My blog is free and will remain so, I am well aware of the constraints on spending many of us have. But the blog is also expensive to maintain and needs some expensive updating – especially on a new system for delivery to mobile users with tablets and smartphones. That alone will cost about $6,000, plus updating and maintenance of the blog and some new equipment for my photography. I’m wearing my stuff out.

The blog and my photos are free to anyone who wants to read them or use them, but they are not, ironically, free for me to produce. The farm and dog and animal care is not cheap either.

So I’m offering a new voluntary payment system. You can pay $75 a year, which is the simplest system, or for those who prefer it, $5 or $10 a month. I offer these choices to meet people’s individual financial circumstances. Everyone gets the same thing regardless. The blog is free. This is not a subscription fee but a payment fee, you are simply paying to support my blog and my work. You are paying me for the work I do, just as you would if you were buying a book.

The blog is increasingly important to both my writing life and my financial well- being.

And many people on the Internet are becoming more comfortable with the idea of paying artists and writers for the work they do online.  That is a good thing. Cream rises. The blog is my book, it is my living memoir, an authentic and continuing account of my life. I update it frequently, and just about every day.

I consider it a unique and prescient experiment in building the new life of the writer, changed forever, along with much else, during the Great Recession and in light of the digital information revolution. I should say I have no access to your financial information, none of it is stored on my website or servers. For your protection and my sanity, I cannot start or stop payments, you have full access to your account at all times and canceling is very simple, it can be done at any time.

I do not keep track of who is paying and who isn’t, you are all welcome here. Most of the people who read the blog do not pay, and so there is much room for this idea to grow.

So think about paying me for my work if you can and if it is useful or entertaining or uplifting for you. If  you can’t, I completely understand.

I am committed to this new way of writing, it is not that different from the old way except for it’s timeliness and frequency and for the dialogue we now have with one another. The blog is the centerpiece of my creative life now, and I am grateful to have to opportunity to explore and build the new life of the new writer. I intend to be relevant for a good long time to come. And thanks. You can check out payments here.