Tag: money

Categories
Uncategorized

Pay (Molly) What You Want

Molly White is a writer. Wait, she’s an amazing writer. You may know her from Web3 is Going Just Great which is “a project to track some examples of how things in the blockchains/crypto/web3 technology space aren’t actually going as well as its proponents might like you to believe”.

She also does a newsletter called [citation needed] which (critically) covers cryptocurrency, AI, and other issues in the tech industry.

For [citation needed] she offers a Pay What You Want model. Here’s an excerpt from the about page:

All content is free and available to all readers, and will continue to be that way. Paywalls suck and you won’t find them here. What you receive will be exactly the same regardless of whether you choose to pay for a subscription or not.

That said, paid subscribers are crucial to allowing me to continue doing this kind of research and writing, and so if you are able to support my work I would be immensely grateful. You will also get access to additional features including commenting.

I understand that not everyone is willing or able to support at the same rate, so I’ve set up a system to allow you to pay what you want. The suggested rate is $10/month or $100/year, which comes out to around $2.50 a newsletter just for the weekly recaps — less when you factor in the additional deep dives and special editions. But whatever you want to or can afford to pay is just fine with me, and deeply appreciated.

There’s a bit more on the about page to read, but I really wanted to include the above text. (The rest of the page is mostly about Molly and her credentials.)

This is how I want it to work. This is the Pay What You Want method, and I think it can work… because it does work.

I subscribe (and by that I mean pay) for a number of publications in Milwaukee. Mainly Urban Milwaukee, OnMilwaukee, and I think The Recombobulation Area. (Note I said I think because I can’t remember if I signed up so I need to recheck that. I’m not a fan of Substack, which Dan uses, but I still want to support him.)

Of the above, only The Recombobulation Area is a one-person shop, and the other two are large(r) organizations with full staffs. They both do ads, and that’s fine, they need to do so, but I will pick either of them over the old guard of Milwaukee Journal Sentinel or any of the local TV stations who usually offer a healthy mix of too many ads and poor design.

Sorry, back to Pay (Molly) What You Want! I should find more examples of this concept. I remember when I got in touch with a news organization that offered subscriptions because they published one really great story, and I wanted to support them. They told me I could subscribe for $99 per year. That was it. They had no option for a one-time donation or a Pay What You Want option, which is sad. I would have immediately subscribed for $1 per month, and maybe increased that if more great stories were published, but they lost me.

I support Inkscape and OpenSCAD each month, and being able to choose the amount, or given more options on smaller amounts, is what got me in. If the options were too high I’d really have to weigh the decision, but $1 or $5 per month is a no-brainer for me.

Are there more people & organizations out there utilizing a Pay What You Want model?

Categories
Uncategorized

Pay What You Want for Art (Live!)

If you haven’t read the post Pay What You Want for Art it’s a good primer for this post. Did you read it good! If not, the gist of it is that I have the privilege of being able to create and and make it available to people at a price they can afford. How do I do this? By letting the customer choose the price.

Sure, this has all been well and good when friends, follower, and people I know (online) have messaged me about a piece and offered a price. I think everyone at least covered the cost of materials, the cost of postage, and then some. A few people covered it fivefold, which is great!

Part of the idea here is that (much like in society) we all contribute according to our means. If you make more money, you pay more in taxes, as you can afford to… and then we all contribute to the things we all use, like roads, parks, public services, etc.

(Obviously the wealthy are excluded from this idea here in the United States because they are human garbage and don’t pay their fair share, but we’ll ignore that for now.)

So a guy I know (Jeff) asked me to take part in this art show and said I could sell my art. When he mentioned it would also be a fundraiser for the Bay View Community Center‘s food pantry program, I was in. Jeff asked that I donate a piece to the silent auction, and then I could sell my art. I told him I’d like to donate half of the sales to the cause, and that’s what I did.

So I figured I would test the “Pay What You Want for Art” idea in person, at an event… with people I did not know. And here’s how it went.

To start, I should say that this was my first event selling art I created. I had no idea how it would go. I was hoping I would cover my costs, and also raise some money. We managed to do both.

I had 15 sales during the event, with an average sale amount of $36.33.

Breaking that down further I sold 38 pieces during the event, with an average sale price of $14.34 per piece.

Total sales for the night was $545. After transaction fees that came down to $514.14. (I used Square but really should have tried to use Venmo more since people can easily avoid fees there. About 1/5th of the sales were cash, so no fees there!)

I took that $515.14 and divided by two for $257.07, which was awesome. I would get half to cover my costs, and the BVCC would get half. So wait, there’s actually another $40 to add on because someone who could not make it to the show really wanted a piece so I delivered it to them Monday morning and added in their $40 with half to me and half to the BVCC.

