Chris J Wilson

🔗Asking, Giving And Blogging – Greg Morris

Truth is, I have been trying for a while to make writing and blogging pay like it used to. 6-7 years ago web ads paid ok with a few thousand hits a month and didn’t completely wreck your website and income paid for my hosting and even allowed me to, shock horror, make a little profit.

I can relate to the changes Greg has seen in writing online. I used to run a site that made a nice little amount of money through ads: Enough to pay for hosting and a few tech treats. But things have changed. Google ads want to be invasive. Web design trends have pushed ads out of the way (unless your a big media company and want them all over the place.) The promised patreon /Kofi/content subscription solution hasn’t lived up to its promises.
We shouldn’t be that suprised. The same issues have been in software with the growth of free with in app purchases and the (justified and not) vocal opposition to software subscriptions.

The issue of subscription fatigue is real.

Many of us would love to support more services and creator, but with so many apps, creators and causes to subscribe to, what was once a small drip from our pockets is now a running tap.

Perhaps creators should seek to create things and ask for payments in exchange for access; it’s the pricing model many wish more apps adopted.

This is certainly the model Seth Godin recommends where he talks about creating experiences. It isn’t easy to monetise anything, but we should pay attention to what we do/don’t pay for.

If we wouldn’t be willing to pay for a newsletter subscription, why would someone pay for ours?

🔗 Overthinking? Try this iOS Shortcut.

As usual, I found myself overthinking this week about small details and not getting much done on the big stuff. It’s been happening too often lately, delaying my newsletter and book projects. But this week, I decided to do something about it. I built a kind of break-glass-in-case-of-emergency shortcut for whenever I’m stuck in a rut and overthinking.

I really like this idea from CJ Chilvers. I think I might steal/adapt.

The Big Three - The Accidental Creative

Keeping a shortlist of open creative loops in front of you consistently will help you stay focused on what matters, and prompt your mind to be looking for potentially useful creative stimuli in your environment.

I’m reading (well, listening on Audiobook) The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry and he shared this simple idea above.

I love it.

Creativity insight so often comes by looking at problems from a different perspective or noticing a connection with something else. Keeping a list in front of you with three problems where you need some insight helps invite these connections and perspective shifts.

I’m trying it, and I’ll report back.

The end of secularism is nigh - UnHerd

All of which should serve as a wake-up call to the West that it is not only its financial, economic and military muscle that is currently atrophying. So too is its ability to market its culturally conditioned assumptions as universal. The concept of the secular is not, as many in West like to think, a neutral one. Quite the opposite. As the very word betrays, it derives from the distinctive theology and history of Latin Christendom: for ‘saeculum’, the word given by the Romans to the endless flux of things, was counterpointed by St Augustine and his heirs to the religio, the ‘bond’, that, so Augustine had taught, joined the pilgrim Church on its journey through the centuries to the radiant eternity of the City of God.

I thought of the XKCD standards comic, where people try to unify things by a standard but just add another competitor in the process. I wonder if that’s how the future will see secularism. Admittedly many different religious systems have already passed away (which is different from the standards comic), and I’m sure there are other issues I haven’t thought of.

Posing for selfies - Seth’s Blog

The irony is that the people we’re most likely to want to trust and engage with are the ones who don’t pose. They’re consistent, committed and clear, but they’re not faking it.

Figure out what you want to say, the change you seek to make, the story you want to tell–and then tell it. Wholeheartedly and with intent.

Posing is unnecessary.

🔗 A look inside Paradise Street — Hoxton Mini Press

This week we’re looking inside Paradise Street. This uplifting, irresistibly nostalgic book, the fourth in our Vintage Britain series, celebrates, among other things, the physicality of spending time outdoors.

Enjoy the look back in time.

The forgotten political roots of Bridge over Troubled Water - BBC Culture

Simon talked about using the primetime opportunity as a Trojan horse for “a home movie about where he thought the nation was”. Directed by actor Charles Grodin, Songs of America used the duo’s hits to soundtrack footage of riots, marches and the war in Vietnam, much to the horror of sponsors AT&T, who demanded their $600,000 investment back.

More after today’s post on Bridge over Troubled Waters.

🔗 Expert sandwich tips that will change your lunches for ever - BBC Food

Got to try some of these!