Monetizing Joy

NOT asking you to become a paid subscriber...

This is such a sticky wicket.

I’d rather talk about weight, age, sex, death, taxes, the weather, whatever. But not money.

My mother believed money grew on trees or at least that there was a leprechaun with a pot of gold that would sprinkle some on her doorstep if (and when) things got tight. It’s a horrible life strategy, but a nice imagination station at which to take a pause from our commercial tendencies.

But, I pulled out my big girl panties this morning, because it’s time to talk about money.

I’ve been writing on Substack for over a year now. What started as a pure experiment has become a staple exercise in my week. I’ve committed to making The Joy Luck Club a space for transparency, mostly mine, but sometimes others. A place where there’s no guarantee of a happy ending or good advice or even something of substance. It is what it purports to be…a space to explore joy.

And its grown, slowly, organically, and for reasons that probably have more to do with the algorithm than my writing, but I’ll take it!

The obvious next step? Set up paid subscriptions and ask those of you who are regular readers to support my work monthly or annually, for fees that are, to be honest, extremely reasonable in comparison to the amount of effort it takes to create this content.

I’m such a sucker for an obvious next step. I LOVE a black and white solution. But, I’ve held back from taking this step in particular. I said I’d do it when I hit 100 subscribers, but that benchmark passed with a lot of uncomfortable murmuring on my part when my husband asked me about it.

For awhile, I didn’t understand what was holding me back. I spend hours each week in conversation with myself and others trying to understand and communicate how and where and why joy shows up in my life. Isn’t it fair to ask people who consume that content weekly to contribute to its continuation financially?

The answer is…YES. It is absolutely okay to ask that. That’s not my hang up.

Where I’m getting stuck is the idea of monetizing joy.

Image by Frantisek Krejci from Pixabay

When I first started writing The Joy Luck Club, I was literally flirting with joy. I had zero experience with being in a long term relationship with joy, no clue how to take my hardened heart back to a place where it might be able to experience something akin to joy. All that to say, I’m no expert. I’m an explorer with a verbal processing problem.

I still don’t know what I’m doing a year later. I feel like my relationship with joy is Facebook official and fairly stable outside of the socials, but the only thing I’ve become certain about is that more exploration is needed.

I expect many of you are on a similar journey. Maybe you’re still in the canyon, joy sitting next to you. Maybe you’re waiting in heated anticipation of having some make up sex with joy. Maybe you’re feeling helpless, and finding joy in resistance keeps you from feeling hopeless.

Whatever it is and wherever you are with joy, all I want, ultimately, is for you to be here with me.

So, I’m not going to take the obvious next step.

The Joy Luck Club and all of its content will remain free for everyone.

Let me be clear, this is in no way a passive aggressive dig at any of the creators on Substack whose content is behind a paywall. Most of them are making their intellectual property available here for a miniscule amount compared to the quality and value of their creations. In addition, they are doing it multiple times a week in video, in audio, and in written word. That’s fucking hard, takes a tremendous amount of time and thought, and is absolutely subscription worthy.

Which is not to say that I think The Joy Luck Club isn’t changing the world in its own right. I do. At the very least, it’s changing my world.

So, I needed to find a middle ground. A solution that aligns with my values and integrity and continues to be an invitation, not a barrier, to exploring joy.

At the end of every post moving forward, I’m going to drop a “Buy Me a Joy💣” button. If that post resonates with you, if you thought about it more than once after you read it, if you shared something from it with someone in your life, if there was any part of you that smiled reading it, or cried, or cussed, or thought “me too”, I’d ask that you buy me a joy💣. It’s basically like buying me a cup of coffee, but with a 💣emoji, so better…obviously.

The button will allow you to gift any amount, and each gift will allow me some breathing room to keep focusing on this work.

And here’s where I want to equivocate, to add in all the rationale and caveats and lack of expectations. Instead, I’m just going to stop. To leave it here. To trust that you see my integrity and values struggling to find the right answer, and that you will use your agency to spread joy, whatever that looks like.

Thank you. For staying with me as I stumbled through this. And for being an audience that appreciates exploration, however messy.

Sending joy your way.