Ten or so years ago, when I was settled into professoring and looking around impatiently for ways to grow my writing, I researched a lot about Print-On-Demand (POD) tech, which at the time meant signing up with a company like Lulu or Smashwords to essentially self-publish books. I still think it’s not a bad idea, and I might go for it.
The Present. A few weeks back I got serious about the YouTube option and started making a video every day. Sometimes a good video, more often an underproduced mixed bag–just like the Spill here. Get it out, put it up, move on.
The day before yesterday, I bought my first real camera to be used in the service of that growing seriousness. At the same time, I was learning that even once you crack that magic 1000 subscriber mark, ad revenue from people, even lots of people, watching one’s vids is no guarantee of art translating into anything like a living wage. Maybe you could hope for a few hundred bucks a month, more like, if everything went well and you were a modestly viral success.
Instead, it seems, most committed full-time Tubers were, are, funding themselves in other ways, most especially through affiliate links, most especially through Amazon. The way it generally works is that a Tuber reviews a camera, let’s say, and then posts an Amazon affiliate link for that camera in the description of the review video, and gets a small cut of sales generated in that way. Not just for the specific item, but on any other purchase that the customer might make in the session that started with clicking that link. Review enough crap, post enough links, attract enough people to click on those links, and you might make thousands a month, as opposed to hundreds from having ads run on your monetized channel.
Learning about all this way of making money set my teeth on edge for a number of reasons.
I would rather you didn’t buy more shit, and that if you did, you bought it somewhere that wasn’t contributing to making the Bezos even richer. Even if it was making me a tiny bit richer too. I’m an anti-capitalist. The whole business model is pro-corporatist, consumerist, capitalist. And anybody with any sense knows that late-stage capitalism is indistinguishable from fascism. The Man owns the Washington Post now, and he did not buy it and does not run it for anything resembling charitable or nobly journalistic reasons. It’s just another cog in his propaganda machine and his domination strategy.
Now sure … if you have to buy shit anyway, like a camera, like I just did, because there are no camera shops left where you live, because Amazon, Walmart, Whoever, put them out of business in the first place … I don’t mind you clicking my link and benefiting me along the way. But still. The whole thing, if we’re being honest with ourselves, and I intend to be, is fucking gross.
I went to bed a little bit grumbly and I woke up that way too.
After I had yesterday’s post on the simmer here, and posted my vid for the day, I started messing around purposefully. I went to the home page of vairtere dot com and decided it was time for a change. I went out and found myself a fresh new Creative Commons HTML5 template and started adapting the code to my needs.
I put down the breadcrumb trail at the top and replaced the logo-like image and re-introduced this project and the new one without fussing myself much. Then I got down to this part of the page:
It’s that third part. It’s short. I’ve got the Patreon and that’s fine, but … something’s missing, conceptually and practically.
You know what I need? I, personally, need a t-shirt that has the words Vairtere Dot Com printed on it. I need one, no three, just for me. Maybe three short-sleeve and three long-sleeve. Wearable business cards. I’d wear ’em. And I could sell ’em too. That could help. I once bought a t-shirt from Scott Carrier’s website for fifty bucks, which was too much for a t-shirt but not too much for a donation. It says Home of the Brave on it. That’s the name of his podcast. People really seem to like it. I get a lot of comments when I wear it.
He really should have put his web URL on it though. So mine will just say Vairtere Dot Com … or maybe … “Anarcho-Belletrist”, with the V-dot-c in smaller letters below. Why not two versions? Or four? Maybe put it on a coffee mug too. A mousepad–there are people who do that now, I think?
There are.
So I went out to my search engine of choice and started typing in things like ‘best online t-shirt printer 2022’.
That’s when I learned a new thing, about that term ‘print-on-demand’. It hardly ever means books any more. People are PODing on everything from bedsheets to spoon rests. Catchy little phrases. Good and bad art. Full-color photos, sometimes.
Whole business are run by people who take no pictures, are not writing, are not filming; they are just … Printifying.
Again I was assailed by the chirpy children and the chirpier adults, explaining to my old witless ass exactly how to get this done. You need to find your niche! You need to study the analytics! You need to run strategic value-laden ads on Facebook!
Oh fuck a rabid mangy duck, here we go again.
No. No, no, no. I’d almost rather get a real job like a proper Murican; fieldhand, house mammy, anything. Just to mute the grasping greedy sound of the chirping and the whole systems of belief that it rests on.
I just want a Home of the Brave t-shirt that says Vairtere on it instead, you … twitterers. I don’t want a god damned niche. I already have one of those and I like it fine, even if it may very well be hellfire impossible to monetize.
I’mma get my printified t-shirt; yes I am. You’re getting one too. My Patreons are going to get theirs for free and it will be tax-deductible as a marketing expense. Just you watch.
In the relentless rain of this October day, I am sifting through my starlink signals, and I am already down in the weeds with this beast.
The WooCommerce plugin for this WordPress blog will dance to my tune. I will be Master of it, Emperor of my own spreadshirt, even if I am a Fieldhand.
I will kick its ass. I will rule the world with my cheap chinese proxy threads. I’ll be punk deity of my own Imperialistic domain.
Secretly, the whole thing is even a little more fun than I care to admit out loud.
Which is scary and cool, as it should be.