Subscribe: you choose your price
Welcome to the subscription page, loyal reader! On this page you can choose how much you want to pay to support both me and some great charities—I pay 50% of my net income to the charities.
How much can you afford right now…?
My project and the choice of this business model are based on two main ideas:
- This blog is the most valuable way I can offer you and as many other people in the world something useful;
- In the long term, giving is much more interesting for everyone concerned than taking or ‘selling’.
Here are 10 reasons why…
- Everybody wins: I get to eat and pay the rent, you get to read a better blog, charities get more money and the people the charities help get better lives;
- Everybody wins more: studies show that mixing charity and payments for some reason encourages you to pay a bit more than you otherwise would do, if you can control how much you pay. So I get to eat steak instead of tuna from time to time, you get to read an even better blog and we get to make the world an even better place and change even more lives via the charity donations;
- Let’s be honest with and trust each other: I’m going to be doing this for a long time. I enjoy it. I enjoy reading your comments. I want you to stick around for a long time, too, including when your personal economic situation changes. So whatever the model is, it needs to be sustainable over the long-term. I don’t think distracting you with advertising or affiliate product sales is particularly consistent with that. This way we don’t have to worry about it. You just decide how much value my blog has for you, and that’s it. End of sales pitch.
- This is the valuable activity: you want to read about your world, and think about how it affects your life. You want to wonder about how to improve things perhaps. I want to write about that. We both want to talk with other people interested in those things too. We shouldn’t distract ourselves from this goal, our common interest, which leads us to…
- Invest your time, energy and money: don’t waste them. If I get 100% of my income via my blog, I can concentrate 100% of my time on writing a better blog for you. If I have to earn my income from alternate activities—like, say, teaching and translation—I can’t spend as much time making this a better reading and learning experience for you. I want to spend all that time reading, writing and thinking about the world for you, not trying to shoehorn you into a sales funnel. You want to spend your time reading, thinking about and commenting on your world, not listening to me practicing my sales technique. So let’s just do that;
- Advertising, affiliate products & ‘selling’ waste our time: I think filling my site with advertising or trying to entice you in to an e-mail list to sell you somebody else’s affiliate products is a waste of time and energy. It wastes your time and energy, and it wastes mine. I have to waste time learning how to do all of that and you have to waste time reading it all, which you almost certainly don’t want to do. By letting you subscribe at the price you’re most comfortable with, we can concentrate 100% on what we’re both interested in: reading, writing and thinking about our world more, and talking to other people who share our interest;
- You know how much you earn: I don’t. Normally, a business has a good idea how much most of its clients earn, and can adjust its prices in relation to that. I have no idea how much you earn. Maybe you’re a rich investment banker in New York or Nairobi, or maybe you’re a poor student in Manchester or Mumbai. Maybe you’re on a dollar a day somewhere, or maybe you earn $1 million dollars a month. The point is, I don’t know. So you choose how much you pay;
- You know what is ‘cheap’ or ‘expensive’ for you: I don’t. Maybe you spend lots of money to get lots of quality information about your world, or maybe you’re more of a cheapskate who earns lots of money but doesn’t ever want to pay very much for anything. Either way, I have no way of finding that out. So you choose.
- You know how much value this has for you: I don’t. maybe—like one Russian reader—you’re an investor and what you read on my blog makes you change your mind about your company’s whole investment strategy, and saves or earns you hundreds of thousands of dollars or euros. Or maybe you’re the poor student and what you read here changes your view of the whole direction of your future, now that you understand your world better. Either way, there’s no way I can know how much value this truly represents for you. You are unique and so is your situation. So you choose.
- It costs me the same to write for one reader as it does for one million: if I had to do something different for every reader, this model wouldn’t work and I would have to charge some high fixed price per article. But I don’t: you all get to read and think about the same articles. So you choose how much you pay.
So: how much can you afford right now…?
FAQ: pricing & subscriptions
Can I really choose how much I pay?
Yes, of course, that’s the point. Just pick whichever option you feel most comfortable with.
Can I pay nothing, €0.00, and read for free?
You can read and learn from some parts of my blog for free: the news pages and the daily Top 10 World News posts. To access the main posts, you must pay something.
But what if I don’t want to pay anything?
You choose, always. There is no obligation at all to subscribe.
Can I change how much I pay later on?
Yes of course. Just cancel your existing subscription and sign up again. If you find yourself with less money than before, you can move down the scale, and if you come into more money and want to show more support, you can do that too.
Really?
Yes, really, you choose, always.
Do I get access to different to everything, even if I pay the cheapest price?
Yes, you get full access to everything, whichever price you choose.
Why is the minimum price €1.99?
Because that’s the minimum price necessary to make it work and for both the charity and me to receive at least €0.25 once taxes and essential expenses have been paid.
€99.99 / month to read a blog…!?
Yes, of course, why not? It’s not much at all for some people. Like I said, I have absolutely no idea how much you earn, how much you spend or how much value you get from what I write in your particular economic circumstances. So you choose the price you can most afford right now, the price you’re happiest with.
Why don’t you just let me type in any amount I like?
I have absolutely no idea about how to make that work technically.
