I suck at capitalism. I think of ways I could make more money off the Charley Project, like merch and stuff, and wind up not doing anything because I get to feeling horribly guilty because
1. It seems like there is no way to make money without the risk of exploiting others. Like merch. How do I know my merch wouldn’t be made by enslaved Uyghurs in Chinese labor camps (that’s who makes all the Temu stuff from what I’ve heard) or by child laborers in Bangladesh or something?
2. I don’t want anybody to ever be thinking I started the site as some kind of grift for donations. I’ve been accused of it before and though I know it’s not true and that no one who actually knows anything about the Charley Project would think it was true, it’s really hurtful every time it happens. I am actually a lot more sensitive to criticism than any of you know. The reputation of this site is worth more to me than making loads of money.
I would never put the Charley Project behind a paywall. Even if I wanted to do so, which I don’t (since it would make the site a great deal less useful to the public), I am pretty sure the internet would hate me for it.
Lately, the way things have been, I’ve been feeling like the Charley Project is akin to the Great Barrier Reef: providing a true crime ecosystem that many podcasters, YouTubers etc, feed off of, but suffering from over-exploitation and at risk.
Because no one wants to pay for content on the internet. Everyone wants it to be free. Like, how many people ACTUALLY donate to Wikipedia every year? They get the impression it’s a free public service but it’s not; it relies on grants and on donations. Imagine how upset people would be if Wikipedia vanished—but how many people would pay $3 a month to keep it?
I don’t want ads either. There don’t seem to be many products that would be appropriate to advertise on the grim catacombs of my site.
Patreon has been suggested. I don’t know much about it but I know Patreon supporters get offered rewards and I don’t know what I could offer for rewards. I know one true crime podcaster offered behind-the-scenes police homicide file content as a Patreon reward. Which on the surface sounds like a good reward given the content they were producing , but then the podcaster got canceled because the behind-the-scenes stuff included crime scene photos of a murdered child and people got upset. You can see how this can be problematic.
PayPal is taking more of a cut than they used to, and people are donating less. Because times are hard. The economy is supposedly going well but the middle class is shrinking and most people I know personally say they’re struggling. I saw in the news that they’d figured out how much it costs to live “comfortably” in my city, and that amount was more than twice the average income of a worker in my city.
I know I could make more if I officially registered as a nonprofit but I don’t really know how and only know that it involves lawyers and lawyers cost. Plus I don’t even know if a “nonprofit organization” can be legal if it consists of just one person.
I am exceedingly grateful to everyone who chips in, knowing they don’t have to and that most people do not. Several years ago some true crime people did a big fundraiser for the Charley Project and I was so grateful I cried. This money kept the wolf from the door for a long time when my husband lost his job. I don’t know what we’d have done without it.
I don’t know if the Great Barrier Reef thing is a very good metaphor but I’m tired and I’m cold and I’m writing on my cell phone in a dark room cause our power got shut off today. I hadn’t expected it but my husband didn’t seem surprised when I texted him at work about it. He says he’ll get us reconnected tonight. He handles the bills so until the disconnect I didn’t realize things had come to this.
And late this month I’m supposed to go to Wisconsin and give the keynote speech at their missing persons event and I am trying to figure out how to make this work financially: twenty hours of driving round trip, an Airbnb, and putting Patrick in a boarding facility while I’m gone. My sister and mom can’t take him cause of their own pets, Michael’s parents are not physically capable of handling him, my dad lives in a pet-free apartment. He will have to board.
I just suck at this. I’m sorry.