I offer this work on a sliding scale based on income; I ask 1/1,000th of your annual income per hour. So if you make $45,000 per year, I ask for $45/hr. If you make $150,000/yr, I ask for $150/hr.
I offer this work on a sliding scale based on income; I ask 1/1,000th of your annual income per hour. So if you make $45,000 per year, I ask for $45/hr. If you make $150,000/yr, I ask for $150/hr.
Support Kottke.org With a Membership
About 45% of those who have been a member of kottke.org are currently not active paying members. That’s a lot of churn! If even half of those folks would re-up, I could do some additional cool shit around here, I think. That said, the number of active members has remained relatively steady over time, which I’m thankful for.
This document has served as a powerful reminder to myself of how much I’ve struggled to get to where I am and why I deserve to be here. And more importantly, it serves as a place to reflect and learn from the past and be less scared of failure in the future.
Keeping a failure resume has let me be so much more ambitious in trying new things and applying for things I would otherwise think I’m unqualified to apply for.
[Better distribution matters more than better product because most people are satisfied beyond a certain ‘decent’ threshold. If you deliver a decent product to many customers, you can make enough to improve your product.]
“But the superior product must win!” Why? “Because it’s the superior product!” To who? “To me! And the 10 people I’ve talked to!” Ok but your competitor has talked to 10,000 people and they like his product well enough. And he’s hiring your product guy, oops, better luck next time.
I am sympathetic to the idea that great products, great artists, creators, etc should be appreciated. but also, “the audience” or “the market” is not actually some perfect, platonic ether. It’s people. And people are busy and tired and generally prefer to be met where they are.
If you don’t go out and do the work of teaching people how to appreciate you, your odds of being appreciated are very, very slim. you’re basically depending on chance, on the whim that Serious Appreciators will notice you. It’s very risky to leave this up to chance.
[Talk to a thousand people about it and you will notice patterns. When something resonates with a few dozen people, there are probably thousands of people that feel the same. Addressing what they mention means you connect with their specific experiences as opposed to what you think might be interesting.]
I’ve been to the Hackerspace Wiki before to find local places while travelling. I didn’t know they had hackerspace apps listing, software wishlists.
Their design patterns library includes The Community Pattern:
set up a mailing list, a wiki, and an IRC channel. You will need all three. Think about a platform for discussion, storage for documentation and real-time communication.
[You need at least two people to start an idea and two more to get work done. It’s easy to recruit once you have four people, and best to get started with ten.]
[Infrastructure first or projects first? By making everything infrastructure-driven, people will come up with contributions you would have never thought about.]
The magic of doing $10,000 per hour work
[Busywork is satisfying (swoosh) and easy (ding), so do it cautiously. Email can lack affordances for priority while allowing anyone to send you one, which can easily get you absorbed in what other people demand of your attention. If you can do it hungover, it’s less valuable.]
[Increase your anti-fragility by honing keystone skills: public speaking, writing, sales, technical sensibility, design, and negotiation.]
[$10,000 per hour work is invisible and may produce no results for years or decades.]
A simple habit to let luck find you
I’ve made one [Mutually Beneficial Introduction] per day for 10+ years.
[Once both people opt-in, take thirty seconds to write with details that can’t be found by searching online. Try this regularly.]
Writing, Riffs & Relationships
[Share what you wrote with a deliberately small group of maybe five people: your metric here is conversation and meaningful connection.]
[Write for one person to focus the text and also guarantee there’s at least one person you can share with via direct message.]
[Scan your list of decent drafts considering who you could write each for.]
Seriously, I won’t take your money unless you say, “I’m super jazzed with these results, and there’s nothing I would change.”
[Divide the monthly price by average usage to get the hourly cost. Per hour, people might be paying about fifty cents for online streaming, a dollar or few for games and movies, five to fifteen for their creator subscriptions.]
Send your users this welcome email
[Ask: “What’s happening in your world that brought you to this project?”]
what happens in the conversations I have with the ppl I’m coaching
[I offer: space away from the rat-race to reflect, breathe more deeply, move deliberately; a good bullshit detector; place to practice, prepare, or role-play tough future conversations; help to find the right amount of stretch in your development goal without overdoing to short circuit progress; encouragement if you need someone telling you to quit your job.]
[Improve your interpersonal dynamics by seeing the relationship as something that can be co-designed in process rather than ‘agreed upon’.]
[My formal training is in engineering and agriculture. I coach because people ask me, not because I’m certified.]
[Smaller organizations might not be able to afford leadership coaching from professionals but can afford peer-to-pear from like-minded companions.]
[Share a list of ways you can help as a consultant, then offer a sliding scale of hourly rates.]
Digital Strategy Consulting from Tom Critchlow
I think of clients like partners and typically don’t get hired to make spreadsheets. I’ll make the spreadsheets anyway, but you hire me to care about your business.
Embedded leadership is useful because I’m often available to lead projects on short notice and can shape the strategy, work rapidly to define the roadmap and then over time work to build a robust sustainable team within the organization to own the work.
Engagements often start with a short, small group workshop where we can create clarity around both the problem and solution in a short space of time. These workshops often springboard into larger ongoing retainers and embedded leadership engagements.
This document aims to be an open guide to funding of open source projects.
[Grants, Notable Projects, Other Organisations, Crowdfunding]
A curated list of awesome resources for funding open source projects and authors.
[Products, Donations, Bounties, Licensing, Articles, Organizations]
A handy guide to financial support for open source
This document aims to provide an exhaustive list of all the ways that people get paid for open source work.
[Donation button; Bounties; Sponsorware; Crowdfunding (one-time); Crowdfunding (recurring); Books and merchandise; Advertising & sponsorships; Get hired by a company to work on project; Start a project while currently employed; Grants; Consulting; Paid support; SaaS; Copyleft + paid license; Open core; Foundations & consortiums; Venture capital; Restricted license]
How to organise yourself - the dangerous path to Explorer, Villager and Town Planners
Be prepared to be shocked, that’s the horror of looking.
This is like a guide on how to run a company or organization.
Do you have ten years of experience? or ten of the same year?
More Money For Better Open-Source Software
I am going to emphasize, in the docs, the license file, and the communication surrounding the project, that free-loading is not socially acceptable. Along with this, I will provide convenient mechanisms to donate. The code of financial conduct would be something like this:
- If you are a non-commercial user, don’t worry about it.
- If I fix a bug you reported or add a feature you wanted and you have the financial means, a one-time tip is much appreciated. Even if this is unlikely to add up to serious money, it takes the one-sidedness out of the process of responding to user requests.
- If you are extracting value from your use of my software, set up a proportional monthly donation.
The monthly part is the important thing here. Having to periodically beg a user base to please contribute to a donation drive again is a drag, and not very effective. Convincing users to donate as long as they get value from the software gives a maintainer a more or less predictable, low-maintenance source of compensations for their work.