$10

2 weeks Zachary Shahan 0 Comments

We have thousands of subscribers, and many more supporters and longtime readers. Most people who support the work we do provide $3/month (via PayPal, Patreon, Stripe, and Substack). That’s great. We appreciate every dollar. But … a few things have been going on lately and we’d definitely appreciate more support if you have it to give. For example:

  • A cup of coffee is more than $3 now. In fact, it’s more like $7. Inflation’s a —bleep—. We have huge hosting costs because we have a lot of traffic even though we don’t sell high-dollar goods. We have newsletter costs, accounting and lawyer costs, staff costs, etc., etc. And everyone seems to be raising their prices.
  • AI is doing AI things. Whereas in the past, many people found our site by Googling something and clicking a link to an article of ours that told them about that thing, nowadays, AI has stepped in front of traditional media sites and is claiming to know all things all the time. Even when it’s blatantly wrong, it’s doing the American thing, sticking its chest out, and making claims confidently that are completely false. That’s good enough for the vast majority of people. Yes, we do get traffic from the links ChatGPT, Google AI, etc. now include, but you can imagine that’s a fraction of the people who are reading what AI has regurgitated from our content.
  • Social media is its own menace. More and more, people want to just read stuff on social media and get their news there, not reading for stories on real media sites. I am 1000% confident we’ve never had anything close to this level of misinformation spread as we do in the 2020s. Social media, or antisocial media as Steve Hanley calls it, is truly creating great harm to our society. If you appreciate more fact based, thoughtful, long-form content, toss us a few coins a month and we’ll feel immensely thankful.
  • Notice all the paywalls across the media? Yup, that’s the method much of the media has decided to use to deal with these challenges. Paywalls, paywalls, paywalls. We’ve avoided going that route for various reasons. But we would still appreciate the support from those who can provide it. And, hey, we don’t even blast the giant subscription request on top of every article like great outlets that haven’t gone to paywalls, like The Guardian, do.

Anyway, there’s more to put here, but you get the point. We’d love more support in order to more sustainably do what we do, and to be able to do it better. You can contribute on Substack, Stripe, or Patreon. (Many still contribute via PayPal, and that’s fine, but we’ve found it’s better to go with one of these.)

Also, I just want to highlight that in addition to doing our best to cover all the hot news in the sector that comes out every day, we also put a lot of time, effort, and money into creating high-quality original content. Here are some of the original pieces we’ve published this month so far:

So, yeah, if you’re able to join others who are contributing $10/month to CleanTechnica, that would be great. Or whatever you are able to contribute is appreciated. Thank you.

Solar power plant in Crimea, Ukraine (currently occupied by Russia). Photo by CleanTechnica.

Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its editor-in-chief and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about electric vehicles and renewable energy at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao.

Zachary Shahan has 9295 posts and counting. See all posts by Zachary Shahan