Push harder for supporters

 What's up everybody. Welcome to the pwn podcast. I'm your host, Peter William. You can find this podcast and myself at PeterWitham.Com. This episode has got a bit of a funny title, I guess. Push harder for supporters. Now, what does that mean? Well, I was in a conversation with a friend of mine recently and I was saying to him, look, I just think I've reached a point where I got to make a decision and I don't know that I can keep doing all of my podcasts and my side projects. And he asking me why? And I explained, look, as you've often heard me say. Free content is not free to produce. It is free to consume, not free to produce. And I said to him, look, I've, I have tried. Out with my Compile Swift podcast, for example, CompileSwift.com. You know, it gets thousands of downloads every month.

It's fantastic. I hate to kill off successful things like that. And I really don't want to, but at the end of the day, It's not bringing in any revenue. Now that's not to say that this was its goal, but its goal was always, it should support itself. Right? And I was explaining, you know, I've done the, buy me a coffee thing.

I've done all these things. And I've tried to get.

Sponsors. And I put my own sponsors in there for things like set up and DigitalOcean and all these things. And those who do very well on my trade coffee one, they do well. Now, the only downside there is, as I was explaining to him is they do well to keep me in hosting, keep me in coffee and keeping in software.

What they don't do well is things like continue to pay the mortgage, pay the heating costs, pay the phone bill. Uh, things like that they're sort of wrapped into, you know, you get a specific reward for them, which is fantastic because I use them all. I use hosting. I absolutely adore my. My coffee and of course I use software.

That's all fantastic. But at the end of the day, you know, there are costs involved with these things. And somewhere along the way, you've, you'd be sort of got to find a way to try and break even. And, you know, you said, why don't you try Patreon? And I was like, yeah, I tried it. That was the first thing I tried years ago and it worked for maybe one or two sign ups. Once per month and, then they went away and that was it.

And then he said to me, something that sort of made me realize. You know where I was maybe going wrong here or how I was failing to try harder. Which is, um, he said, well, you know, I hear you talking about these things like set app and the coffee and everything else on the podcast. But I never, he mentioned Patreon and I thought about it and I was like, yeah, he's right. I never mentioned it. And the reason I never mentioned it was because I sort of abandoned it.

The idea was that you would sign up on Patreon. Many podcasts do this. You sign up on Patrion and then you get advert free versions of the podcast. Other podcasts offers other things as well, like a shout out and, extras and all those kinds of things. And I thought, well, he's right. So I thought to myself and I sit down and look, I'll give it one more go.

So this weekend just gone. I was sort of working through, cleaning up the Patriana bed and adding some episodes of the podcast and things like that. And to see where it goes. And when I released a new version of the compulsive podcast on Sunday, I specifically put in there, Hey folks, need support, would love support. Please go to the Patreon. And I will see what it does, but I mentioning all of this to see to your wall. You have to push and you have to be uncomfortable about these things, because I don't like to push these things too hard. Because I know that sometimes they can bother me when people push too hard. But, it's like that social network thing where, You post once. And that's that.

And then maybe you post something twice the same thing twice and so on. And there's a point at which you're like, oh, I feel like I'm bothering people. Now with the same thing, but then you realize one day, someone points out to you, look, if you've got. Let's just pick one, for example. My Compile Swift account on X or Twitter. Which, has I forget over a thousand? Probably a few thousand. I can't remember followers.

It's yeah, but that doesn't mean that you're bothering all those people because they may never have seen it. Or maybe they, a few of them saw it once. You feel bad because your very engaged with this. And so you feel like you're doing it a lot, but in reality, You're probably not. Getting anybody's attention, right?

If you only do something once or twice. And it's kind of like that too, with asking people to support you. You know, it. You got to not feel bad about doing it. So I'm trying to not feel bad. About asking people and I'm laughing because, it's a case of I support podcasts financially, other people and things like that because I want them to keep going. And, a lot of podcasts I used to listen to, especially tech ones, faded and died.

And I've said to people, I said, I can't do this anymore. And I don't want to be one of those. I totally get why they, they reached that point because I've been at that decision point many times. And so I'm giving it another go here. But. My point to your wall is don't be afraid to ask people, right?

If you need. Support for something financial or otherwise on, on your projects or your goals or pursuits, whatever it may be. Yeah. Bug people ask them. Because if you don't ask, you don't get, and we don't ask often enough, I guess it's the realization on that? So I just wanted to put this out there.

It was one of those kinds of things to maybe have you think twice. We'll see, but go away and think about it, right? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Reach out to me, PeterWitham.com/Contact. And with that folks. I'll speak to you in the next episode.