Day two of kottke.org full-time

Grok Headline matches for Day two of kottke.org full-time

Doing kottke.org as a full-time job

Doing kottke.org as a full-time job 03/14/2005 04:24 PM

I recently quit my web design gig and -- as of today -- will be working on kottke.org as my full-time job. And I need your help.

I'm asking the regular readers of kottke.org (that's you!) to become micropatrons of kottke.org by contributing a moderate sum of money to help enable me to edit/write/design/code the site for one year on a full-time basis. If you find kottke.org valuable in any way, please consider giving whatever you feel is appropriate.

This will be a one-time "fund drive" lasting 3 weeks, you may make contributions via PayPal, credit card, or check, there will be some great gifts as an incentive for you to give (more details here), and your contributions will be the primary means of support for the site. And yes, I have absolutely no idea if this will work and I'm completely nervous and exhilarated by the challenges ahead.

If you're uncertain as to whether you want to become a kottke.org micropatron, please read on. I'm going to explain what it is I'll actually be doing, why I'm doing it, how the site might change, and what I'll be doing with your hard-earned money.

Why are you doing this?
I've been self-publishing on the web for almost 10 years now, first with a little site on my school's web server, then on various ISP accounts, then 0sil8, and finally kottke.org for the last 7 years (almost). Looking back on it all, this little hobby of mine has been the most rewarding, pleasurable, maddening, challenging thing in my life. I've met so many nice, good people, formed valued relationships with some of them, traveled to distant lands (and New Jersey), procured jobs & other business opportunities, discovered new interests, music, movies & books, and lots of other stuff, all for putting a little bit of me out there for people to see.

And yet, I almost quit last spring. The site was getting out of hand and wasn't fun anymore. It was taking me away from my professional responsibilities, my social life, and my relationship with my girlfriend. There was no room in my life for it anymore. As you can imagine, thinking of quitting what had been the best thing in my life bummed me right the hell out.

After thinking about it for a few weeks, I had a bit of an epiphany. The real problem was the tension between my web design career and my self-publishing efforts; that friction was unbalancing everything else. One of them had to go, and so I decided to switch careers and pursue the editing/writing of this site as a full-time job.

Ok, but why else are you doing this?

• Blogging -- or personal publishing in general (not that they're synonymous) -- as a pursuit has been somewhat marginalized as a hobby or something one does to support other more worthy and/or lucrative pursuits. People leverage their blogs in order to write books, write for magazines or newspapers, pursue art or photography, go work for Gawker, Mediabistro, or Weblogs Inc., get jobs at startups, do freelance design (as I used to), start a software company, or as a vehicle to sell advertising. All worthy pursuits, but I'm interested in editing kottke.org as my primary interest; blogging for blogging's sake, I guess.
   
  In the recent comics issue of McSweeney's, Chris Ware notes that "in the past decade or so, comics appear to have gained some greater measure of respect, due in no small part to the number of cartoonists who have begun to take the medium seriously". This is me taking online personal publishing seriously because I feel it deserves as much.
• With decreasingly few exceptions, media is supported by advertising. Content on the web in particular is heavily ad supported. I'm interested in exploring other avenues with a special interest in discovering sustainable ways for other folks to do things like this as well.
• I'm attempting to revisit the idea of arts patronage in the context of the internet. Patrons of the arts have typically been wealthy individuals, well-heeled foundations, or corporations. As we've seen in many contexts, the net allows individuals from geographically dispersed locations to aggregate themselves for any number of reasons. So, when you've got a group of people who are interested in a particular artist, writer, etc., they should be able to mobilize over the internet and support that person directly instead of waiting around for the MacArthur Foundation or Cosimo de Medici to do it.
• I'm interested in too many things to settle on design or programming or writing or a particular topic. kottke.org indulges my desire to be interested in too many things (as Neal Stephenson put it recently).
• And not to get too mushy here, but this has been a dream of mine for a long time now. Thought it was high time to stop dreaming and start doing.

How will you doing this full-time affect the site?
First, let me tell you what won't change. The content on kottke.org will always be freely available to everyone who visits, regardless of whether you have contributed or not. No special "member" content or services. Think of kottke.org as non-crippled, fully-supported shareware...you only pay if you feel it's worth supporting.

kottke.org will also not become any less personal or any more professional. This is still my personal web site and is not going to mutate into a vertical blog about tech, design, politics, pop culture, or even asbestos. I'm not turning into a journalist. I'm still going to write and post almost exclusively about things I am interested in, whatever those may be at any particular moment. Just so you know, I may occasionally post cat photos, as is my right as the editor of a personal web site.

