Lot of stuff to talk about but I did want to try to do one long work update that gets you up to speed on what’s happening in JH land over the last few weeks since I updated here. I’ll try to be more diligent about this in the future, but I’ve only got so many hands and so much time and “real” content is the priority.
To start off welcome to the several hundred new followers I’ve picked up over the last couple of weeks, I appreciate you being here and look forward to getting to know you as you become part of the JH community! For those of you who are new, this site is the “Supporters Only” portal for all my work, where folks who have contributed get to peek at stuff like project management files and little blog posts of a nature that really only people who are following and supporting me would care about anyway. Mostly it’s a way for supporters to keep up with what their support is helping to create; everyone who buys merch or joins my Patreon or whatever gets the login for the portal and then they can see everything.
That said let’s get to the news, because there’s a ton of it!
TLDR
- making merch to use as support incentives. Much more on this below
- Had a couple of nice visibility boosts this month that have really energized things, and met some new folks who are really out there doing it right, and I’ve been very inspired and creative.
- Have posted several new articles/blog entries on the site since this site was last updated.
- Working on a radical reconstruction of Patron/supporter perks, much of it related to the merchandise but I think there’s some room there for offering some electronic benefits that I haven’t thus far.
- Created two new “groups” connected to the John Henry page on FB. One is private, one is public. Access to the private group is absolutely going to become part of the supporter perks, there are just a couple of little integrations I need to make first. Lots and LOTS of other stuff like that happening, more details to come as thing get into condition to talk about.
- Stepping in to a much more active phase of growing the community, partly related to those two groups. I am definitely pushing the public group hard as a place for creators to link and share their work and thoughts, do some networking, get some cross-pollenation happening.
Not everyone is going to be into a given type of music, or a certain style of comedy, or what have you, but when you get enough people in a place you start finding the people who are into…punk bluegrass and professional wrestling, or Steve Hofstetter and also politics. It’s amazing what happens when you start putting people together, and after a lifetime on stage and creating and performing I love the idea of helping other people do the same.
Plus I’m old and have been doing everything forever, so my own content will be relevant to everyone at some point, just not all at the same time! (Although you might be surprised…) - Two new “real work” pieces in process right now; one will deconstruct a whole little package of very specific types of disinformation that are often combined very effectively on social media. I’m gonna break those down and show them to you and hopefully help you be a little more protected from them in the process. Plus I’ve got a long piece going on the whole US-Iraq relationship over the late 20th and early 21st century that’s likely to get some attention. Certainly in both cases I think they’re things people need to know, so that’s my way of helping ensure they do! I plan to schedule followup livestream events for both articles, so watch for that.
- I’m also writing other pieces intermittently while doing all of the rest of this. As I get settled in to this next level of doing the things I do, new content will be less chaotically timed and I’ll have a chance to work more on subject-specific stuff like music or acting or politics or whatever.
- THANK YOU SO MUCH! Please stay on the engagements and keep it growing, I’m trying to do the same every change I get to check my timeline.
- I haven’t forgotten or abandoned this tool! I’ve just been hyperfocused on GETTING THINGS DONE, and that hasn’t left a lot of time for documentation. I’ll backfill that when I get a minute to breathe.
The Longer Stories!
Two exciting things in the last month ICYMI: I got tagged in an article over at Wired.Com that attracted a good amount of traffic to JohnHenry.US, and that’s cool because ad revenue and a solid, meaningful message was seen by a few thousand more people than had previously. Then I had a Facebook status go viral. Depending on which numbers you believe, I’ve had somewhere between 890 and 930 thousand people see me in the last month, and other cool numbers. Facebook reporting can get a little buggy, but here’s a few screenshots of the metrics I see, with explanations in the captions
The above taken as a whole: I’ve found over 200 new members of the community and been seen by nearly a million people this month, and all told it’s earned me about 95 potential dollars in total passive income from social media and website traffic. The implications here for ongoing traffic increases on both platforms, and the expansion of other funding methods, bodes very well for increased success.
This seems like a good time to remind you out loud that none of this would be possible without everyone being involved, sharing, helping build the community further. Your support is priceless and things are definitely moving in the right direction on all fronts. Please stay engaged! The more of you who share and engage with my work, the more will see it, and it grows. As it grows I’m able to focus more on content creation and worry less about stopping to ask for money because I’m hungry or bills or due or there’s some other cash-based crisis happening.
The last BIG NEW THING is the creation of a real Merch section at the website. Everything offered is technically a perk or reward for supporting my work, rather than something I’m selling for profit, but that doesn’t change the numbers.
I’m going to end up writing a separate piece about the pricing on this stuff, but in a nutshell here’s what’s going to happen: I’m going to set up designs built around popular status messages I’ve posted or aphorism I made up and use often. The first of these reads “The Revolution We Need Most Starts In The Mirror.” (Revolution We Need Most Archives • John Henry)
For each design there will be multiple variants across all for each message. These variants are based on the size of the logo and other “branding” information relative to the size of the message. A message with a very large logo like “Revolution We Need Most” Large Logo Tote • John Henry will be priced at the lowest profit margin over cost. As the branding becomes less prominent, the price gets higher. Higher prices can also result in higher-quality items, more specialized styles, and additional features. So where the previous link is $15 and features a large logo and motto on side side of the bag, “Revolution We Need” Small Logo Tote (Both Sides) • John Henry costs $25…but the logo is much smaller and appears on both sides of the bag.
This gives a ton of price range options for folks, lots of choices about how they want to support the site and what’s happening in my work that they believe in, and a lot of control in the hands of the supporter (that’s you!) to make their own choices.
In addition to the merchandise proper there are also going to be a BUNCH more options in the storefront and via Patreon, with different pricing levels and perks available. This includes things like free exclusive live events and chats, access to the private group on FB, and things I haven’t even thought of yet.
