Please Support Our Patreon Campaign... And Listen To Our Conversation With Patreon's Founder Jack Conte
from the techdirt-podcast-episode-100 dept
As we've discussed a few times recently, the online advertising market has seen the bottom fall out of it. And that means we need to rely on other forms of support much more regularly -- including affiliate sales and direct crowdfunding. Frankly, direct crowdfunding is certainly the most pure of these options. It builds a stronger connection between us and our community and removes any whiff of third party interference in that relationship. In the past, we've done time-limited campaigns, and we may do that again as well, but I've been writing about Patreon since it launched (and Jack Conte since long before that), and have been impressed with how the platform has grown and changed over time -- and am also impressed with Jack's vision for where the company can continue to go (some of which you can hear in the podcast discussion).
Anyway, I hope many of you will agree to support us via Patreon. We have a variety of perks we're offering -- some of which we've offered directly in our Insider Shop for years, but some of which are new and unique to the podcast -- including a special backers' only episode that we'll be releasing in January. We have lots of stuff we'd love to do, with both the podcast and the website, and plenty of great stories to tell, but we need your help to do it. Please support our efforts.
Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes or Google Play, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: crowdfunding, jack conte, podcast
Companies: patreon, techdirt
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Re:
Are existing monthly donations handled by Beacon in any way?
If you're just supporting us directly via the Insider Shop, then no. Those are handled directly by us, and you don't need to change anything. For people who were paying us monthly via Beacon, they should have received notice a while back that those charges were no longer happening.
This is just another, different way for people to support what we do (and, in particular, to support the podcast).
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Blocking Tor users?
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Choices
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Re: Choices
Mike, do you have a preference for which vehicle receives support. I assume support directly through the Insider Shop would do the most good.
We want people to feel comfortable supporting us however they want -- that's the most important thing. Lots of folks seem to really like Patreon and we were interested in using the platform. So for people who want to support us that way, it's great. In terms of direct monetary contribution, sure, supporting us directly via the Insider Shop means more of the money goes directly to us (we still have some transaction costs) and it's more integrated into the site. But, really, it's up to everyone what they're most comfortable doing.
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If a moderately successful "talk show" channel on YouTube like the Rubin Report can pull in $30K/month on Patreon, that might be the kind of audience worth tapping into.
While many of us hate seeing the current trend of online speech being concentrated into a few megacorporations, it's the unfortunately financial reality of either joining the empire or being crushed by it, as remaining a completely independent website, and succeeding at it, is not getting any easier. It's worth noting that many of the financially successful YouTube channels all seem to feed off each other.
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