Blogs like mine are dead. Very few people go to individual websites to read updated articles on a regular basis anymore.
Nearly everyone now gets his/her news from social media on smart phones.
The problem for bloggers in our field is that social media outlets “shadow ban,” throttle the reach, and/or de-platform most firearms and self-defense content. No one sees all the information I produce.
My peak website readership was in 2016. I have lost large numbers of readers every year since then. My daily page views are now about 1/3 what they were in 2016 and dropping by 10-20% a year.
As my readership declines, so does my advertising revenue and affiliate sales. It’s becoming less and less profitable to spend 20-30 hours a week researching and writing the articles you all enjoy reading.
I expect the decline in readership to continue until sites like mine are forced out of existence.
I am going to double down on my writing efforts and hope that more of my readers are willing to pay a small amount of money to support the articles they enjoy.
I’ve restructured my Patreon benefit tiers to provide more value and to allow folks a way to get a daily email of all my content for a nominal fee that will counteract the downturn of decreasing ad revenues.
The biggest change I’ve made is to provide all my $10/month supporters a 20% discount on all my classes where I handle the registration.
If you haven’t noticed, registration for my classes takes two forms. For some classes, the host hires me to come in and teach for a flat fee. In those classes, the host sets the fees, handles the registrations, and keeps all money over and above my fee.
For other classes, I handle the registration myself (usually via Eventbrite) and pay the host a range fee per student or give the host free slots in the class.
The discount only applies to the classes where I handle the registration. That will be about 2/3 of the classes I teach in 2024.
Here is the rest of the Patreon benefit structure:
Paid membership tiers
$1 / month⸱
This is the tier to support my writing at the lowest cost to you. Everyone in this tier will get free digital copies of all the books I write as well as ad-free emailed copies of all of the articles I post.
$5 / month⸱
This tier will receive all of my digital books, will get ad-free articles emailed to them through the Patreon site every time I publish something new, and will get content like Q&A articles, special features, and detailed practice session write-ups (usually 1-3 pieces of extra content per month) that are not posted on my site.
Patrons at this level will also get early access to registration for my classes where I handle the registration and tuition fees.
$10 / month⸱
This tier includes all the benefits from the previous tiers as well as a 20% discount on all class registrations that I handle in-house. The discount does not apply to classes where my hosts handle registrations. Patrons at this tier will also be able to ask questions that will be answered in my occasional Q&A columns.
I am going to continue to write at least three articles a week and post them for free on my site as long as it remains profitable to do so. If the page views continue to decline in the next few years, I anticipate putting all my content behind a paywall.
If you’d like to see all my content without relying on a social media platform that hates people like us, please sign up for one of my Patreon tiers. At the annual discount price, you will get all of my articles and books delivered straight to your inbox every day for a little over $10 a year. If you take my classes regularly, the $10/month tier will almost pay for itself if you purchase a weekend class every year.
You can sign up for my content on my Patreon Page. I hope to see more of you there in the coming years.
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