What might change on the site will be driven mainly by two conditions:

1. kottke.org is now my main professional priority. At long last, focus!
2. I will have available to me, for the first time in years, large uninterrupted chunks of time with which to produce creative works.

The goal is to use the increased level of focus and time to create a (much) better site. More time means there will be more content of a greater variety. Some days, that may mean more posts and more links. I'll be able to go to more (hopefully interesting) events in NYC (& elsewhere) and write about them. I'll have time do the occasional bit of real journalism, collaborate on neat projects like Dropcash, and do larger projects that require longer time scales to finish...dare I hint at a return to more 0sil8-like projects? (I dare.) And there are opportunities that I'm sure will present themselves as I settle into the luxuriant folds of full-timeness.

Why not advertising?
Like I said above, there's got to be a way to support media that doesn't involve advertising. But more than that, I don't want to disrupt the relationship dynamic we've got going here. There are currently two parties involved with kottke.org: me and the collective you. Advertising introduces a third party. In my experience, the third wheel of advertising often works to unbalance the relationship in favor of either the author or the readers (usually in favor of the author). If ads were involved, I might feel the need to change what or how I write to appease advertisers. I might write to increase pageviews and earn more revenue. I could fill pages with ads, earning more revenue but making the content more difficult to read or pushing some content off the page entirely. You could block advertising and deny me needed revenue.

None of that is appealing to me. If I'm writing, you're reading, I'm responding to what you've got to say about my writing, and we're mixin' it up in the comments, why do we need a middleman? Why not keep that dynamic intact if we can?

What's your monetary goal?
Quitting my job to run kottke.org full-time is possibly the dumbest economic decision I've ever made in my life. This undertaking so isn't about the money. (I'm gonna link to Ludicorp's about page here because their corporate philosophy matches well with my philosophy in approaching this.) At best, my goal is to make about 1/3 to 1/2 of my former yearly salary to support my efforts here for a year. I have no idea whether this goal is even remotely achievable...only the hope that it is and the desire to make it happen. Like I said, dumb economic decision.

As with anyone starting a new business, I've tightened things up in order to give myself the best chance of success. I've moved to a (way) cheaper apartment in Brooklyn, cut way back on eating out (I'm learning how to cook properly instead...hey, if I can learn to cook, you can pony up a couple of bucks), will be using my cache of frequent flier miles when I need to travel, and am curtailing my spending in general. It feels a lot like right after I got out of college...without the ramen noodles.

Are you excited?
If by that you mean "do you feel like you're going to throw up?" then yes.

Ok, that's about all I've got for now. That's definitely the most difficult thing I've ever had to write; I hope it came out OK. Thanks for reading and I hope you'll consider supporting the site. If you've got any questions, send me some email or find me on AIM (I may be a little slow on the IM uptake...I'm anticipating a busy day or two). I'll probably end up compiling questions I get into a later FAQ post of some sort (or making corrections/clarifications to this one).

Again, thanks for reading.

(Oh, and I should be on the webcam most of the day today. I guess you should be able to tell roughly how the above is going by how much I'm smiling. If instead you see me rocking catatonically in my chair clutching an empty pill container, call 911.)

Update: Hi there. Not a lot of time (today has been crazy! have you ever gotten IMed by 300 people in one day?) but things seem to be going pretty well. If you've emailed to ask to be put on the micropatrons list and don't see your name up there, don't despair...I've got a bit of a backlog. I'll get the names up there as soon as I can. And more later..but for now, thank you to everyone who contributed, you're too kind. Off to dinner before I starve.....

MSN Search Hits Full Time Almost 100% of
the Time now

MSN Search Hits Full Time Almost 100% of
the Time now 02/01/2005 09:15 PM

"full-time"

"full-time" 02/07/2005 02:02 AM

So You Want to Be a Full-Time Trader?

