Media Events is one of a million other one-person newsletters that exists at the intersection of culture and technology. However, there are two things that make it different:

1. Media Events is Better Than The Rest™.
2. I do not charge for subscriptions.

This is not to say that, as an independent blogger, I don’t want to make money. I definitely want to make money. However, I’m not fully convinced that, at this point, subscriptions are it. The issue, basically, is that there are too many newsletters — great newsletters, newsletters that have been around for years and which have earned, through hard work and talent, hundreds if not thousands of paying subscribers — and, as a start-up newsletter dedicated to pieces of Media that have become Events, I’m not going to be able to compete. There is a finite number of people out there willing to pay five dollars each month to read stuff by one person on the internet, and those people have a finite amount of money. And I’m guessing that at this point, those people are probably paying for so many newsletters and podcasts that they couldn’t possibly have the time to consume all that, ahem, “premium content.” 

Also, like, subscriptions kind of suck? How many times have you signed up for a paid subscription just to read a single thing and then promptly unsubscribed? Or signed up for something only to forget you’d even subscribed in the first place? When was the last time you listened to a bonus episode of that podcast you’ve been supporting every month on Patreon for the past five years? (To anyone who has a successful thing that relies upon the monthly contributions of subscribers, please know that I’m mostly joking / mainly jealous.)

Enough! It’s time to try something new. Micro-paywalls, baby!! Each premium post on Media Events will cost the royal sum of one dollar to access. Or, more accurately, if you pay a dollar to read one of the premium posts on this site, you will be able to read all the Media Events premium posts for 24 hours. Binge them. Open them in a bunch of tabs and forget about them. Whatever. 

The idea, though, is that we can engage in an honest transaction here. I get your dollar, you get 24 hours of access to my stuff. You’re getting to read something you wouldn’t otherwise be able to read, and I’m getting your money in a way that doesn’t involve me secretly siphoning five bucks from your bank account every month. 

Now, am I doing this because Supertab, a company that specializes in micro-paywalls, is sponsoring this blog? You bet your ass I am. But I like the people at Supertab. They’re nice, and I used to work with their CTO. Besides, their company offers a solution to the bottleneck that is the current subscription landscape, so I’m genuinely excited to be using their tools.

So, let’s give this a shot. Please give me $1.00, and in return, I will give you one day of access to my premium-tier blogs. If you have any feedback, you can email me here.

Some further disclosures: Supertab, this blog’s sponsor, has absolutely no control over the editorial content of Media Events, and they also have no control over the stuff written on this page. However, Supertab’s staff provides me with technical support and works with me to experiment on how to best use their tools to monetize small, independent sites such as Media Events.