A letter to readers

Last January, I set up a PayPal button on the Rogovoy Report website (see right-hand side of this page) and invited readers to help defray the cost of providing free, daily and weekly e-newsletters – BerkshireDaily, HudsonValleyDaily, BerkshireWeekend and HudsonValleyWeekend – as well as the original stories and adapted press releases posted on the website. Going into this, I had no idea what the response would be, and I certainly had very low expectations. I figured every little bit helps, and if a few folks felt like contributing, that would be great.

The response, in fact, was relatively overwhelming and gratifying. Many contributed, in amounts ranging from $10 to $20 to $50 and even a few around $100. Businesses pitched in with promotions, encouraging contributions with the offer of restaurant meals, theater tickets … even a free ukulele.

The “paid subscriptions,” if you will, provided great moral support and some financial support. Compiling the material for the newsletters, reporting on the cultural events in the region, writing the occasional performance and arts review, and supporting the efforts of so many struggling nonprofits easily amounts to a half-time (or more) job. With more and more media outlets setting up online paywalls, my expenses have gone up. I subscribe to various newspapers and magazines online so that I can provide recipients of my newsletters links to the best web content across the board.

The bulk of the financial support for these efforts has come from paid advertising, and the bulk of that comes in the busy summer months. There are long stretches of time, however, where the checks coming in are few and far between. Come Labor Day, advertising drops off drastically. Not all advertisers pay on time, a few never pay, and while most can be counted on eventually to pay up, it still doesn’t provide enough of an income to justify the time and effort I put into this whole operation I call “The Rogovoy Report.” And, frankly, I’m not a great advertising salesman, and I’d much rather spend my time writing and collecting great stories from around the web than trying to get people to advertise and chasing down accounts.

Besides which, the paradigm is shifting away from advertising-supported online publishing and toward user fee-based publishing. In the long run, this is a good thing in general, and a very good thing for the Rogovoy Report. While I have mostly relied upon paid advertising so far, it takes a lot of work to get and maintain it — time and effort better spent elsewhere. Also, there is a limit to how much advertising the newsletters can support. Ultimately, I would rather rely upon you, the reader, to support my efforts, rather than chasing down advertising (although I think there will always be a place at the table for advertisers to piggyback on my efforts to communicate directly with this highly discriminating, intelligent, demographically powerful audience).

I am committed to keeping the newsletters and the website free to all. It really is a labor of love, and there is little else I would rather do. That being said, I have bills to pay. There’s a mortgage payment, of course, and food and clothing and gas money (and dog food!), as well as directly related expenses like high-speed Internet, webhosting, computers and software, online storage, taxes, insurance, etc. My monthly expenses are about to increase by $500 a month for health insurance, which I haven’t had in over a year. And while I do other work to supplement my income, it’s still a struggle. Such is the life of the freelancer, and it’s a choice I make. It beats mining coal, for sure.

So once again, I am asking for your support in the form of voluntary payments. Since I first enabled contributions via PayPal, a new recurring payment option has been introduced (please click on the “Donate” PayPal button on the upper right of this page on the website). It’s quick and easy to figure out that with the modest help of just a few hundred of the 4,500 or so recipients of the e-newsletters plus some regular visitors to the website, I could enjoy a steady and decent income, cover my expenses and pay all my bills, not have to scrounge around for extra income and advertising, and spend more time doing what I do best (what I do worst is selling advertising and billing for it, in case you were wondering).

Do the math: If close to one quarter of the subscribers to the e-newsletters kicked in less than 20 cents per newsletter (or $1/week), that would approach $50,000 per year. If 1,000 subscribers — fewer than one out of four – paid $5 per month (the cost of a fancy latte plus tip, or two cups of coffee plus tip), that would be $60,000 a year. Or if 500 folks ponied up $10 per month, same thing. That’s the beauty of micropayments spread across a large audience. Of course for every person who contributes even more, a few might contribute less – from each according to his means – and this could be a more firmly grounded business.

If you enjoy what you read here and in the e-newsletters, if you place some value on what I do and what I provide, please think of a way that you can help, either through a recurring payment, a one-time payment, or through advertising. A lot of what I do supports many other worthy endeavors – arts organizations, performing groups, independent businesses, local agriculture, artists, musicians, and a variety of causes that benefit from my advocacy journalism.

There is a new paradigm for this sort of thing. The old business models no longer apply – there are fewer and smaller book advances; newspapers have slashed staff and generally dumbed down their product (and are no longer locally owned); bloggers and writers and editors like myself are left to go it on our own, and as I’ve said, online advertising is yesterday’s news. This is both a blessing and a curse. I can be totally independent and don’t have to answer to an owner or publisher who lives elsewhere and whose main concern is profit. I am free to place my emphasis almost wholly on the “product” or “content.” But not totally free. That is where you come in, dear reader. Thanks in advance for stepping up and playing a role in this new paradigm.

 

Sincerely yours,
Seth Rogovoy

P.S. Contributions to the Rogovoy Report are not tax-deductible, but they do support my efforts to provide independently owned, non-corporate, locally based cultural journalism free of charge. Think of this as your community-supported news service, along the model of community-supported agriculture (CSA) or a co-op.