After quitting his job to become a Professional Blogger, Jason Kottke has just published a post updating his readership on how his 3 week fund drive went. Looks like he make his goal (almost) although he doesn’t give actual figures:
‘As I mentioned in my initial post about all this, my goal was to make “about 1/3 to 1/2 of my former yearly salary to support my efforts here for a year” and I very nearly reached that goal, although not quite as you can see from the graph. But it’s close enough that I’m not going to worry too much about it and I won’t need to supplement my income with any freelance work, which means I can focus on the site full-time, something I’m very pleased about. I probably could have made more had I pushed harder or guilted people into giving a little more to “put me over the top”.’
In answering the question – ‘is this a sustainable business model for independent media on the Web?’ he writes:
‘The short answer is probably no, with a few caveats. I did make enough to support myself for a year, but I’m already worried about next year (if I decide to ask for contributions again at that point) because there’s going to be the inevitable drop-off in year-over-year contributions. I think several people who contributed this time around did so as an experiment or as “back payment” for the previous 6-7 years of content and may not be so likely to contribute next time. And some are going to decide it’s not worth it to them to keep up their “subscription”.’
His post has a lot of interesting tidbits – especially when you get further down to the lessons that he’s learned from the experience where he actually suggests
- consider advertising (its easier, more stable and more lucrative)
- work on community (people are more willing to invest in you if they are part of it
- work on growing traffic (pretty obvious but its true)
- keep costs low (again obvious stuff but its the beauty of blogging)
Read more at Micropatron follow-up report: how things went (kottke.org)
