Paid option launched

Wood from Eden is staying the same. With an additional paid option.

Since a long time ago, Anders and I have said that when we reach 1000 subscribers, we will start paid subscriptions. 

We haven't exactly reached the 1000-subscriber mark yet. We are stuck somewhere around 930 and we understand too little about publicity to do anything about that for the moment. So we cheat a little with the numbers and launch a paid version of Wood from Eden today. 

How to do it

Basically, there are two common ways of running a paid substack:

1. Keeping everything free and having a paid option for those who want to contribute. 

2. Dividing the contents of the blog into a free and paid share. 

Number 2 is not an option for us. We always wanted our texts to be widely read and that is still our objective. We also want our blog to be a place for free and open discussions where everyone is welcome to participate. For that reason, everything that Wood from Eden offers for free today will remain free for all the future we can imagine.

Going private

Then a less common option remains: Creating a new type of content specifically for paying subscribers.

The idea is to add a new section to Wood from Eden consisting of more private and light-hearted stuff. There is a vast middle ground between what I find appropriate to tell the whole internet for all time and what I want to keep entirely private. Since our number of paid subscribers will probably never exceed my Dunbar number, the paid section of this blog will constitute a semi-public sphere. 

The point of our paid posts will be, more or less:

1. Saying thanx for the fish to those who are supporting us. 

2. Writing about stuff I'm thinking about but don't want to share with the whole internet. 

If some people with restricted financial means are interested in such more lighthearted stuff, we will do like most Substackers I know of and give access for free. Just send us an email (don't be shy! We don't have the means to pay for subscriptions ourselves and understand that others can be in the same situation). My only concern is that I don't want our paid texts to lie entirely openly on the internet. 

Risky strategy

There is one important risk with this strategy: Some people might want to support our writing, but are really not interested in my apple trees, Anders' sawmill or my thoughts on the relationship between humans and tomcats. I don't want to spam those people with weekly updates about lighthearted stuff they didn't ask for. I don't like to be spammed myself, so I expect the same from others. 

For that reason, I'm not sure whether we should send our posts for paid subscribers by email or only by Substack inbox. Maybe we could write some kind of code in the headline, so supporters who don't like too mundane stuff can block them before they unsubscribe out of exhaustion (believe me, I've done such things myself). I hope for some feedback later on regarding how to send out posts to paying subscribers. 

Plans for the future

Anders and I always wanted to make a living from writing. Before Rob Henderson put my article Becky is depressed on his Twitter and a number of our older posts went viral as an effect, that was a distant dream. Now it is something closer to a cautious plan.

Basically, our hope is to continue doing what we are doing. That is, reading and writing stuff and growing our own food and building our own houses. But I have a certain hope of avoiding starting practical projects for money: For a number of years, I have planned to build a cabin or two and rent them to German tourists. Anders is not completely fond of those plans. But I insist there is a lot of money in the tourism business.

I have nothing against German tourists (although The Simpsons did its best to give them a bad reputation). But If I could choose, I would very much prefer to cater to people who care for free thinking. If our blogging proved capable of generating some income, I would happily scrap all my plans to enter the tourism business in order to spend more time writing. 

Not there yet

I don't know if we will ever get there. It is mostly outside our control. Regardless of whether someone pays us or not, we will read and write as much as possible. The only difference is that we will be able to focus more on intellectual work if it generates some income. In order to make a living from writing, we need to make ourselves known to more people. Although we sometimes make attempts in different directions, we have to admit that we don't really know how to do that. We are very grateful to those who support us with money. But we are also very grateful to those who can help us reach a larger audience through sharing our posts and giving us some publicity advice: Obviously, we don't understand publicity issues very well.

Our only plan is to continue writing. We appreciate everything our readers do to make that plan possible in practical life.

A picture of practical life: Our vegetable land.