I should have wished you all Merry Christmas a couple of days ago, but I was, as you will see, distracted. So let me hoe you've had a very Merry Christmas, Happy Boxing Day, a fine St Stephen's Day and whatever else the year's final week offers.It's been almost a month since I last posted here, and what was originally supposed to be a blog but has looked more like a website featuring reviews and essays and interviews. The kind of stuff I am supposed to be writing for a living, which is part of the reason why there hasn't been anything forthcoming. Not that I have increased my output of writing for payment, indeed, that has decreased steadily, in these days of print contraction. So I have concentrated on my work in American football, on TV radio podcast and online writing, and also offered a weekly column on Patreon (patreon.com/mikecarlsonfmte , hoping to attract enough subscribers to at least earn as much as I did from writing the same column (but in far less depth) for the nfluk's website the previous 13 years.
That has been a lot of work, but the requisite subscriber base did not materialise, and worse, did not increase as the season went on, as I had naively assumed it might. So I face two questions in the New Year: first what do I do with this blog site and second what do I do with the patreon column.
I am going to resume writing for IT for the time being: a few things this week and then try to catch up on some of the material I meant to do but didn't in the past few months--"no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money" said Dr Johnson, and I haven't counted but there must be close to a million unpaid words on this site. Then I'll decide where to go with this--maybe to a full-scale website.
The Patreon column I will likely put into abeyance for the offseason, though my plan was to carry on with something every two weeks, just to keep people on board. Again, we shall see, because I am committed to continue through the Super Bowl in February. Decisions, decisions. Your responses and input are valued, but I am thinking the key idea is how to reach more readers directly. And make it a Happy New Year!
1 comment :
I enjoy FMTE, and am surprised at how few subscribers you managed to get on Patreon. I would like to see you team up with similar authors to increase the volume of content. But I'm not sure how much the extra effort would increase the number of subscriptions. I'd be sad if you stopped writing FMTE, but obviously if it doesn't make any money, you have to justify the time you spend writing it in other ways.
All the best for the new year. Good luck!
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