Alexander Kluge 🐣 naii.io @naii@mastodon.naii.io

The first step of any creator hoping for lasting success—whether for ten years or ten centuries—is to accept that hope has nothing to do with it.

To be great, one must make great work, and making great work is incredibly hard. It must be our primary focus.

We must set out, from the beginning, with complete and total commitment to the idea that our best chance of success starts during the creative process.

Do go make and share. Do what you can’t.

Reading Bob Hoffman’s newsletter:

FACEBOOK CORRUPTION NEVER ENDS

https://typeagroup.cmail19.com/t/ViewEmail/d/FE6265F7FB6CE8322540EF23F30FEDED/27FEDBEC33069D0D942A2DF08F503B7C

@aral Thank you for being transparent about the topic of being an "uber human" or "uber developer". Really enjoyed your "S’Update" from Feb 11th, 2021.

And today’s S’Update looks interesting too => https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/105747330838253719

p.s. is there a way to get a Vimeo permalink to your livestreamed video updates so I can point people directly there?

Last but not least, you can join BMC yourself through my invitaton link => https://buymeacoff.ee/?via=naii, and when you do, I earn a camomile tea from the BMC team. Super nice!

And FYI…

Buy Me a Coffee keeps a 5% transaction fee and you keep 95% of the support your received. Plus, there are Stripe fees (1,4% to 2,9% plus 0,25€) for the pay-out and/or potential currency conversion fees when using PayPal beyond EU/Europe.

So, in the end around 92% of the support should arrive on your account. Not too shabby if this helps you to not have to set up your own "fund my work" tool chain.

Conclusion:

Together with its clean design and its straightforward language on the homepage, about page, and FAQ page, I find BMC to be a worthwhile Patreon competitor.

Very simple design, totally right up my alley.

That’s why I didn’t hesitate to set up my account.

You can now buy me a camomile tea because… screw coffee xD

You can see a link to my BMC page here:
https://buymeacoffee.com/naii

Other copy choices that I enjoyed:

1. designed for _creators_ not for businesses
2. they are your supporters not "customers" or transactions
3. get paid instantly to your PayPal or bank account - no 30-day delays
4. 100% ownership of your supporters; export your email list any time you like

And then I checked how they compare to Patreon and Ko-fi…

BIG ONE: They included a real video review by YouTuber MrAlexTech on their front page => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhzVaYH_YTI -

Plus, the website is simply designed with lots of white and whitespace - which I like.

I knew about it but it never appealed to me. Maybe it was the coffee topic - don’t know.

But last week I checked it out again and found these pieces of copy that changed my mind:

1. "a supporter is worth a 1000 followers"
2. simple, meaningful way to fund creative work
3. without stitching together a bunch of apps
4. build a direct relationship with your fans
5. accept support, memberships; they don’t even have to create an account

So, I checked out the about window in the Amphetamine app which led me to his Buy Me a Coffee page - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/x74353. There, I learned that William Gustafson is the solo developer behind this piece of software.

His app is for free but if you feel generous you can support him with a one-off donation or a subscription (2$/mo or 20$/yr).

Currently, William has 430 supporters. That’s fantastic!

So, he got my attention.

And now I was curious about BMC (Buy Me a Coffee) myself.

I used amphetamine.

And I got addicted.

Ok, let me rephrase.

I’ve started using "Amphetamine".

Amphetamine is a macOS app that keeps my Mac awake.

I needed Amphetamine because I needed to uploaded my Basecamp exports (a ~4GB .zip file) to my Sync.com Vault. It never worked because my Mac fell asleep before the upload had finished. With Amphetamine it worked!

Kicking off day 1/7 of sabbatical 2/7 in 2021 with a song that I first listened to and watched when I used Windows 95 back in the 90s:

Good Times - Edie Brickell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okt9GcWiWmE

“Good times, bad times, give me some of that…”

It’s funny that this song keeps popping up in my head every now and then - after 20+ years. *krehzy*

I took the red pill 💊 and said bye-bye to Big Tech - in this case facebook, twitter, linkedin.

Will only stay on non-Big-Tech-owned communities incl. my own Mastodon instance of course.