Introducing the Toonie Club!

When I set out to make writing my full-time career in October nearly half a year ago now, I had no idea that it would actually end up being successful.

I've set up a lot of ways for people to [support](https://brennan.day/support) me. Ko-fi, BuyMeACoffee, Patreon, I've even been accepted to earn via GitHub sponsorships. Just this past week I've opened up PayPal and Crypto wallet addresses as additional ways for people to support, since even though they're not *my* cup of tea, I should let people use whichever preferred method they have.

Like a lot of other creatives, I had large, lofty plans for memberships with tiers and exclusive perks, ranging from small to impossibly large. On Patreon, I decided to have three tiers: 🌱 The Seedling ($2/mth), 🌸 The Blossom ($6/mth), and 🔥 The Founding Circle ($50/mth). I was going to release weekly exclusive writing and blog themes, audio recordings of my work, merch discounts, the whole shebang. But that was all purely theoretical and, frankly, ridiculous.

Really, who do I think I am? Expecting anybody to be interested in my work to the extent that they would be willing to add yet another subscription to their already unaffordable lives.

Now that I've had time to see what my workflow is, I realize that I do not have time to dedicate myself to exclusive work. Why? I'm writing a new, researched 2,000-word essay and spending hours programming near daily, and that takes up the majority of my time. And I want to continue to ensure that my writing and my coding projects are free for everyone. Free as in free beer, and free as in free speech.

I'm lucky to be able to offer this because I'm making the majority of my income from the Medium Partner Program, where I don't need to ask anybody to support me, and instead people are supporting the entire platform when they sign up for a membership.

But this is a platform, with a future uncertain and out of my control, isn't it? Which means I'm in a bit of a major pickle if something were to happen to Medium.

Either I have to start producing less free work and put things up behind an inaccessible paywall on Patreon and elsewhere, or I change vocations entirely. At least, that's what I thought.

Then, I found a creator named [Manuel Moreale](https://manuelmoreale.com/) who has this brilliant, simple membership: [The "One a Month" Club](https://ko-fi.com/manuelmoreale), €1/month. Moreale runs the wonderful [Blogroll.org directory](https://blogroll.org), and after spending "more than a decade of building things online," he came to "realize he's comfortable letting people pay what they want, if they feel like supporting at all".

## The Toonie Club

So, I'm shamelessly stealing this brilliant model. I've decided scrap complex, expensive tiers and perks and instead do this: O