Craig Mod on Membership

This is an interesting and honest post by Craig Mod on how his paid membership program faired in 2019. He breaks down his costs and what advice he would give to other writers/artists who are interested in becoming more independent. I particularly like this bit, too:

I am tremendously grateful to everyone who has joined. I realize not everyone can afford to join, and I realize we’re all a bit bombarded by “memberships” and “subscriptions” these days. But ultimately — this is a good thing! A scant ten years ago this ecosystem barely existed. Now it’s ever-more normalized. This feels healthy. Directly supporting writers, artists, musicians, software developers, et cetera, feels like the final remaining puzzle piece of the last 30 years of independent creation. Computers democratized design in the ’80s/’90s, the web democratized publishing in the ’00s, and now proper payments infrastructure is democratizing creative sustainability.

I’ve been thinking along these lines and with Adventures for some time now. I somewhat like that there’s no money that crosses hands with my newsletter since it’s for fun and I don’t want it to be a job. But with that said, I often imagine what it could become if I threw more time and energy into that project.