Editing The Pen Addict 187/transcript (section)

== Pen Talk ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I think so. We've been away for a couple of weeks and it's been building up.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it has. We don't usually take weeks off. But when we pre-record sometimes, and there's actually two weeks between when we record, it seems like it takes forever to get to that second week. This time it flew by. It seems like we just recorded last week. I guess we've just all been so busy around the holidays. I know I've been busy running all over creation these past few days. But it's all in a good kind of way.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So we should probably just get straight to the big news. Sure. That as part of your recent turn of events in leaving your job and taking the pen addict and not gone to be your full-time job, basically, you have now given the ability for people to support the pen addict brand and the website and everybody that's kind of connected to it with pen addict memberships.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah. This is something I was excited to do and wanted to do and was kind of the whole impetus behind me leaving my job. It was part and parcel to the whole big picture thing. This didn't come up separate from quitting my job. This has all been in the works for months and months and months, trying to get things right, trying to get to a point where I feel good about offering these, feeling like I'm offering good value to people who do choose to support me. And those that have done so, I really, really appreciate it. I've gotten tons of great feedback about it. And, you know, I have a post on the blog and if you haven't seen it, we'll have the link in the show notes. And it goes through, you know, why I chose to do this, you know, what you get, you know. And if you, you know, aren't interested in memberships at all, you're not going to miss anything from the regular pen addict blog. Nothing's going to change at all, which was very, very important to me. So I'm real happy with how it turned out yesterday and today. And, you know, going forward, it's going to be something, you know, I'll be talking about from time to time on the blog. And, yeah, the feedback has been really positive. It's scary to push that kind of button where you're asking people to, you know, give you money. And, you know, I sweated that post for a long, long time trying to word it right and trying to get it right and trying to make sure I explain myself correctly and, you know, things like that. So it was really good, I think, how it turned out. I was stressed hard for the past couple of days until I pushed the button and then it's been all good since then.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So right now is clearly there is a trend. There is a trend of memberships. It is a thing that is happening. It happened. This happened a couple of years ago and now it's happening again. Many people are doing memberships. Why should people be a member of the pen addict? You said nothing's going to change. So why would they give you the five dollars every month?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, nothing's going to change with the pen addict dot com site. So that site, you know, the site as a whole will actually get better. I'll actually have more content, you know, for the general posting reviews, you know, updates, having Jeff and Susan continue to write, continue having guest posts. Nothing's going to change. But with the memberships, you're going to get more stuff that's outside of the website. And it's primarily going to be delivered via newsletter.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I've just I always have more things to say. I think sometimes than like straight up reviews. So I wanted a vehicle to to write a little bit more to, you know, I never hold back an opinion on my reviews. But, you know, I have other opinions that I want to share and, you know, editorialize on some things. Then I want to provide additional content. You know, aside from that type of writing, some more insight behind the scenes. Then I'm going to have things like ink links returning, but in a very smaller, more concise, more dedicated format to where, you know, I will elaborate on the links, things like that. I'm going to have members. I'm going to have members Q&A where members can be directly involved in the newsletter. That'll just be for members only. I'm going to have giveaways of all the stuff I have here that is just piled up. There's going to be some serious, serious giveaway boxes going out once a month.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, there's going to be other features I want to add to the newsletter. I'm working on some audio things right now that I can do is as a side project from the podcast and and have those things featured in there. Some video projects that I might do that, you know, the members will get all of these type of additional type things that aren't normally on the pen addict on the on the website itself. This is all going towards the newsletter and hopefully, you know, all the members are going to enjoy that extra content.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So basically what people are going to get is is more more pen addict stuff, but maybe that you wouldn't well that you wouldn't have posted on the blog, but there's going to be some interesting things. And hopefully as well as more people join the idea for expansion as well, right? Like so people can so you'll be sorry, you'll be able to go into different things. You'll be able to go into audio video that type of stuff and just add more and more because, you know, the more that people the more people that sign up the easier it is to devote your time to creating more varied content as well.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think exactly exactly and I'm adding a shop to that's not going to be a members only shop unless we do members only jackets like literally everyone wants members only jackets. I said we can do members only fishing vests, but there's going to be a shop. It'll be a public shop, you know, for for the pen addict, but members will get discounts on that. Things like that. That will be, you know, only for members, things like that. So there's a lot involved with it, you know, and it's going to continue to morph and change as, you know, I get, you know, more feedback on the newsletter, more feedback on what people are wanting to see, read or hear about from me. But I think it's going to be pretty cool. I'm looking forward to it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So obviously one of the things that we have going on right now, which may cause confusion for people listening to the show is there is the Relay FM membership as well, right? So people can give money to the pen addict podcast. So this is just the thing. The pen addict is part of Relay. Relay is doing memberships and the pen addict you can give to the pen addict and the money goes to me and Brad. And then also you have the pen addict website and the money will go to Brad to help support the pen addict. Brad won't agree with this, but I'll say just if you're wondering which one to give money to, just give money to him. That's what I say. Just go sign up for the pen addict membership over at pen addict.com. That's where, that's what you should be doing in my opinion.