Why My Site Has a "Dreaded" Pay Wall
May 24, 2011
First, because writing, arguing, debating and articulating things I believe in is what I want to be doing. And in order to do it as best I can, I need to be able to support myself from it. I believe having a model in place that will at least allow for that possibility is a good decision.
I'm not running a charity and I'm not interested in receiving government subsidies to back my venture. Except for a little Herlihy humor on the homepage, I will not beg for donations (like some wannabe full time bloggers I know who shall remain nameless.)
I know the arduous task of typing in a username and password is tremendously inconvenient (sarcasm), but in real life you can't just walk into a store, grab whatever you like, and walk out without paying. Well, I guess, technically you could, but you'd likely be standing in front of a circuit court judge, your level of affluence dictating the quality of your legal counsel, which, if poor, could land you in a jail cell, where you'd be in danger of getting brokebacked, shanked or auctioned for a pack of cigarettes.
If, on the off chance, you didn't get caught, you would still be a bad person, and even if your legal counsel was Johnny Cochran top notch (pre-mortem), you'd still be doing community service, so stop thieving digital content and find a shred of decency you freeloading hipster.
But YouTube pays people through advertisements!
One, like I'm going to dumb down my convictions in order to make a buck. Which, two, means I'll never get the millions of views required to make a living. (Consider for evidence, this guy, who is quite possibly a genius of our time - and definitely at least 1,000 times smarter than me - and his most watched video on YouTube - which is a BMW commercial by the way - has 1/2 of one percent the views of Charlie Bit My Finger.) God, that's depressing. Three, like I'm remotely interested in enlarging Google's coffers buy signing my content and first, second, and third born sons over to them, in order that they can shave off a few crumbs every month to me. As if (best impact results from saying it like Alicia Silverstone in Clueless.)
In fact, I believe so strongly in Adam Smith style free markets (and by that I mean economic decisions driven by locality, smallness, and fair competition), that I've been building a list of individual people and small businesses that I support.
You might say, "Brandon Muth sucks for charging for his blog" and I say "I'm a determined soul stubbornly fighting the moral hazard created by the beast that is the huge, multi-national, elitist, crony capitalism that has raped and pillaged small enterprises the world over." Sure, you might argue a pay wall will prevent my ideas from reaching coveted spreadability, but my working assumption is that the demonstrable shallowness of viral spreadability circumvents your argument, pay wall or not.
Face it, most of us would rather be entertained than educated. Candor Club is striving to move more people from the former to the latter.
No Sally Struthers, fly-covered-face kid pitch here.
I'm sorry, but the whole "for just the cost of a cup of coffee a day" schtick has been used and abused for too long.
So here are some additional frames with which to show and convince you that CC is no worse a monthly expense than what you're already spending your money on. At best CC could challenge your pre-conceived notions on politics, theology, and culture AND assist in making you smarter.
10 Reasons Paying for Candor Club Is Really Not That Big of a Deal As It's No Worse (and Probably Better) Than the Following:
1. Apps you pay for and use a couple of times, then never open again.
2. Apps you pay for and then blow inordinate amounts of cash on because you develop feelings for the fish in your tank or animals on your farm. "We can't let them starve, Daddy!!!"
3. ATM fees, just so you can save yourself the inconvenience of driving to your bank.
4. An extra shot and favorite syrup at Starbucks.
5. Letting the RedBox DVD sit on your counter for one more night 'cause you're too lazy to get off your fat ass and drive to the neighborhood Walgreen's before 9PM.
6. PayPerView, when you're too lazy to even pull into the Walgreen's parking lot on your way home from work, your justification being the long line of people - two - already standing in the loosely assembled RedBox line.
7. The IKEA ice cream cone you "splurge" on when leaving IKEA, your justification being, well, we did just save a lot of money on our furniture purchase AND they're like 1.19 at McDonalds (and not non-fat).
8. Springing for Chips and Queso at Chilis because you always do Chips and Salsa and "hey, sometimes you just gotta live a little."
9. Reaching for the 3 boxes of Kraft mac n' cheese over the Great Value one's cause, this time you really want the "cheesiest," dammit.
10. Wii Points so you can relive the late 80s and early 90s, showing your kids you've still got mad, crazy skills on 1942, F-Zero, and Super Mario World (while they stare in bored amazement, straining to make sense of the ground breaking 16 bit graphics.)
11. Throwing in a handful of poorly constructed, BPA laden, Chinese plastic crap from the $1 entrance bins at Target because you never know when you could use an extra spray bottle, some weakly adhered sticky notes, miniature slinky, or pack of Spiderman flash cards to teach your kids the finer points of arithmetic.
Well, OK, it was actually eleven, but, hopefully, you get the idea, which is this: you are already quite accustomed to disposing of your disposable income. I promise to do my best to make disposing it with me more intellectually satisfying than any of the above examples.
Thanks to all of you who have freely chosen to be paying members. I appreciate your willingness to be early adopters.
* I have no research to attest to the BPA laden charge, and in all honesty, it is probably a false accusation, but it made the sentence flow better in my opinion. So please refrain from sending me any "cease and desist" letters if you happen to be counsel for Target Inc.