Put your money where my mouth was

Podcast: Download

By Andy Kaiser
Article ID: 135

Hi everyone, Andy Kaiser here. I’ll make this short and hopefully sweet:

Digital Bits Skeptic loses money. This is okay – and planned for – because it’s a labor of love. But for obvious reasons, I’d rather pay as little out of pocket as possible. Long-term plans are to make it a fully registered educational non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. Until then, my lawyer tells me I first need to develop a subscriber base and make sure it’s financially stable.

Step one to get to that point has been the website ads. But the ads don’t make much money, not even enough to cover hosting, let alone being enough to pay the writers.

Step two is now active: you can support DBSkeptic with monthly or yearly subscriptions.

No, I’m not offering anything beyond the subscription process itself. There will be no annoying pledge drives, no interruptions to the usual format. I’m just taking a moment right now to ask for donations. Your money will help ensure continued operations and continued payments for the article writers. And – this should go without saying, but just to be clear – money from subscriptions will ONLY be used to pay for DBSkeptic’s writer payments and operational costs.

Many of you have read the recent article ID #133 about DRM – Digital Rights Management. One of the points made was that digital media will be and should be very cheap. The content here is free. But for those who are able and willing to support DBSkeptic, I’m putting your money where my mouth was, and am indeed keeping it very cheap. Very, very cheap – you can get down to $20 USD per year. That’s $0.38 per article.

If you feel that the DBSkeptic content is worth paying for, I’m flattered. If you think its not worth paying for, but want to support the site anyway, I won’t complain. To do so, visit DBSkeptic.com and click the link for “Support“.

If you’d rather do nothing, that’s fine too. No offense taken. Just sit back and keep reading. More quality skepticism is on the way.

Other articles related to this topic:

• Lotteries: A sucker’s game or a rational choice?
• DRM is failure in action
• In defense of Oprah Winfrey
• Five atheist logic tests and how to pass them – a skeptical response to “How to make an atheist backslide”
• The undecided voter: An appeal to rational voting