I love moving forward into the new world with this blog, bedlamfarm.com, now eight years old and growing. Wow. When it began, I have 200 people on the site each month, and now there are nearly 160,000 each month, I don’t know how many on Facebook. The blog is a mirror, a reflection of my life, the evolution of writing, the world we live in.
As is customary, I’m offering in update on where things stand. First, the mobile Web design for smartphone users is up and running, and a hit, thank you for all the nice messages. My Open Group at Bedlam Farm is successful, cohering beautifully into a creative work sharing site. I’ve pared it down to 450 people or so, it is better. I’m thinking of creating two or three much smaller groups to allow for more teaching, work shopping, encouraging and communicating on a personal level. They would be limited to 15 or 20 people, rotating in and out. Subjects might include blogging, photography the arts, animal love. More later. The group is capped right now, but will be opened up again later.
Thank you for all of the subscriptions to bedlamfarm.com, they are appreciated. I love being paid for my work – and to be honest, I need to be paid for my work – and the $3 option has been helpful to people who are pressed financially. The most popular choice has been the $5 subscription option, then the $60 a year choice.
These have all been on Paypal, in the next few days it will be possible to sign up for the blog using your credit card of choice. I see there are Paypal people and credit card people, and you can each have your own way here. The credit card buttons are up, but they are not yet operational, the wizards at Mannix Marketing are on it.
As I announced earlier, the blog will remain free – permanently – to those who can’t afford to pay for it, or simply don’t wish to. I think it would be wrong to cut off or limit access to the blog to people who have been following it and supporting my work for some time, I just couldn’t do it. They will always be welcome here. My goal is to get three to five percent of the people reading the blog to subscribe, this is considered very good in Internet marketing terms in the period when we are making a transition to an Internet where all the good stuff was free, to one where people pay small amounts to access it. It feels good to me, and clearly, to most of you as well. Thanks for that. I resisted it for years and I am still not sure why.
Publishing has changed rapidly and while I am committed to my paper books, they are a smaller part of my life and publishing revenues have declined sharply due to digital publishing and other factors. This blog will soon be my primary means of making a living, along with e-books and every year or so, hardcover books. And I like it, I love working on it, writing on it, sharing my photos. People who wish to subscribe on Paypal can do so now, I’m $200 away from my weekly goal, otherwise the credit cards will be up and running shortly. Stay tuned, more podcasts are coming as well this Fall.
The blog is the new book, my new living memoir and it is time to be paid for the work that goes into it. It is expensive to maintain and the subscriptions make it and the photography and maintenance and mobile web designs possible. I think I’m doing well in my transition to the new writer’s life, and you are all a big part of that. Those NPR fund-raising drives used to bug me, but I am more sympathetic now.