So the grand total for the BVCC was $277.07. There was an additional $50 from the piece I donated to the silent auction as well! So my efforts resulted in over $300 raised.

Let me say right now this is not about me. I did the work of creating art, doing the event, selling stuff, and all that other jazz, but the people brought the money. I would not have been able to help contribute this without the help of some very generous friends. My pal Gary bought a lot of pieces, and also got my auction item. Gary also helped me 3D print all the frames! Gary is one of the heroes of the night. Another hero is Kim, who I attended high school with. I didn’t have a great time in high school but Kim was one of handful of people I really liked, so seeing her was great, and she bought four pieces and paid well for them.

Did anyone take advantage of the system? Well, the third sale of the night was to a guy who seemed really excited. He picked a piece, then another, and another, and eventually was holding 8 prints. He then said “How’s 25 bucks?” and my heart kind of sank… I was convinced I made a huge mistake. I didn’t really push back, I just said “Well, sure. So the Bay View Community Center will get about $12 and I’ll get about $12.” Doing the math that set each piece at $3.13 which doesn’t even cover the cost of materials. It’s low. But hey, I committed to this experiment. I took the $25 and gave him the 8 prints.

Now, I just sort of chose to believe that he really liked the work, and he was excited to give art to people (he mentioned a few people’s names while browsing) and you know what? If I got some art out into the world to people, that’s a good thing. He got a killer deal, he got some art, and I got a little bit of money for myself and the BVCC. Sure, if two or three more people did the same thing it would have wiped me out and I would have been a bit crushed, but things went up from there. Kids came to buy art, sometimes for just $10 or maybe 3 for $35. It’s all good. In the end people (hopefully) paid what they could afford, or what they deemed something worth, and we raised some money.

Two people asked for a guideline on pricing, and the response I usually give is that I’ve had people pay as little as $10 and as much as $60 for a piece. If someone said “Is $15 okay?” I said “That’s awesome! Thank you so much!” and the trick is, I say that no matter what the amount (except for the guy who got 8 for $25). If a kid came up with $5 I’d sell to them… Heck, if a kid came up with a crayon drawing I’d probably straight up do a trade!

This show was unique since there was no fee to take part, so I could afford to do this experiment. That allowed me to donate 50% of the sales to the cause. For a typical show where you pay $100 or whatever fee to just get a table I don’t know that I could do the “Pay What You Want for Art” but also, I sort of want to try it.

Categories
Uncategorized

Pay What You Want for Art

In January 2024 I made over 45 relief prints. I set out to do this because I was not accepted to the Var Gallery 30x30x30 show and I wanted to challenge myself to create 30 pieces of art during the month even if I would not be showing my work in a gallery at the end of it. I shared all of my work online to my friends, family, and followers across Facebook, Instagram, and Mastodon. In theory more people saw my work than would have in a local gallery show.

I also wrote about the process and about art and life along the way. See the posts; Part I, Part II, and Part III, Part IV and Part V.

I had no intention of selling any art. Historically I have not sold much of the art I’ve created in my lifetime. I’ve sold a few things along the way, but I certainly didn’t have sales in mind when I started. Just like with the photography I’ve done in the past, if I can keep art-making very low cost for myself then I can either give it away freely (like I do with Gallery 69) or at least just share it online. Photos are great to share online. Physical goods, like prints, can be made pretty cheaply, of course there’s still the cost of ink and paper. (And I try to make a lot of paper.)

For me, making art is something I love to do, and I also love sharing it with others… which is why I’ve posted hundreds of photos with open licenses and why I have a Free Little Art Gallery in my front yard.

And yet… When I started posting prints people wanted them. I mean, often one person would want one. Sometimes two people would want a specific print. I should mention I was often just making a few prints and picking the best one as the “final” or sometimes even just one single print. Of course I could always print more (and yes, I’ll get into that later) but I would make a print, frame it, photograph it, post it, and every now and them, someone would want it.

So I told people “Pay what you want! Any amount will do.” Wait, could they pay nothing? Pay a penny? Well… sure. No one did that though. Perhaps because these are people that (in theory) already know me.

One follower said I needed to set up a shop and list them all because they didn’t want to have to ask me which prints were still available. I didn’t want to muck around with doing listings for all the prints, and honestly the conversation that happens when someone wants a print is valuable to me. It’s interaction with a person who actually wants a piece of art I created. It’s not a store where you anonymously just spend money and get something. I’m thinking about Commerce versus Capitalism. (Which is a topic that’s a bit deeper than this post is going to get into.)

