Sustainability: A message to our Writers.

With deep gratitude to Colin for hours (okay, weeks) of volunteering to build our backend (okay, and frontend), we now have a toll gate on elephantjournal.com on the third article of the day. This will only effect 5% of our most loyal and avid readers. It’s still free for all to read a few articles every day, and we’re encouraging folks to follow us on twitter and Facebook to get those links—otherwise they spend one of their free clicks going to our Front Page.

Our paygate is just $2/month. We want to keep it affordable for all.

Everyone, without exception, is being asked to pay. The thousands of readers who sign up and pay just a little, each, will enable us to get rid of our many hours spent hunting down ill-paying ads, and just keep a few of the ads from businesses we love and support. The paygate will enable me to pay writers like you and hire an editor and grow our traffic 10 fold, instead of 2 fold, which is good for all of us in terms of providing a far bigger platform. And, most importantly, a bigger site will fulfill our mission far more—to be of benefit not just to the choir, but to the masses who didn’t know they gave a care about “the mindful life.”

If you’ve already supported elephant’s Grassroots Network, you’re grandfathered in. There’s a login set up for you and you should have received an email.

We are offering Paypal in addition to Inspire Commerce, which we used exclusively for our Grassroots Network. Why? Because it’s easy for our many readers who already have Paypal accounts, and we can’t afford to lose the speedy/lazy would-be supporters among us. We are not leaving Inspire Commerce. They’re a better service, offer a better deal, are independent and Boulder-based, and their staff practices mindfulness. They’re right up our alley. I love them and encourage all mindful lifers to use them for your yoga studios, businesses, online commerce.

Yours,

Waylon

< Note: This is not where to sign up.  To become a member, please sign up here, Become a Member. >

PS: more re: why are we supplicating writers to pay?

My view is that everyone should pay. It’s a $2 (now a buck a half) a month! I personally feel inspired to pay, as have my interns who do more work than any of us (well, except Bob or Lynn or Ben Ralston or I). In the Buddhist community, we pay for programs that we also volunteer in, and we give donations to teachers on top of that. This is about mission. This is a cheap toll. This is less per month than one cup of black coffee.

That said, anyone who can’t or realllly doesn’t want to pay can email me personally, and get a pass that Colin can give me personally. If this Paygate works, writers will get paid far more than $2 a month under my incentive plan. If folks aren’t inspired to pay and aren’t already supporters from our $14/month program, then I can give a pass.

$108 for a lifetime membership—if you live another 50 years that’s just $2/year 🙂

Waylon Lewis – founder: http://www.elephantjournal.com | host: Walk the Talk Show with Waylon Lewis. Ft. on 20 sites, incl Huffington Post.
http://www.twitter.com/elephantjournal | http://www.facebook.com/elephantjournal | twitter.com/waylonlewis | facebook.com/waylonhlewis
312,000 unique readers this month, 605,000 articles read: Google Analytics.Treehugger: Reader’s Choice “Eco Ambassador in Culture & Celebrity” and 2010 “Changemaker”  Discovery Network’s Planet Green: “Green Hero”  Shambhala Sun: “Prominent Buddhist”  Naturally Boulder: “’07 Entrepreneur of Year”  5280 Magazine: “Top Single ’09”  MNN: Top 10 US Green Video Blog  Beliefnet: Top 10 Buddhist Blog Shorty Awards: #1 Green Twitter in US