— Most paid-content creators pitch themselves as public services and beg for your donations to support them

I may be guilty of coming off that way, though never explicitly so.

“Please support my work.”

Here’s why I think that’s bullshit (and presumptuous) and what I’ve done to ensure I’m not asking for donations; but rather, I’m offering life-changing and enhancing values, plus some entertainment, in exchange for a subscription payment.

The way of the future is through more paid curated content, not less, and the reason is that someone always has to pay, and it’s increasingly difficult (not profitable) for big corp to fully finance “free” content for all.

It’s been moving that way for a long time.

That’s because all content used to be funneled into manageable baskets with high circulation for advertisers. Broadcast television was like three channels. No Internet, so the paper or two was it for daily news. You had a few radio stations on the dial. There were magazines for niche markets, but the numbers of those that got newsstand exposure was limited by…the size of newsstands.

Even then, you had to pay for a newspaper or magazine, and that’s because of the unit cost of materials, printing, and delivery. Another person watching the TV or listening to the radio doesn’t cost the producers anything (and in fact, makes them money). But every additional print copy and delivery costs additional money.

Now there are a million monetization models and of those, a million hybrids.

Obviously, I prefer an easy subscription model, no ads, no real affiliate deals, sponsorships yada. It’s so simple. Click, pay; click, pay no more. There are 8 billion different mixes of individual interests on the planet and for almost any reasonable niche, there are sufficient numbers of folks to support a content-creating business for it. The problem is not that there aren’t people in the world who would love the content, It’s that fishing for them takes a lot of time and money, especially the less mainstream the content is, and the faster the current it’s swimming against.

(Remind you of anyone?)

… I play some stuff by the numbers and some stuff by ear and feel.

So I’m changing things all the time, but it’s not willy-nilly. In other words, it’s moving toward a thing where the paywall is the front door and not anywhere else inside the theater.

I think there’s a lot of great analogy to think about in terms of brick & mortar stuff. And I’ve used some of it before, talking about having a table of “Free Stuff” right inside your storefront on Main Street.

Another is a show in a theater, as mentioned. The paywall is at the front door. It’s not like you let people in, and they can mill about everywhere, except the auditorium. Or, let’s say they can come in and watch the first 5 minutes of the show, but then have to pay, or leave.

They’ll mostly leave.

Because they’ve been satisfied.

Huh? But they didn’t see the whole show. True.

So they’re not satisfied. Also true.

It’s two different levels or kinds of satisfaction.

They anticipated the show and would probably have been willing to buy a ticket based on that anticipation/expectation alone. But you spared them that by giving them a deal they couldn’t refuse, and what that 1st 5-minutes of free viewing did was satisfy their anticipation.

It’s gone, and can no longer be used to get the ticket sale.

Because the anticipation wasn’t the actual show. It was the idea of the upcoming show and how it’s going to improve or enhance their life in some pleasurable way.

Once the show starts, it’s all a different thing. Each person who purchased the exact same ticket is going to have a different assessment of the value. And, even when the assessment is that the show was a complete dud, refunds of tickets are rarely even asked for.

You pay your money, you take your chances. You never have to purchase another one by the same outfit.

You see, you’re not really selling a ticket to the show at the front door. You’re selling a ticket to the idealized idea of this fantastical spectacle that’s going to leave you in awe.

Once the show starts, that idealized anticipation is no longer for sale, and when the 1st 5-minutes of the actual show as it is up, then you’re selling the other 55 minutes and most people will just walk.

Am I sure about that? Sure am.

Why?

Because the ones who would have gladly paid for that additional 55 minutes are the ones who made absolutely certain they bought advance tickets as soon as available, or at the front door the second the office opened.

Amirite?

… The other thing is this. There are different levels and mixes of the free portion that would appeal to more of the people who didn’t buy advanced tickets.

But what the hell are they, how is it optimized to maximize revenue? Like, OK, how many 1st minutes exactly…3, 5, 7…or at some particularly suspenseful point in the first minutes of each different show…which rooms can they mill about in, how about discounts on snacks, etc?

Nope nope nope.

Just sell advanced tickets and tickets at the front door.

So, what I have done here is made every damn post pretty immediate paywall and going forward, it’s a short description and that’s it. You know, like when you’re scrolling through Netflix? What do you get, about 20 words?

I’m thinking 35.

I’m having ChatGPT-4 do them.

So I want to get as far away as possible from any presumptuous notion that I think my work is important and needs everyone’s support so that I get the word out to more and more people, like a charity.

There are already plenty of charities and no need of pretending to be one of them.