So You Want to Be a Full-Time Trader? 12/03/2003 08:42 AM
TheStreet.com Dec 3 2003 8:32AM ET

Back full time tonight

Back full time tonight 01/16/2004 10:58 AM
Information has been a bit slow coming out this week due to my busy schedule in San Diego. I will...

Full or Part Time
Webmasters/Entrepreneurs

Full or Part Time
Webmasters/Entrepreneurs 06/29/2004 03:26 PM
Seems to be a real mix of SEO's with their own sites these days. Did the big Optimization-come-SEA (Search Engine Advertising) switch impact people *that* much?

De-Stressing Techniques for the
Full-Time Netrepreneur

De-Stressing Techniques for the
Full-Time Netrepreneur 03/29/2005 08:29 PM
One of the top three reasons for running an online business is usually to have more free time. However, it seldom works out that way. Running any business full-time can be stressful and time-consuming. So, here are a few destressing tips to help keep your business from consuming YOU: (© 2000, by Harmony Major) 1. TAKE THE [...]

Full-time Perl/CGI/MYSQL Web Programmer

Full-time Perl/CGI/MYSQL Web Programmer 01/09/2004 09:55 PM
Rolloutsoftware - United States, California, Santa Monica (2004-01-07)

Destressing Techniques for the Full-Time
Netrepreneur

Destressing Techniques for the Full-Time
Netrepreneur 05/23/2002 10:39 PM

del.icio.us gets funded, Schachter goes
full-time

del.icio.us gets funded, Schachter goes
full-time 03/30/2005 04:32 AM
Cory Doctorow: Joshua Schachter, who created the link-sharing service del.icio.us, has taken on some investment capital so he can work on del.icio.us full time. Congrats, Joshua!

I am excited to finally be able to devote all of my energy to working on and improving this site, and I'll also be able to acquire some much-needed infrastructure.

I'm still in charge of the site and still committed to making it as good as it can be.

Link (Thanks, Ian!)

San Diego Perl Developer Full-Time

San Diego Perl Developer Full-Time 02/01/2005 09:51 PM
Delphi Technical - United States, CA, San Diego (2005-02-01)

Any information, any time, any network -
how close are we to the full take-up of
3G?

Any information, any time, any network -
how close are we to the full take-up of
3G? 03/29/2005 09:08 AM
Computer Weekly Mar 29 2005 12:43PM GMT

Ongoing Full-Time mod-perl/mysql Miami

Ongoing Full-Time mod-perl/mysql Miami 06/17/2005 05:56 PM
GunsAmerica - United States, FL, Miami (2005-06-17)

RE: [Full-Disclosure] Security aspects
of time synchronization infrastructure

RE: [Full-Disclosure] Security aspects
of time synchronization infrastructure 08/21/2004 01:33 AM
joe (Aug 19 2004)

CA's Interim CEO Not Seeking Full-Time
Post (TechWeb)

CA's Interim CEO Not Seeking Full-Time
Post (TechWeb) 05/10/2004 03:16 AM
TechWeb - Ken Cron, who stepped in after Sanjay Kumar was reassigned last month, says the software vendor is in no rush to name a full-time CEO--but that he's not a candidate for the job.

PHP Freaks Hiring a Developer in Orlando
- Full Time Employemnt

PHP Freaks Hiring a Developer in Orlando
- Full Time Employemnt 11/19/2003 02:49 AM
PHP Freaks is hiring an in-house full time PHP Developer in ORLANDO, FL. If you are in this area and have the skills, seeking a job and want to have fun, please take a look at this job offer.

RE: Re[2]: [Full-Disclosure] Security
aspects of time synchronization
infrastructure

RE: Re[2]: [Full-Disclosure] Security
aspects of time synchronization
infrastructure 08/21/2004 01:33 AM
joe (Aug 20 2004)

Re[2]: [Full-Disclosure] Security
aspects of time synchronization
infrastructure

Re[2]: [Full-Disclosure] Security
aspects of time synchronization
infrastructure 08/20/2004 02:03 PM
3APA3A (Aug 19 2004)

kottke.org redesign (kottke.org)

kottke.org redesign (kottke.org) 06/28/2004 06:30 AM
What happens when you spend two years working on one design .. Rationale and background for Jason Kottke's redesign .. kottke.org has been redesigned .. redesigned

kottke.org/04/06/kottke-redesign
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Chinese Business Specialist and China
SEO Consultant Lonnie B. Hodge Will Join
Sinotrading.us As Full-time
International Search Engine Marketing
Coordinator and Director