FAQ: charity donations
Do you really pay 50% of your net income to charity?
Yes.
Can you prove it?
Yes. Each month I will publish a post so you can see exactly how much we’ve managed to donate to charity between us. First one coming soon here.
How much really goes to charity?
It’s a little complicated of course, but here in Spain the first thing that needs to come off your chosen subscription price is VAT (sales tax), which is 18%. Then I have to do some accounting to subtract some expenses. Then income tax is 20% of whatever that subtotal is. Like this:
Net income = Price – VAT – expenses – income tax
Net income gets split: 50% for the charities, 50% for me. As an example, with the €19.99 price and assuming 10% costs:
€19.99 – €3.05 – €1.69 – €3.39 = net income = €11.86
50% = €5.93 for charity
50% = €5.93 for Matthew
As you can see, most of the different between the price you pay and the 50% split disappears in taxes. There’s not much we can do to change that.
Which charities get the money?
Good question. Again, you will be able to choose. You will be able to vote from a list of selected charities each month and I’ll write cheques to all the ones that you want to support.
If you all vote, for example, 60–40 for giving the money to Oxfam and the Red Cross, I will write out two cheques at the end of the month: one for 60% of the money to Oxfam and the other for 40% of the money to the Red Cross.
Who selects the charities on the list?
I do, but feel free to suggest another if you feel it will be well supported.
FAQ: loyal reader profiles & commenting
Can I comment on the articles once I subscribe?
Yes, of course, all of them. It is always a pleasure to read your thoughts and opinions. (Any abusive comments will be deleted, though…!)
How can I interact with other loyal readers?
Via their profile pages and in the comments section of each blog post. Online, you basically get to know someone via their ideas and opinions. Then you take a further interest in them, and wonder who the person behind the comments might be, so you can visit their profile page to find out more.
Your profile page allows you to:
- upload a profile photo;
- publish a link to your blog, Twitter or FB page;;
- tell others a bit more about yourself;
- publish or not publish your e-mail so other loyal readers can contact you;
- see the last 10 comments you left on my blog;
Here’s what my own profile page looks like….
Can I contact other loyal readers?
Yes, if they have decided to publish their e-mail address on their profile.
If they have decided not to publish their e-mail address on their profile, then they have decided they don’t want to receive e-mails from anyone else. In that case you cannot contact them.
Do I have to use my real name…?
I would encourage you to do so, it’s more interesting that way, but you can also choose to use an alias if you wish.
Do I have to upload my photo…?
Again, I would encourage you to do so, but there is no way of knowing if it’s you or not, so feel free to use any photo you like for your profile and comment image (within the bounds of normal taste and decency, of course).
FAQ: other possible models
Why don’t you use Google Adsense or some other ads to make money?
Most advertising is intrusive, boring and it doesn’t work very well on the internet. It takes up your valuable time and attention, drawing you away from whatever you were thinking about before you saw it.
You need about 5 million pages views a minute to make any money, and that just encourages blogs which use it to set up their sites so that you HAVE to go through multiple page views to read a whole article or see a whole set of photos.
I would have to learn how to sell advertising and deal with the advertisers and put them in the best places on the blog to annoy you enough into clicking them frequently. I think we should just concentrate on what we’re interested in, without distractions.
Why don’t you try and sell affiliate products via your e-mail list?
The idea behind affiliate products is that I build up a big e-mail list which you choose to join so that I can then send you down a sales funnel to buy somebody else’s products.
So, as well as distracting your attention, I’d have to be trying to convince you it was worth spending more of your time and money elsewhere. So no affiliate stuff, no hidden affiliate links. The books I link to on the category pages are just plain links, I don’t try and earn any money off them.
FAQ: changes, cancellations & refunds
Can I change my subscription price?
Yes. Absolutely. Whenever you like. Just cancel your existing subscription and re–subscribe at whatever new price you feel better with.
You can do this in both directions of course: you can choose to pay less each month, or you can choose to pay more, depending on your circumstances and how much value you think I provide you.
Can I cancel my subscription?
Yes, if you really want to, you can cancel your subscription at any time. The system will stop your PayPal payments and allow you access to my blog for the remainder of the month you’ve already paid for.
Can I read for a couple of months and then stop and unsubscribe?
Absolutely. There is no minimum or maximum subscription period. You’re in complete control all the time.
Can I get a refund?
Yes, if you really, really want a refund, that’s also fine: you can send me an e-mail with your subscription details and I will refund 100% of your subscription fee for that month via PayPal.
It is not unfortunately possible to refund previous months’ subscription fees.
So: how much can you afford…?
To sum it up, this is all about transparency, honesty, openness, giving, caring, improvement, discovery, learning, thinking better, participating, making a difference. Even if it’s only a small one.
Everybody wins. Me. You. The charities. The people the charities serve.
Ok, great, you’ve convinced me, what do I do next?
Just choose the subscription price you are happiest with above and sign up. In five minutes time or so, you will have access to everything on my blog. You can change your subscription rate at any time.
What if I have any problems with the sign-up process…?
No problem at all. Just get in touch via the contact form and we can talk via e-mail or even on the phone and fix whatever your problem is.