Decision time

I'm not sure if you're aware of the fact, but I'm paying for this blog. I made the decision to do that at the time because I was concerned about the ethics of the free alternatives; I've become a lot more wary in recent years about who has my data and what they're using it for.

Some time in the next few days, probably over the weekend, they're going to want me to renew. And I've been wondering about that. The thing is, they keep e-mailing me on the assumption that I have a massive commercial newsletter which is going out to thousands of readers. I don't. I have three; admittedly three mostly very engaged readers, but still. Three. And while I'm quite happy to pay to provide content if it's of value to people, even though I'm not trying to sell anyone anything through the blog (other than occasional links to my earring shop), there is also the fact that it's a fair time commitment. For even as many as twenty readers, that would be well worth it. For three, I'm not quite so sure.

So I've decided not to renew. Instead, I'm changing my approach. You can now find me on Dreamwidth, where I've set up a more general and informal blog; there will still be plenty of crafts, but it won't be limited to that, and entries are likely to be shorter and more frequent (on the whole). Dreamwidth specifically does not allow marketing, so if you need to save the link to my earring shop, this would be a good time to do so, because I won't be able to post it there. Ghost has been great for what I've been using it for - a long-form specialist craft blog - but it takes both money and energy to keep going as it is. And, while I have those things, I'd prefer to use them elsewhere, given the circumstances.

I hope to see you all on Dreamwidth. You don't need an account to be able to read my posts, but I think you do if you want to comment; that means it's entirely up to you whether or not you sign up for one. It's free, unless you want to pay for more bells and whistles, which I'm not doing at the moment. As for this blog, I don't know how long it will take to disappear after I stop paying for it, but I imagine it eventually will; so, just in case there is anything from it you want to keep, such as recipes or instructions, I'm going to post my blog record, which I've been keeping as a reference to ensure I didn't duplicate anything.

LibreOffice is fairly cavalier about file extensions, so if you have any trouble opening it, try renaming it with the file extension .txt. That should do it. It is just a text file.

If you decide we're going to part company here, then thank you for joining me on the journey so far. Everyone else... let's see what happens in the next stage!