Comments on: Passing the Hat

By: Sara

Sara — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 01:48:10 +0000

I’m down with what Dara said. I get the donation thing, but I seldom actually do it myself — have never donated to Wikipedia, for e.g.

I don’t know what the answer is. I think you get a name, and that helps. But even that’s not guaranteed. I think you subsidize your creative stuff with other stuff.

Or you figure out what people will pay for. Cookbooks. T-shirts, etc., like over at Achewood: http://achewood.com/.

Or, most likely, a combination of all of that.

We’re not alone, btw. Bands can’t really sell their albums anymore because of free downloads, so they make their money on tour through merch. And are continually told, I’m sure, “Don’t quit your day job.”

By: denniscass

denniscass — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:54:55 +0000

I should know by now to watch about in using the word “bloggers” or “blog.” That sh*t is just too loaded.

I was thinking more of the website as the tool for taking the donations, as opposed as a quid pro quo for services rendered.

My real question has to do with the idea of a donation model. Or a pledge-drive model. If someone consistently brings you the Good Stuff, and they have no viable way of supporting themselves in the marketplace, then would you pay them just for being them?

I know I would in some cases, but I also feel like in other cases I’d want a more traditional money-for-product exchange.

By: pseudosu

pseudosu — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 23:52:25 +0000

I think if your blog is popular enough you can sell ad space. I can’t imagine paying to read a blog, or anyone paying to read mine — as worthwhile and hilarious as it may be… (grin)

By: bets

bets — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:37:10 +0000

Tipping bloggers? BLOGGERS? Here’s a tip. Work on something you can actually sell.

By: JES

JES — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:10:16 +0000

I don’t know — it seems to me that it will still be possible to make a living of it, somehow. The catch: nobody knows what that word “somehow” means. So we’re all just throwing stuff at the… well, “wall” doesn’t quite do it… at the conveyor belt of the Web, hoping something will stick to people’s attention long enough. (And by “we” I don’t mean just writers, but Big Media as well.)

Passing the hat, umm… Tell you one thing: the first time my employer asks me to “volunteer” to be our division’s United Way coordinator will be the last time. It’s got nothing to do with how I view UW, and everything to do with how I feel about asking people for money. (The Missus once hosted a sort of Tupperware party — the product was pots and pans — for friends; it made me cringe, and still does years later, to recall the “closing the sale” moment.)

Hadn’t heard about the Monitor‘s move; thanks for that.

By: Dara

Dara — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:00:44 +0000

I kind of think things are done, and the old writer’s dream of being paid to sit somewhere and express your self is, more or less, over. I think it will be different for those people lucky enough to be born in places with low costs of living and high social services (all the new novelists will be Canadian?) but the farther this goes on the more I conclude that the Victorian – Vietnam era was an aberration, and that contemporary lives are more like medieval ones, dictated by brutal Malthusian economics and thus wiped clean of true leisure or the opportunity for creative thought.

I’d chop the previous sentence into a publishable one, but you’re not paying me to do that, so, bye!