Still spinning from this idea in 's "Making in Public": that when the economics of consumption don't work—e.g. because the product is a public good—a more viable model may exist around the economics of *production*. That is: when might production *be* the product?
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This is a compelling angle for many (especially older) Kickstarter projects: when what you're buying as a backer is not the eventual product, but rather causing the product to be made at all. You're buying its production. The eventual product is like a positive externality.
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Subscription content producers have a similar vibe. Buyers aren't paying to unlock some article's paywall; they're buying into creation of future work. I wonder if this is more compelling if purchases plausibly cause marginal output: "I'll write fulltime when I get X subscribers"
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Nadia observes that sometimes the production "product" being bought is access—feeling closer to the creator, a private community, sneak peeks, behind-the-scenes, etc. My instinct is that this offering can only scale so far, but I'd be curious to learn about counter-examples!
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This has been a compelling angle to think about funding my work. In this frame, my output artifacts are public goods (essays, interfaces)—positive externalities from an ongoing process which is itself the product. My "customers" buy a verb, not a noun.
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Of course, I don't know what it means to make my production process a product. Patreon still has a "charity" vibe that doesn't seem right. I'm increasingly thinking of it more as "crowdfunding an NSF CAREER grant," which captures the causative angle. Still feels like not enough.
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All this has helped me understand why I feel so adverse to promoting my own Patreon: absent a clear, positive-sum proposition as an offering, the default is that it feels like asking for charity, which in turn feels very inappropriate. Save charity $s for needier causes!
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I would happily pay to follow the curated work of those your thinking/ writing/ doing is inspiring
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I like this line of thinking!
At risk of sounding negative, here is my concern: you're effectively selling entertainment. Therefore, the incentives will be to make the production process as entertaining as possible/to work on projects with entertaining production processes.
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In an ideal situation, even with these incentives that system would allow projects to exist that would not otherwise exist.
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Thank you for highlighting this part of the book! This was actually my favorite part to write about, but hardest to amplify in a simplified way, so I haven't had had as many conversations w/ others about it as I would've liked. ❤️
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(I am still saving your email to reply to on a delicious quiet evening...)
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Very thought-provoking. Have similar feeling about Patreon - been considering adding a paid bit to the Substack, which at least feels like ppl would pay for my work rather than charity - but not til I can completely commit to it!
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On the contrary, it might work better before you can completely commit to it, because then you can authentically propose that marginal subscribers will cause marginal writing!
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“Crowd funding a career grant” puts word to to how I feel about it. I support 6 people on patreon and none of them are for the patreon exclusives. I just want them to keep making it for everyone
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Patreon feels to me like one step beyond internet "tipping" which has always had a strange feeling to me. It's been made a little less weird by people posting their Venmo or Cash app tags and asking for help in hard times. There's still some rough edges there
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