The changes continue here on Desperate Living, as we introduce subscription and PPV content. We’re aware that this might not be welcomed with open arms by everyone, so let’s explain the motivation behind this.
The primary reason for subscription content is that Desperate Living needs to become a more commercial venture. In the eight years that this site has been operational, it has yet to make money. Whatever income that we have made through Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee, or via the very limited advertising that the site has been able to carry (mostly Amazon affiliate links) has barely even covered the running costs. That’s fine – we did not go into this believing that it was going to make us rich beyond our wildest dreams. But equally, there is only so much time that anyone can devote to a project that runs at a loss.
In an ideal world, we would be able to upload two or three posts a day, but as regular readers will be aware, in recent months it has been more like one post every couple of days. Quite simply, we have to focus on other work to pay the bills. Still, in the eight years that the site has been active, we’ve uploaded almost 2500 posts – around 312 a year. That’s not bad, but we would like to do more. For that to happen though, we have to have a slightly more commercial approach to what we do.
We’re not talking about suddenly posting ‘news’ about a new photo being released from the latest Marvel film, reprinted press releases and endless populist clickbait pieces that can be read in the blink of an eye. We’ve prided ourselves – especially in recent years – for writing deep-dive examinations and in-depth reviews that reward the reader for having clicked on it. None of that will change. But we can’t do this for nothing indefinitely. And hell, we’d like to pay writers as well.
The rise of the internet has made us all – and I certainly don’t exclude myself from this – becoming used to getting everything for nothing. Paywalled news sites and online magazines feel like an irritation even though back in the day, we would’ve bought the print versions of those magazines and newspapers without even considering it. Well, we’re asking you to consider it once again. Sort of.
We’re not remotely paywalling Desperate Living. We’re not stupid enough to believe that we could do that. But we are making certain posts ‘subscription only’. More precisely, they will be available as one-off pay-per-views, monthly and annual subscription options. We believe that the prices – $2, $5 and $30 respectively – are not extortionate. You may disagree. We are, of course, open to reader feedback on this.
What content are we talking about? Not every new piece – not even most new pieces. But we are going to make some of our more… erm… ‘adult’ posts subscription only. Not because we believe in the old adage that sex sells but because this potentially helps the site in another way as well. Let me explain.
We have never wanted to censor Desperate Living. We’ve held to this principle even though it means that we are effectively unable to carry much advertising. We’ve seen other sites purging their content to placate advertisers and have no criticism of them doing so – like us, they need to work out a way of making this full-time job pay a minimum wage. To do this here feels a step too far – financial censorship that we just can’t submit to. It’s not as though we are publishing anything explicit, obscene or pornographic – but in a world where the mere sight of a female nipple (or even a photo of a woman in a bikini, as we’ve found) causes social media sites to break out in the vapours and delete images while website blocking software is equally blunt in its interpretation of ‘adult’ content, some of our content is certainly provocative. And that doesn’t even take into account the forthcoming OFCOM purge). What to do?
Well, we can make it less public. Rather than delete swathes of content – some of which I believe includes our best writing – to placate the censorial, we can lock it away so that the general public has less immediate access to it. We’re not removing it, we’re not editing it. We’re just making it less public. You can see this as censorship if you like but it really isn’t. It might not help at all – but it seems worth a try.
There are a few back-catalogue posts that have been converted to subscription pages already and we are about to publish the first new subscription-only post. It’ll be a tiny percentage of the site contents and not all the ‘sexy’ stuff by any means. Most of you are not going to even notice it. As I said earlier, we welcome discussion on this matter. It might not work at all and if that’s the case, we’ll have to think of something else.
You can also support us through our usual sources – and if you demand something physical for your money (and hey, physical media forever, eh?), be sure to check out our mail order pages that will be bursting into life next week with Reprobate Press products and rare collectables.
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I guess this is goodbye then. A site that rails against censorship self-censoring itself in order to make money smells of hypocrisy.
Probably better, and more honest, to close the site altogether.
Sorry you feel that way. I think that you are misunderstanding what we are doing. We’re not censoring anything – it’s all still there, all still available. We’re just not giving it all away anymore. Feel free to think of that as greedy if you like – but I don’t think wanting to be paid for a small part of years worth of work is exactly hyper-capitalism.
We could’ve simply deleted a bunch of old content that often no longer even represents where we are today – no one would’ve noticed, most likely. But I wanted to be upfront about what we are doing with a very small amount of our posts. Everyone self-censors. We do it every time we choose images to accompany a post. And I’m not going to apologise for wanting to move the site forward – which requires us to start making money one way or another. We do have a secondary plan in place for this content – but that’s for the future.
Taking a middle ground view the internet is constantly evolving still buy horror publications so feel it is fair that journalists websites do get something back for the “content” they provide I know the author of the TV movies book published by headpress was a tad miffed that her blu ray commentary had been ripped and put on you tube so you could just hear it for free now if the site was totally paywalled it might be a hard sell ….but its not.