Chinese Business Specialist and China
SEO Consultant Lonnie B. Hodge Will Join
Sinotrading.us As Full-time
International Search Engine Marketing
Coordinator and Director 06/17/2005 03:23 PM
Lonnie B. Hodge, a China SEO Specialist and Chinese Business Consultant, has joined forces with www.Sinotrading.us to provide translation, editing and cultural marketing services. [PRWEB Jun 17, 2005]

Companies Turn to Internet Consultants
Rather than Full-time Staff Employees
for Internet Strategy and Management
Solutions

Companies Turn to Internet Consultants
Rather than Full-time Staff Employees
for Internet Strategy and Management
Solutions 07/25/2004 02:48 AM
Small and large companies are turning to consultants to save expense over the cost of hiring a full-time staff. Businesses face tough competition and challenges with a lack of capitalization, inadequate staff with insufficient expertise, inexperienced and overworked staff who are unable to properly plan strategies and direction for on-line presence. New business start-ups often have budgets that do not include salary and benefits for a full-time experienced team. [PRWEB Jul 25, 2004]

Full Tilt Poker’s “Main Event Mania™” Is
in Full Swing

Full Tilt Poker’s “Main Event Mania™” Is
in Full Swing 06/05/2005 10:52 PM
More than 50 people have already qualified for Full Tilt Poker’s $10 million giveaway. [PRWEB Jun 1, 2005]

Kottke

Kottke 07/12/2004 04:09 AM
via

kottke.org/remainder/04/07/5976.html
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A9 (kottke.org)

A9 (kottke.org) 04/15/2004 07:40 AM
A9 beta search service (kottke.org) .. Kottke's response .. Kottke .. about

kottke.org/04/04/a9
track this site | 5 links

The war (kottke.org)

The war (kottke.org) 03/19/2003 10:46 PM
kottke.org :: home of fine hypertext products .. Kottke talks war .. KOTTKE .. Kottke .. Jason

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kottke.org failed on 11/05/03 (17:01:27)

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Parsing of kottke.org failed on Thu Nov 6th, 2003 (00:51:23). Email me at rss@them.ws with the name of the feed and the time it occured.

Welcome back, Kottke

Welcome back, Kottke 06/05/2005 11:47 PM

I'm back from a week and a half of vacationing in Ireland. Aside from the frequent rain, Ireland is a beautiful country...and even the rain isn't that bad. I'll have some photos up soon (three quick photos on Flickr for now). I didn't take my computer along or check email while I was there, only thought about the web once or twice**, and didn't miss it at all. But it wasn't exactly the revelatory recharging experience that I've heard about from other people who are tethered to the web all day long and then take an extended break from it. Not exactly sure why...maybe I've honed my gear switching ability to a fine point so that whatever situation I'm in, I'm in the appropriate mental state. Or perhaps I can only concentrate on one thing at a time. Anyway, I'm back and ready to get back to work (or whatever it is that I do here).

Thanks to David and Anil for posting remaindered links while I was gone. It's fun (if a little strange) coming back to a bunch of unfamiliar content on my own site...looking forward to rolling through all their links. However if you're considering hiring either of these two fellows to help you with your blog business, I would direct your attention to the graph of my traffic over the past week at right. When those guys took over -- which day will henceforth be known here at kottke.org as "Black Monday" -- well, you can see what their reign of terror did to the number of daily visitors around here. On the other hand, they were probably too busy with their proper (i.e. paying) jobs to worry too much about posting, so they are to be commended for their attention to their duties. In either case, it's been a pleasure...come back anytime.

** Apart from an extended conversation about RSS while hiking through some of the most beautiful countryside I've ever seen. You can take the boy out of the web and put him in a sheep pasture, but you can't take the web out of the boy. Or something.

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Parsing of kottke.org failed on Wed Nov 5th, 2003 (22:41:50). Email me at rss@them.ws with the name of the feed and the time it occured.

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The end of free (kottke.org)

The end of free (kottke.org) 05/14/2004 11:51 PM
Jason Kottke has an intelligent idea .. The end of free (kottke.org) .. Kottke

kottke.org/04/05/the-end-of-free
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Day two of kottke.org full-time

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