A yearly appeal.
My blog posts are mostly personal posts. Some people don’t care to read about people’s personal lives. I get that. There are plenty of free blogs out there for people to read. Indeed, all of my blogs used to be free. With all of that free material out there about people’s personal lives, why should anyone pay to read mine?
-Everything I write has been created by me. All you see is the finished product. What you don’t see is me madly scribbling ideas in my journal or fighting the text as I get it to make sense, flow well, and be readable. I don’t use AI to help me create my material. I feel that to charge people for something that’s being done with AI would be unethical. It can be a useful tool for some people, but I’m old school. I write, because I like to write.
-My paywalled posts are the ones where I have chosen to get more personal or to go into detail about something. They will also be posts where I share information, things that I have learned that I feel might help others, tips, samples of writing that I may go on to publish, etc. More work goes into those. They take longer to write.
-Our farm is not yet a working farm. I think we’re at least two years out from that. The farm is not making us money right now. There’s definitely potential, but we’re just not there yet. Any extra money that either of us can bring in helps. We’re both on a fixed income.
-I share political commentary. I’m not a journalist. I’m not a wonk, but I do pay attention to what’s going on, and every once in a while, I like to share my point of view. Preparing those posts is more like work. I cite my sources and do other research in preparation for that. That’s more like the writing that I would be doing for pay if I was still freelancing or had pursued a journalism degree.
-I will be pursuing and interviewing people from within the animal rights/welfare/rescue community for Kindness Chronicles. Sometimes, they will be videos, and other times they will be in print. It takes time (and courage!) to “cold call” people from that community, especially some of the more prominent folks, and it takes time to get the posts edited, finalized, and sometimes approved. It doesn’t just take up my time. It takes up theirs, as well. Becoming a paid subscriber would enable me to donate to the organizations I’m hoping to interview. I do that anyway, but extra cash would make it a lot easier.
-Every once in a while, I will be sending handmade gifts to my paid subscribers and offering other perks. (I’m still thinking about how this will work, but it is something that I would like to do in the future.)
Paying small creators on sites like this is an act of kindness and an act of trust. You are letting that person know that you want to hear what they have to say and that you trust them to give you what you are looking for. You are also not trapped forever. You can unsubscribe and go back to free status at any time, should you decide that Five Feathers Farmgirl or any of my other newsletters isn’t your cup of tea. (I won’t get mad. I promise!)
I hope that you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber, but it’s fine if you decide not to. I will not be spamming my readers, beyond the email headers and footers and the paywall notices embedded in the paid posts. One beg letter a year is quite enough, don’t you think? 😉
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