Re:“Open source” is broken
by xena on Saturday December 11, 2021 @05:02PM
(#29524676)
I actually do make a very small amount of money for my posts. I make about $120 per month on Patreon (I more accurately make $175-ish per month but I also donate back to the amount of about $55 per month to other projects) and this blog is frequently brought up in interviews, which means that it becomes an impetus for people to hire me. I'm not sure how to quantify that, but either way it offsets the costs of hosting the server, even though I have kind of a ridiculous level of overkill (Ryzen 5 3600, 64 GB of ram) for that server.
As for the time to write these posts, yeah I'm making nowhere near my market value for this kind of writing. I've considered adding ads to my blog, but I still feel kind of philosophically uncomfortable with "selling out" like that. My job really does make sure that all my needs are accounted for and I am blessed to be in a state where I have financial excess and can make additional private contributions to other projects.
At some level though my blog is really a sink for my anxiety. Just being able to put words out into the void and knowing that someone is gonna read them helps a lot when it comes to making things a lot less scary in the world. I really do just throw them over the wall when I'm done though lol. Sometimes I'll do a typo pass but most of the time I write well enough that my first pass turns out to be the last pass unless some critical problem is found. This doesn't happen often though.
I do occasionally make volumes out of my writing and sell them on Itch (https://withinstudios.itch.io/), but I have only ever made $250 on there in total; nowhere near enough to fund the creation of the media in question. I also don't advertise my Itch shop very well so that may be partially on me.
Mostly though the goal of this post was to make people think about the issue. I have succeeded.
As for the time to write these posts, yeah I'm making nowhere near my market value for this kind of writing. I've considered adding ads to my blog, but I still feel kind of philosophically uncomfortable with "selling out" like that. My job really does make sure that all my needs are accounted for and I am blessed to be in a state where I have financial excess and can make additional private contributions to other projects.
At some level though my blog is really a sink for my anxiety. Just being able to put words out into the void and knowing that someone is gonna read them helps a lot when it comes to making things a lot less scary in the world. I really do just throw them over the wall when I'm done though lol. Sometimes I'll do a typo pass but most of the time I write well enough that my first pass turns out to be the last pass unless some critical problem is found. This doesn't happen often though.
I do occasionally make volumes out of my writing and sell them on Itch (https://withinstudios.itch.io/), but I have only ever made $250 on there in total; nowhere near enough to fund the creation of the media in question. I also don't advertise my Itch shop very well so that may be partially on me.
Mostly though the goal of this post was to make people think about the issue. I have succeeded.