Hello, lovely readers. This week I'm doing a crowdfunding drive for Public Address. As I've explained before, these occasional requests for contributions represent the majority of the site's income. And they allow to me concentrate on Public Address, which is my favourite work. My need is fairly acute at the moment, to be honest.
When we've done the occasional whip-round in the past, I've simply invited one-off donations, you've made them and they've helped more than you could know. You can make those from your PayPal account or credit card by clicking this button:
Or by means of a payment into the Public Address bank account:
03 0255 0166635 001
But this time -- and sorry this has taken so long, but I've been looking for an ideal solution which turns out not to exist -- you can also, if you choose, take out a voluntary sustaining subscription. This just helps us exist.
These are your voluntary subscription options via PayPal. Note the drop-down menu options on the button:
The subscription button should prompt you to create a PayPal account if you don't already have one. The advantage of this is that it gives you control of the recurring payment, which I figure is very important. You can cancel at any time by following these instructions, or by simply hitting this button:
Both of these buttons will have a permanent place on the site, so you'll be able to get to them easily.
The other subscription option, which you may or may not find more straightforward, is a simple automatic payment from your bank account to the Public Address bank account at the sum and frequency of your choosing:
03 0255 0166635 001
I looked for an automated option for this, but the only services available took subscriptions as direct debits (which I would have to cancel) rather than automatic payments, and it's pretty clear to me that you should be in control of your own damn money.
So what will the money be used for? In the first instance, it simply helps me be here every day. I'm suffering a significant degree of financial insecurity at the moment, so I have to be careful with my time. But what I want to do is post more to Public Address and offer you all new things.
Donations this time will also underwrite several key additions to the site:
Access: A new, broad-ranging (but loosely internet-themed) disability blog written by the awesome (both of them) Michelle Walmsley and Sacha Dylan, and others. (My autism blog at humans.org.nz will continue under Hilary Stace's oversight and we'll do a PledgeMe to fund an upgrade at some point.)
Feed: that damn food blog! I may yet have a sponsor for it, but I can't really wait any longer to get cracking.
Capture: An upgrade to the functionality in the Capture photoblog adding the option of a thumnail-and-gallery option.
The home page: The regular features of the site need a tidy-up. Some internal features will be dropped and we'll make the Public Address System link more obviously a gateway to the discussions.
Feel free to suggest any other improvements we could consider -- especially if you're kicking in some cash! I hear whispering from some of the team about ... a book blog. In general, I think we'll look more at themed blogs with a range of authors than personal mastheads (which can be hard for people to maintain over time).
It would be nice to get to a point where I can pay per blog post on the site, but I won't get ahead of myself on that. That may come with the help of some commercial ideas I'm pursuing, or we could add Patreon accounts to individual blogs. Patreon was the best of the platforms I looked at, but it's more for individual creators than a whole publishing venture. They seem like nice people anyway.
As, evidently, are you -- especially if you've chipped in a little for us. And if you have contributed, feel free to to let me know, so I can do something nice for you as the opportunity arises. Just flick me your email address here:
This isn't the regular Public Address mailing list, which announces new posts most days (that's here, and you are warmly welcomed to join it), and your address won't be used for any other purpose than occasional gestures of my warmest appreciation.
Anyway, that's it for now. Got some blogs to write ...
PS: Someone's asked whether they can pay a sum of their choosing for an annual sub and get a tax invoice for it. YES, no problem. Just click the email link below and let me know.