What does this all mean moving forward? I may try to continue the Pay What You Want model for some of the upcoming prints I have planned, but I may look into things like goimagine which seems like an ethical choice for selling art as they take part in a caring economy. If I can get art out into the world at a low price and also help those in need? Well that’s what they call a win-win situation.

Categories
Uncategorized

Selling a car on Facebook

Last time I sold a car I used craiglist, and you can read about that adventure. I just sold another car, so here’s another story. It went much better this time.

I sold my 2005 Honda Element with almost no effort, but I think this is a rare thing, and I was lucky. See, a few years ago I guy I know who also owned an Element said “Hey, you need to join this Honda Element Facebook Group!” and since I’m already in a hundred groups I just joined another. Over the years the group was quite useful! Since the Element was made for a limited time they are all getting old, and they break, and people would share posts about fixing them.

So this time around when Dana and I talked about selling the Element she joked that she would hire someone to haul it away. I said “Let me post it to the group” and I did, with a “Hey, I might be selling this” post. I got people interested immediately. Now, my Element was in okay shape, but not great shape. It was seventeen years old, and broke a lot over the years. It had a cracked windshield caused by some rust on the roof. But hey, it ran, and it was AWD, and the body was in good shape.

I ended up connecting with a woman who lived about an hour away, and five days after she contacted me I had it cleaned up and she was test driving it. She made an offer which I was happy to accept and I sold it to her. No flim flam like when I sold the CR-V. Just straightforward “I want to sell it for this much” and “I am willing to pay this much” and we both agreed and walked away happy. Well, I walked, she drove!

I’ll admit, I was sad to see it go. I mean, I could fit so much in that car! I once put a Wienermobile in the back. I even made a DIY Roof Rack for about $30 USD. Anyway, I’m glad it’s going to someone who really appreciates it. The Honda Element is a special vehicle.

Categories
Uncategorized

Five Dollars of your Makerspace dues…

five-dollars

Milwaukee Makerspace dues are currently $40 per month for a “full” membership, and we allow each member to “vote” for what areas they want to support with their dollars. In our membership software a member can choose up to five areas to fund, with a total of $5.00 per month. You can put all $5 towards one area, or split it up among multiple areas.

For instance, if you tend to use the laser cutters a lot, you can put your $5 towards the laser cutters. This compounds with the funds from other members, and creates a pool of money for the laser cutters that the Area Champion then gets as a budget. The Area Champion decides how to spend the money. They can purchase spare parts, materials, software, etc. Consumables tend to be at the top of the list for many areas. For the laser cutters that may be cleaning supplies and new lenses, and they may want to have enough cash reserve on hand to purchase something more expensive, like a new laser tube, if needed.

Other areas might stock up on tape, blades, glue, small tools, etc. Besides building up a fund for each area, the “vote with your dollars” method also allows the members (and Board of Directors) to see which areas are the most popular. (Assuming people put their money towards the areas they care about and use.)

Here’s an snapshot of the funding as of the writing of this post. (The raw data is available here.) Note that a low dollar amount doesn’t necessarily mean an area is unpopular, as they may have just spent all of their cash. It’s better to look at the monthly allocation to get an idea of the popularity of an area, listed as “Current Member Funding” on the page.

Area Dollars
3D Printing Area $830.03
Anodizing Area $0.00
Forge Area $1,198.82
Casting Area $635.25
Ceramics Area $356.04
CNC Area $496.36
Craft Lab $847.76
Electronics Lab $725.66
Metal Finishing Area $163.48
Jewelry Area $575.60
Laser Lab $2,642.60
Leatherworking Area $339.50
Maker Faire Funding $677.29
Metal Shop $1,134.20
206.76 $189.01
Power Racing $163.67
Print Area $189.80
Soda Fund $129.00
Vacuum Former $164.35
Welding Area $624.22
Wood Shop $1,482.69

Besides the $5.00 per month that members can allocate, they can also choose to donate directly to these areas using our member management software (which is built on Wild Apricot.) This is a good way to support an area that you might use infrequently. For instance, I used the Paint Room quite a lot for two weeks leading up to Maker Faire, so I just did a straight donation to that area rather than change my monthly allocation.

I mentioned “full” member above, and that’s because we also have “family” members, who are add-on members that only pay $10.00 per month for their membership. We scale down their $5.00 per month to just $1.25 per month, so they can choose up to five areas to support, but at only 25 cent per area.

Obviously not all spaces can operate in this fashion, but with close to 300 members and a good financial standing we’ve got what I think is a pretty good system.

So, how does your space do it?

(Note: I was told that the Anodizing Area was rolled into the Metal Finishing Area, so that’s why the number is $0.00. It’s still in the system due to legacy reasons.)