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As it does every year, October raced by in a blur. I realized today that I hadn’t done any Free-supporting for the month. Oops, time to play catch-up!
…So I got to wondering: of all the personal blogs I read, how many of them offer me some way to give them monetary support? Intrigued, I embarked on a wholly un-scientific poll, visiting every one of the 60 personal blogs in my RSS reader and looking all over the homepage for offerings. What I found was very encouraging:
About 2/3 of the personal blogs I read have some way I can support them, and several of them offered more than one way. I was a little surprised by how large a percentage have some kind of product/service for sale, but in retrospect, I don’t know why that should surprise me. All in all, I’m just glad to see all these opportunities!
Cash is a little on the tight side at the moment, as I’ve been traveling this month, but I did make two product purchases from favorite bloggers:
From Patricia, I ordered a couple pieces of fabric – which also gave me an opportunity to support Spoonflower a bit. I do believe there are some Patricia-designed kansazhi in my future.
…And from Christina, I bought a PDF tutorial for making her awesome fabric boxes. I can always use more organization around here, she said, knocking over a large stack of unopened mail.
Anyway. As always, I thank you for witnessing this little project. By the way, did you know that my Mom does monthly community support, too?
I’m always encouraged by your “free” report. I think I’ll do a similar unscientific chart to see what the people I read actually do. One of the challenges is that I tend to read them in a feed reader so I don’t see the home page links, although I do see the ads.
Also I noticed that recently you have a new line about reading the blog post elsewhere and copyright violation. Can you address this in a post as to why you added the tag. Is this a trend in blogging or have you had some theivery which led you to add this? Do you feel that it changes the tone of your post at all?
I always enjoy reading your blog. Thanks for putting for the effort.
Thank you so much, Chppie! I added that line to my RSS feed because I kept finding my blog posts on “feed scraper” blogs. These are blogs where someone republishes the entire feed from another blog without that blogger’s permission. Essentially, a feed scraper blog is hijacking content in hopes of getting traffic to drive ad revenues. It’s so frustrating. So I added that line to make it more prohibitive for people to steal my content. Does it change the tone of how my posts appear in people’s RSS readers and on the email subscriptions? Perhaps, a bit. But sometimes you have to weigh all the factors and make the best decision you can. I do think the amount of hijacking has gone down since I added that line.
I have noticed that happening when following links and arriving at some weird conglomerate website… quite sad. Good practice to include information in each post, because there are many who read exclusively through their RSS readers for sure (like me).
I do realize now that sometimes that makes it harder for people to support you… perhaps sometimes it’s better to ask outright, rather than have obscure buttons on the sidebar, etc :P
It’s a delicate conversation with your readership, really – and we have to start taking into account the fact that so many people are coming to us through RSS readers and never actually seeing our websites. I’ve been considering putting links to my podcasts and ebooks in the footer of each post in my feed (alongside that copyright notice). On the one hand, I don’t love the seeming “pushiness” of that. On the other, you’re right – in an RSS-reader environment, how else are people supposed to know?
I know what you mean…so many possible efforts seem pushy. Of course, every marketer tells you that it seems pushy only because you are aware of every time you ask…but others only see it once or twice – if at all.
I wonder if it’s a good experiment to do… to add related products or services to the end of posts. So when someone finishes reading, they have the opportunity to support you – or explore further really, because it’s an offer that relates. Something I’ve been thinking about for sure!
Are you using WordPress, Linda? Here’s a WP plugin I used to use that lets you create a little library of footers, which you can then plug into any post you like:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-post-footer/
That’s a good point about how we notice our marketing more than the public likely does. And I suspect that in this information-saturated environment, repetition does hold some value. Still… hard to get past my own aversion when I see another blogger being too “market-y” all the time. This is all tricky balance, for sure.
Thank you for your support! :)
I noticed the links as the bottom of the posts when they come through my email. I was wondering why the change. I had no idea about the “hijacking” of posts. How have you even found out that was going on?
Well, I do periodic searches for “craftypod” on Google Blog Search, Blogpulse and Ice Rocket (blog search engines). Since the disclaimer footer has my blog name in it, the scraped posts often show up there. Sometimes readers report them to me, and sometimes I’ll be looking for an old post of mine and Google it, only to find it on a blog other than mine.
Grrrrr, :-/
Oh my goodness! I did see your order in Spoonflower (thank you!) but I didn’t expect to see this here on my blog rounds. Thank you again! :)
I have supported a couple of my online friends this past month and it definitely does feel like money well spent. (Can we say CraftyPod podcast? :))
I really, really appreciate your support, Patricia – and what a total treat to get to meet you in person at long last!
Hello there, I’ve been lurking on your site for couple of days (Kim Werker tipped me about an old podcast (#108) that discusses Free) meaning to get in touch and ask for your opinion what do you think about the match between crafter’s community and Flattr. To my great surprise I found a Flattr button in this post :)
Do you see Flattr potentially becoming one alternative for crafters to support their hobby? Your research shows that only 2% are trying donations, what’s your gut feeling – does it point at donation model being a failure or are people just too modest to ask for donations?
By the way, Kim guest posted today on the general topic here: http://blog.flattr.net/2011/11/kim-werker-free-vs-fee-in-the-crafters-scene/)
Hi, Slim – I just saw Kim’s post on Flattr this morning, and it’s really nice to get to chat with someone from Flattr.
Here’s where I am with Flattr: I do think it offers a simple, low-cost way for crafters to express tangible appreciation for each other’s work. But our community is really oriented toward the Etsy-shop model at the moment. I wish we would branch out into supporting each other’s blog content, since we usually can’t afford to support the stores of everyone we know online. But we need a whole lot more people using Flattr to make it a viable option in our community.
I see crafters periodically putting out calls to find out who else is using the service, but sadly, I find myself Flattr-ing the same handful of people month after month. I haven’t been able to get a read on why so few have adopted it. (Would anyone like to chime in on that question here?)
If I’m being 100% honest, I have to say that I think there is a certain modesty about asking for donations. I think that, as a community, we may have a bit of a disconnect between producing our creative work and valuing it highly enough. I also think there’s a widespread belief of “I can’t afford to support others.” And I think we’re still wrestling with this whole idea that the lovely, freebie-filled internet landscape may not be sustainable unless we start finding ways to support it.
That’s a complicated reply, I know. It’s a complicated and evolving question. I hold to the belief that at some point, the donation model will catch on among crafters. It really does seem to me that the idea of chipping in small amounts for our friends is nicely aligned with the spirit of our community.