thought. I just signed up, slapped some info on there and left it alone.

It's been relatively successful; I have a few people signed up for the monthly membership, and a larger number who have sent me one-off donations. Most of which have come about because of Simple.css.

But in order to even get close to financial sustainability, I need to take my Ko-Fi page more seriously. So with that in mind, I've made a few changes to both my Ko-Fi page, and this site.

Firstly, I've removed the other membership option in favour of a single One a month option. Which allows people to sign up for $1/month, or as much as they wish to pay.

I've also added a few perks, chief among them is access to my drafts. I've setup a private page on this site where all my drafts are listed. Members have the ability to view the drafts (as well as in-progress work), vote on them, and add ideas of their own.

I'm also planning on being more active in Ko-Fi to give members more access to what's floating around my brain.

Anyone who is a member, or has donated via Ko-Fi will also be listed on my supporters page in perpetuity, even if you cancel your membership.

If you think your name is missing from the supporters page, please let me know.

Finally, I'm planning to do some creative work in the near future - some website themes that I plan to sell. Members will have a significant discount on these too.

Final thoughts

I'm hoping these changes will provide a platform for me to gain some opinions on my ideas from people who are invested in what I do, and will allow for you, my readers, to feel more engaged too.

If you enjoy my content and feel generous, please consider supporting what I do. I'd be ever so grateful. ❤️

Visit my Ko-Fi page

• Meta