Over the years, I have struggled with how to balance my deep, internal drive to create this website, with the costs of time, energy, and money required to do so. Do I charge for content? Do I pursue sponsors or advertisers? Or do I just continue to let it be a fully self-supported pet-project that I merely dabble with in my extremely limited free time?

To be perfectly honest, none of these options ever fully appealed to me. On some deep philosophical level, I just never felt right about charging for content or selling space to advertisers. Yet I also didn’t feel it would ever become what I believed it could be without some sort of support.

So, I thought, why not make all of my content & ideas completely free and open – just give it all away. And make a way for readers to donate if they were so inclined. To make the site 100% reader-supported through 100% voluntary donations.

It was a scary thought. I wondered what would happen if someone stole my ideas or my content. I was called crazy and told that it would never work. But something inside me said to just do it anyway.

Was it a risk? Yes. But I didn’t see any better alternative. Or at least not any worse one.

So I pressed on. Silently building the container that would eventually house the 8 million things I wanted to share with the world.

And then I found brainpickings.org and Maria Popova. The first legitimate example I would discover that was succeeding in exactly what I wanted to do. Researching, writing, curating, and beautifully presenting a variety of interesting content. And doing it entirely donation-based, reader supported.

It is in this spirit, inspired by the simple elegance and brilliant eloquence of my counterpart Maria Popova, that I invite you to contribute to my website, and to hers, as well as to any others you may find valuable and worthy in the future.

Click here to contribute now.

 

 

More to come…

  • Why not charge for content?
  • Why not advertise or seek sponsorship?
  • What’s wrong with self-supporting?
  • Thoughts on Faith, Trust, & Creating something of Value