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Personal Musings

Buy Me a Coffee

How you can support my writing and creative endeavors as an independent writer

wildflowers at Hawksbill Mountain in Shenandoah National Park
Wildflowers at Hawksbill Mountain. Shenandoah National Park. Photo by Jeffrey Pillow

After getting feedback on a recent post, I’ve decided to switch gears a smidge on implementing a paywall directly to my site. This allows me to keep my site free-to-all to read while giving you, my reader, multiple options to support my work.

Regardless of which option you choose, you can visit my Buy Me a Coffee page to contribute.

Monthly membership

If you are able, I would kindly ask you to consider a monthly membership. The cost is $5/month.

Tip jar

There’s a second option which is a tip jar. If you read a post that you find value in or a good laugh, now you can show your support by dropping a few bucks in my hat. How often you choose this option is up to you. It does not require a monthly membership.

What I believe:

  • Musicians should get paid for their music,
  • Artists should get paid for their art, and
  • Writers should get paid for their words.

Count me in the latter group. It’s why I joined as a writer on Medium recently (another option for you to support my work). I’ve written for fancy and not-so-fancy magazines, newspapers, websites, Fortune 500 corporations and so on, but I’m an independent writer at heart. I don’t believe in gatekeepers. I believe in direct access with my readers and Kevin Kelly’s theory of 1,000 True Fans.

I chose Buy Me a Coffee for a few reasons:

  1. As a supporter, you don’t need to sign up for an account (unlike with Patreon and Ko-Fi). It’s quick and easy.
  2. Buy Me a Coffee allows me to roll out Extras to my supporters who choose a monthly membership. I plan to get creative with this, but access to non-site content will be top of the list. This may be early or exclusive access to short stories, poetry, 1:1 coaching, and so on.
  3. It’s secure as secure can get and allows for multiple payment types (credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay).

One last nudge

I can’t speak for you but I can find many ways to blow $5 a month in less than five minutes by rolling on over to 7-Eleven or Dairy Queen. I quit eating ice cream (I know) but my kids still ride the ice cream train and a small Blizzard now costs more than $5. That’s nuts (wait, that’s an extra charge)! And people wonder why that Oliver Anthony song debuted number one out of nowhere.

So buy me a coffee, will you? It’s a metaphor for supporting my work monetarily. I’m actually a tea drinker 🙂