Magazines, online publications, newspapers... they struggle to stay in business even in the best of times. (I've seen the death of a few of them from the inside.)
You know what's 10 times harder than that? Keeping a publication in bussines without taking any money from advertisers. There's a reason you don't see other publications attempting it... because it's really, really hard.
The Lunduke Journal has been able to do it... but just barely. It has been a monthly (and sometimes weekly) stuggle to keep the lights on.
We've all seen the results of that struggle -- coverage of a huge number of topics that no other Tech News outlet will even touch: from bizarre business practices of major Tech Foudnations to exclusive leaks from some of the biggest Tech companies in the world.
All of that coverage is only possible because The Lunduke Journal is unique -- among all of the major Tech News outlets -- in refusing to take money from advertisers or Big Tech sponsors.
Sales Sales Sales Blah Blah Blah
In order to make this work, The Lunduke Journal has needed to run an almost constant stream of promotions and sales -- sometimes running multiple promotions in a single week.
While that has been absolutely necessary, it is far from ideal.
- Having a whole bunch of constant sales results in annoying (though sometimes amusing) amounts of sales notifications.
- It distracts me away from the important (and fun) work of The Lunduke Journal. More time spent doing sales and promotions means less time writing articles, recording shows, and creating comics.
Promotions and sales work. While the amazing articles and shows published here do a wonderful job of bringing in new free subscribers... the sales (and such) truly are needed to nudge most people to become full supporters.
But needing to run these promotions all the time -- which has been a necessity -- will slowly drive Lunduke insane.
Obviously, this system needs... refinement. Less total time spent on promotional work, but still able to accomplish the funding goals needed to keep The Lunduke Journal operational.
So we're going to try something... an approach that combines together a few different approaches we've tried in the past.
The Once-a-Month Lunduke-a-thon
The idea is simple:
- All sales and promotions, for the entire month, will be sandwiched into two days (back to back) -- The last day of the month and the first day of the month. (Example: January 31st & February 1st.)
- If we can hit enough funding in those two days, we can avoid doing any sales or promotional work during the remainder of the month.
- But when those two "Lunduke-a-thon" days are running? We hit it HARD.
This will allow me to focus the vast majority of the time -- all days except for two per month -- on research, articles, shows, and the like. And it will make it easy for all of you to ignore any and all promotional emails if you wish to. This means that you'll know that all emails and notifications from The Lunduke Journal -- for the rest of the month -- are always new content (articles, shows, and the like).
During these two days we'll do a live show (or multiple live shows), post multiple promotional pieces of content, and keep a constant stream of updates on how it's going as we work towards the goal of fully funding The Lunduke Journal (for the entire coming month) in just two days. Plus a few little surprises.
Let's do this
After I publish this article, the monthly "Lunduke-a-thon" will begin.
Trust me. You won't be able to miss it.
Some of it is going to be pretty darn fun. But if you want to ignore all "promotional" type stuff... you can tune out until Friday morning when we will -- if all goes according to plan -- strictly be publishing promo-free content for the remainder of the month.
Buckle up, Buttercup. This is going to be a wild two days.
