Thrilling follow-up to subscription week!

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Last Sunday I introduced Subscription Week, 5 posts (one, two, three, four, five) selected from my archives which, while wide-ranging, I felt represented a selection of the best work I do here for my readers and which I hoped would encourage some casual readers or fence-sitters to sign up for PayPal subscriptions to help ensure the continued viability of this site.

Those who subscribed by last Friday should already have received an e-mail with information about accessing the newsletter archive; if you didn't receive an e-mail (after checking your spam folders), drop me a note and I'll get it to you ASAP.

The subscription scoreboard

I gave all sorts of figures in my Sunday post, but since last week was Subscription Week, let's stick to PayPal subscriptions. Here were my subscription figures last Sunday:

I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I am an eternal optimist. I have a lot of readers, a lot of Twitter followers, and a lot of e-mail correspondents, but just 120 PayPal subscribers. I sort of figured if I could get up to 200 active subscribers that would be a nice round number that might justify me continuing on at this for another year.

Well, we didn't quite get there. Here are my current subscription figures:

Conclusion

When I first wrote about my move to self-employment a lot of folks suggested going to a subscription-only model. In a way that would be easier for me, since it would both let me talk openly about stuff I'm discrete about here on the blog and give me more time to work on my other writing projects (or "get a damn job!" as other commenters have suggested).

On the other hand, I love writing for a larger audience and helping people in the comments, by e-mail, and on Twitter. If I went subscription-only it seems like that kind of presence would naturally disappear.

So I don't know. It may even turn out that the little Google Adsense box in my sidebar will start spinning off gobs of cash and render the whole discussion moot.

I have until the beginning of February to renew my hosting agreement, and I have to make some kind of a decision by then (and no, credit card affiliate links are not on the table). Stay tuned!