Creators and Voluntary Contributions
Feel the love
I love the idea of people paying for stuff because they love it and not because they happened to glance at some annoying ad.
People have been asking for contributions since the dawn of the internet. It took about 5 minutes after that dawn for people to realize that when you put something on line you are providing value with no compensation.
The capitalist model is 1. take a raw material, 2. add value to it, 3. sell it to someone who does not wish to do the work you did but wishes to use the product. Everybody wins!
I know how to make soap (learned through a research project once) but I definitely don’t want to do it. I’d much rather buy a bar or bottle at the store and go on with my life.
On the other hand, I LIKE to write and I think I have some ideas and stories worth sharing. I take 1. An English language dictionary, 2. arrange some of the words in a pleasing sequence and 3. Sell those words to a major publisher or 3a. give those words away to people who don’t want to go to that trouble or 3b. ask people to pay what they think that arrangement of words is worth or 3c. point people to Amazon where I have a boatload of books for sale.
#3 isn’t really the option it once was if you are a creator. It technically still exists but so do horses, butter churns, spinning wheels, and button hooks.
#3a may not be fair (life is fair? who knew!) Asking for tips may not be efficient or reliable. It may be pointless in your (my!) case. But it is the world we live in and I’m not going to cry about it … I actually like the idea of it. Money is money. It all spends the same, but I like the idea of getting paid by someone who actually liked my work and not by someone who got sucked in by some nearby clickbait.
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If you enjoyed this article throw a couple of bucks in the tip jar via Patreon!
