Yesterday, I was able to get a subscription model setup on the weblog. I’m not entirely sure the weblog subscription market will ever end up being like the Substack market. Some market advantage exists for Substack as a marketplace of readers interested in independent writing. You see people who subscribe to a few different writers and that amplification effect helps build wider audiences for some writers. Certainly, some writers have audiences that are bigger than any one platform and they can go just about anywhere and be successful. Somebody in that category might very well be able to run a WordPress newsletter with a subscription model. They would have to make sure it is always up and running. Consistency and stability would be a necessary part of keeping that system running in the long term.
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We are back on track with a block of writing happening each week. Right now posts are staged for the next 5 weeks out till July 14, 2023. I woke up this morning and worked on the next block of writing in the backlog. Got it recorded and scheduled to both Substack and the blog.
I’m super curious about this feature that Twitter has rolled out called “Subscriptions” to create a monthly income stream for content creators. The most interesting part of the equation is that you have to set the monthly subscription prices and you cannot change it later. Filling out the entire form took a couple of minutes. It required completing these 2 prompts:
“Take a minute to say hello”
This bonus content will probably be a bit of inside baseball related to my writing efforts. I have been writing blogs for 20+ years.
“Describe the perks you’ll offer”
You will get a few more blocks of content that would otherwise appear on the blog. I’ll try to provide a better look at what is happening.
My monthly cost would have been $2 as a subscription. That seemed superior to the $1 minimum amount they would have allowed. In theory somebody could have selected the maximum value in the drop down of $239 as the target monthly subscription rate. That seems like an awful lot of subscription cost to get access to some bonus content in Tweet form each month. Maybe somebody who breaks news on a regular basis or a really interesting public figure like Michael Burry (think Big Short fame) could command that maximum value. You could subscribe to most of the major streaming content services for that cost.
Assuming the Twitter account devoted to Subscriptions is an accurate source…
In total the system has 3,858 users with accounts that are enabled for the monthly subscription feature. That is actually a larger number than I was expecting. A screenshot is included here as I’m sure the overall numbers will change go forward.
Apparently, back on May 12, 2023 they reduced the application steps from 27 to 4…
You asked (loudly), we listened.
We’ve reduced the signup flow for creators from 27 steps to just 4.
It’s never been easier to earn a living on Twitter. Tap on “Monetization” in settings to apply today.
— Creator Subscriptions (@Subscriptions) May 12, 2023
I’m not a paying subscriber to any Substack at the moment. During the height of the Twitter related drama that was occurring I did subscribe to Platformer for a bit. Earlier this morning I enjoyed a free post from a different publication and hit the like button and was about to add a comment. Unfortunately, they have a setting on Substack that presents me with a prompt, “Only paid subscribers can comment on this post.” It is of course followed by a suggestion to upgrade to a paid subscription to unlock the ability to comment. In this case the author simply won’t get my thoughts or receive any communication from me on the subject. I appreciate the idea that people could gain income from writing a Substack. Independent journalism and writing in general is always a good thing to encourage. Some of that output might not be very good, but that is how the great sorting of attention brings things forward and pushes others to the background.
Sometimes things that I write pick up a bit of attention and people look at them, but the vast majority of the content that I have produced over the last 20 years has been pushed to the background during the great sorting of attention online. That is perfectly fine with me for the most part. I’m writing for the purpose of observation and mostly for my own learning and personal growth. My methodology of processing complex ideas at times involves writing about it to work on advancing my consideration.
Throughout the last 2 years I have added 16 different Substack’s to my recommendations list apparently.
They all provide a variety of different insights to my email inbox throughout the weeks or in some cases months. They arrive at a variety of intervals. Some Substacks are way more active than others. My efforts for example arrive every Friday. That makes it a weekly Substack and it has pretty much always been that way. I know that the team over at Substack would really like us to interact with the content on the smartphone applications or in the feed as a collection of content. I’m guessing that most people still read and consume the content as emails either as they arrive or when cleaning out an inbox.
Today should be a good day to really focus on things. I have been on a kick to remove subscription services recently. Certainly some household services have to remain and they bill monthly. Somehow for an ineffable reason Netflix survived the recent culling. We have been paying for Netflix since they used to send me Farscape DVDs back when we resided in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It has been a long time. We have had Disney Plus since the start of that streaming service and it has all the Marvel movies I like to watch at the end of the day. Initially I thought a limit existed to how many times I would watch the Iron Man franchise, but that apparently does not appear to be the case at all. Recently I even found the listing in Disney Plus with the entire Marvel film universe in order based on the movie chronology. Armed with that information I started watching again from the start and moving my way from left to right on that list slowly one film at a time. That started after I finished watching the entire Frasier (1993 to 2004) series again on a different streaming service. Outside of that content sometimes I get on a Top Chef watching kick and that lasts until the content runs out. It’s really the window right after dinner where I want to watch something for a bit before moving on to other things.
All of that was prompted by my recent relentless focus on removing subscription services. Speaking of being prompted for output, my writing enterprise of starting to type in the morning is about what happens when the prompt is empty. At the moment of zerospace, where will an empty prompt go from the spark of imagination. That is really what I’m after trying to understand and trying to figure out each and every day. I sit down with no agenda or defined path forward. Within the parlance of large language models I don’t have a prompt. Instead I sit for a moment in the resplendent pleasure of reaching that zerospace before beginning to move toward a newly created spark of something. A lot of times that something is not anything spectacular or even the right path to be taken at that point in the journey. Frequently, I end up writing about the process of writing. That trajectory is not intentional. However, I do allow it to happen. Even the very process of stringing a few words together begets more writing. That is where I’m trying to get to during each writing session. I’m trying to get to the point where I have walked down the path from zerospace to productivity. Opening the door to creativity and productivity is essential for the writing project to begin in earnest.
Today might just be one of those super productive days where I wake up and produce two pages of weblog quality prose before jumping right into the next thing on the list to accomplish. That is one of those things you just have to appreciate. I have been considering spending some of my evening time writing a fiction series, but I’m not sure if that will end up happening. Generally speaking my academic writing backlog is so full and overwhelming that I need to just focus on that effort. Knowing that I often end up running down other tracks of effort as sometimes that just seems more fun than working within the proper work breakdown structure.