A Quick Update For My OGs On Tossing A Coin To This Witcher

An update on my Substack memberships, BuyMeACoffee, etc. etc.

All of the ways folks can show their support for my rolling around in the cosmic dirt and/or thought processing aloud into the void are in tatters, ‘cause I wasn’t sure what I was going to be up to professionally as of 30-90 business days ago (thanks, Uranus!)

I haven’t been sharing here because I’m re-adjusting to writing more publicly, but I have been sharing quite a lot about the ritual work and other community comings and goings I’ve been up to on Facebook, behind the safety fence of “Friends Only” posts. I wasn’t expecting so many folks to check in with me and ask me about tossing in a coin or two for my ongoing efforts — I am so sincerely grateful that folks thought of me and want to invest in my work in the world. It’s muchly appreciated, and I will have more on how you can do that in the short-term at the very bottom of this post.

First: I nuked my Buy Me A Coffee, in favor of moving to FourthWall (which is on my list, but not yet done.)

I have looked into a few different SaaS and e-commerce platforms, but none of them - besides investing in setting up a Shopify/WooCommerce/Squarespace shop, and not even then because it was clunky mess - met my needs. I didn’t want to be selling art prints in one place, originals in another, membership over here, one-time contributions over there, courses and workshops and other digital deliverables over in what light in yonder window breaks. To say nothing of VAT and sales tax compliance nightmares, which is even more relevant for me now, soon-to-be (goddess willing) global citizen.

So when my friend Monica Herald introduced me to FourthWall, I was thrilled. FourthWall solves 95% of these issues for me: I can accept one-time and recurring support, I can sell art prints as well as originals through the same point in the near future, and I can also offer digital products, too, *without* the headaches of sales tax & VAT compliance. I don’t mind having my consulting work separate, so it’s a perfect solution.

Second: I am working on resurrecting/reconfiguring my Substack membership.

I think it’s set at $18/mo right now, I’m gonna lower that to $5/mo. It makes it more accessible to a wider swath of people and I think that’s a reasonable amount to ask for in exchange for the privileges of commenting on my work and having access to a fun community group chat. I plan to use the latter as a way to share the type of updates I might behind the safety of ‘Friends Only’ on Meta’s dead strip mall platform.

Charging for access to my comments on my longform work is a deliberate choice on my part as a historically marginalized person. I refuse to accept or indulge this idea that anyone can have access to the intimacy and relational care of my attention, for free, especially when so often now that comes with time-wasting bullshit and violent abuse meant to get me to stop creating or feel shame for my self-expression, without any reasonable basis or argument.

(Also, I realized the people who read + appreciate my art (community ritual, literal art, writing), tend to overlap the folks who then go on to hire me for consulting support and whatnot, but the latter is a much smaller segment of my audience because I do my best work in higher touch containers with a lot of nuance and personalization, which are, by their nature, more expensive, and not a good or accessible investment for a lot of people. Business 101 audience segmentation, a thing I understand intellectually because I was basically a fractional COO in my early 20s, did not express itself in this corner of my professional universe because clients have always just magically found their way to me, no content or marketing strategies/plans in place, even when I was making 6-figures. I now know that this is a feature of my starstuff design — that trying to use marketing strategies actively hurts me (it’s true) — but I still need to know who I’m talking to when I do run my yap!)

So, stay tuned for these changes over the coming month or so — in the short-term, you can always pitch in at Venmo (thatgalbunnybrown) or my business PayPal (alexis@alexispmorgan.com).

Tata for now! <3