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. And I, I mean, honestly, I think so too. And I was asked this question yesterday, you know, how does it differ from any podcast or Relay membership? And the best way I could come up with it is that if you support the podcast via Relay FM, you're going to get more Relay FM extras. If you support the pen addict directly, the blog, you're going to get more pen addict extras. Exactly.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. That's exactly it. So you can choose which one you want to do. You can support both of them. You can support none of them and what you're used to won't change. But whatever you decide to support, wherever you decide to put your money, you're going to get some extras. Yeah. How did you come to this price? $5 a month?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So you kind of, you kind of alluded to like how the kind of the memberships and things like that have kind of become a thing. In the past, you know, year, it's kind of become a popular, popular way for, for people to, you know, content creators to make additional money and support themselves. In my case, fully support myself with the pen addict and not. And I didn't have any like hard science on the money thing. But, you know, just looking at what other people offer and the type of content they offer, you can see kind of like $5 is kind of like the sweet spot for that. It has to be at a certain level to make it worthwhile, like something around $2 or $3 and then creating all this extra content and all this extra work. And then getting hit with, you know, different fees and different, you know, subscriptions to make, you know, all like these things work behind the scenes. You know, there's money that's taken out immediately from that. So when you get down low enough to like $2 and $3, it ends up making it not worth a while. And I didn't want to just make it a donation thing. Right. I didn't want to say have a donation thing. I wanted to create more and give back more for people who choose to support. So that was important that I felt like one, it was a good value for what I'm offering. I guess then that's that's the primary thing. There probably is no number two. You know, it was enough to make it worthwhile, make it worth my while and then a good enough value for the members to make it worth their while to, you know, support me and feel like they're getting something good enough back for that price.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, no doubt. And why did you choose to roll your own with member for and put it on the site and not go with something like, I don't know, Patreon? I think.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think. I'm just more comfortable with handling that stuff directly. Like, I don't even though, you know, you know, I have a membership manager and a payment processor and things like that. Those are just like utilities. Right. Patreon is more of a platform. And I felt like I wanted to do something completely separate. I mean, I could just I could have just created a Patreon. And but I didn't want to deal with like the different levels of, you know, I didn't want to say, you know, if you give this much per month, you get this. And if you give it this much per month, you give this. Even though you don't have to do it that way, that seems to be what Patreon does. I didn't want to have it tied into the blog at all in where I said, you know, for every post I make, you know, donate X amount. It just felt cleaner to just have a flat membership. For the one thing, even though you get a lot in that one thing, you know, the one membership. It's not variable, if you will. And I feel more comfortable having that. And, you know, I don't have anything against Patreon. I actually support several people via Patreon. I just didn't feel it was right for me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There are certain scenarios where it works better. And like for the type of content that you put out and the way that you put it out, it doesn't work so well, I don't think.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I think the video creators, it works well for.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, that's who it was built for, really.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. But like for writers, I don't know. It didn't seem like as great of an idea for me personally. But like for the video creators, that seems like kind of the perfect vehicle for that. Like if I was a video creator, I would most likely go with Patreon.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, nothing against the platform at all, like I said. So I just didn't feel like in this case, it was the right setup that I wanted to have. That, you know, it just, this was just how I wanted to do it and have the control over it directly. And, you know, just have the single flat pricing essentially. And that's about it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Anything else you wanted to add on the membership today?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't think so, except that, you know, thank you everyone for all the great feedback. You know, the one thing that surprised me, you know, I was prepared for a little bit of pushback. I haven't had any yet. Not that I'm expecting any. But, you know, there's always, you know, people see change. People kind of freak out. I do the same. I've been guilty of things. You know, knee-jerk reactions. But it's been so positive and this community has been so great. And I just want to make sure, you know, that I deliver, you know, and meet the expectations of everyone who is choosing to spend their hard-earned dollars, you know, to support me and the website and everything I create. And, you know, I'm just really proud to be a part of this community. And, you know, it shows when you do something like this in the support system you have. It's pretty cool to see.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Most definitely.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, there'll be a lot of changes as we go forward, you know, with members. I'll get a lot of feedback. You know, there's really no feedback yet that everyone can give. But, you know, as we move forward, there'll be a lot of changes, a lot of additions. And, you know, I want the members to feel a part of what's going on. So it feels pretty good. I am pretty happy with how things have gone so far.