Wait But Why is creating
high-quality blog posts
Posting long things every sometimes
2721
$10,901.79
Milestone Goals
WBW Can Keep Existing For a Long Time
Any funding we raise on Patreon is hugely helpful, but this is the goal that would allow us to keep Wait But Why going, ad free, for a long time. See the text on the right for more details.
About
Wait But Why was started by two guys—Tim Urban and Andrew Finn—who have known each other since Kindergarten. Tim writes and draws the posts on WBW as his full-time job.
Location
New York, NY, USA
Top PatronsSee all 2721
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Okay here's the deal with who we are and why we're starting a Patreon account:
Our Situation:
We are Tim Urban and Andrew Finn, two friends who met in kindergarten. We started WBW in July of 2013 on the theory that even though most online articles were short and list-y and stock photo-y and clickbait-y, people would still have the attention span for long, in-depth articles if someone did them well.
We had started a small company together a few years earlier, and the plan was for Andrew to run that company while I (Tim) would run Wait But Why and create its content. Since I'd be the only employee and we wouldn't need an office or most things a normal company needs, we'd be able to fund WBW for a while with our savings and a little extra help from our first company.
Now it's 2015. WBW has had a great start and we've developed an enthusiastic readership. In the last two years, I've written and illustrated 70 long posts (along with a handful of short posts and Dinner Table questions), and WBW has become an 80+ hour/week job for me. We know two things now:
1) We want WBW to go on for a long time. The beta test is over. It works. We have readers. I'm obsessed with writing WBW posts—it's the most fun I've ever had doing anything. This should continue for a long time, in some form or another.
2) We need to make WBW self-sustaining for this to work. The "fund WBW with savings + other company" plan was fine for Phase 1, but it's not sustainable. Our savings are unimpressive. And the other company is trying to grow and needs every dollar it can to invest in itself. If WBW is going to go on for a long time, it has to be able to support itself.
Thinking about the long-term self-sustaining plan, we decided we don't want to use ads. Ads are annoying and hurt the user experience, and we can come up with a better way to do it. So far, we have two methods:
1) The WBW Store. This has definitely helped, but it doesn't even get us half of the way to self-sustainability. Maybe when we have more time to further develop the store, it'll do the job by itself, but it's not enough as it is now.
2) Donations. We've received donations from generous readers ever since we put up a PayPal button in the Support WBW tab, but a lot of those donors, along with other readers, have suggested that Patreon is a better way for readers to support the site. So we're trying it!
The way Patreon works is a reader can donate whatever they want per month and the donation is recurring each month after that. So anything, from $1/month up, is hugely helpful to the cause.
What We'll Use the Money For
We set a goal of $12,000/month. That money plus the store income will be enough to keep WBW going, indefinitely. Here are Wait But Why's costs:
If we can somehow surpass the $12,000/month goal, we'll use additional funds to start expanding. There are a bunch of other projects we'd love to do (a podcast, videos, posters, coffee table books, calendars, apps, etc.), and if we can cross our Patreon goal, we'll begin to have the means to do even more with WBW. But for now, we just want to keep things going.
Thanks for any support you can offer if you decide to, and thanks for being a reader!
– Tim
Our Situation:
We are Tim Urban and Andrew Finn, two friends who met in kindergarten. We started WBW in July of 2013 on the theory that even though most online articles were short and list-y and stock photo-y and clickbait-y, people would still have the attention span for long, in-depth articles if someone did them well.
We had started a small company together a few years earlier, and the plan was for Andrew to run that company while I (Tim) would run Wait But Why and create its content. Since I'd be the only employee and we wouldn't need an office or most things a normal company needs, we'd be able to fund WBW for a while with our savings and a little extra help from our first company.
Now it's 2015. WBW has had a great start and we've developed an enthusiastic readership. In the last two years, I've written and illustrated 70 long posts (along with a handful of short posts and Dinner Table questions), and WBW has become an 80+ hour/week job for me. We know two things now:
1) We want WBW to go on for a long time. The beta test is over. It works. We have readers. I'm obsessed with writing WBW posts—it's the most fun I've ever had doing anything. This should continue for a long time, in some form or another.
2) We need to make WBW self-sustaining for this to work. The "fund WBW with savings + other company" plan was fine for Phase 1, but it's not sustainable. Our savings are unimpressive. And the other company is trying to grow and needs every dollar it can to invest in itself. If WBW is going to go on for a long time, it has to be able to support itself.
Thinking about the long-term self-sustaining plan, we decided we don't want to use ads. Ads are annoying and hurt the user experience, and we can come up with a better way to do it. So far, we have two methods:
1) The WBW Store. This has definitely helped, but it doesn't even get us half of the way to self-sustainability. Maybe when we have more time to further develop the store, it'll do the job by itself, but it's not enough as it is now.
2) Donations. We've received donations from generous readers ever since we put up a PayPal button in the Support WBW tab, but a lot of those donors, along with other readers, have suggested that Patreon is a better way for readers to support the site. So we're trying it!
The way Patreon works is a reader can donate whatever they want per month and the donation is recurring each month after that. So anything, from $1/month up, is hugely helpful to the cause.
What We'll Use the Money For
We set a goal of $12,000/month. That money plus the store income will be enough to keep WBW going, indefinitely. Here are Wait But Why's costs:
- Hosting. We need a robust enough hosting plan to support the highest spikes in traffic we ever get so we don't crash during those moments and ruin my happiness.
- MailChimp. The service we use to email posts out to the subscription list. This fee grows as the email list grows.
- Ongoing web development. It's a website, so there are always upsetting glitches coming out of nowhere and occasionally, we add a new site feature. Neither of us has any programming skills, so we need to pay someone for this.
- Facebook post "boosts". When we announce a new post on Facebook, this makes sure that the announcement gets onto 1/3 or 1/2 of our Facebook followers' News Feeds.
- Me. I need to continue to eat things and wear things and turn lights on as I write and draw posts. I'm a guy with no kids in a tiny NY one-bedroom apt though, so needs are minimal.
- One employee. We need someone to handle things like translation or redistribution requests, spam comment deletion, store upkeep, store customer service, and a bunch of other little jobs. These things end up adding up to a few hours every day, and without this employee, I end up doing it all and have much less time to write posts.
If we can somehow surpass the $12,000/month goal, we'll use additional funds to start expanding. There are a bunch of other projects we'd love to do (a podcast, videos, posters, coffee table books, calendars, apps, etc.), and if we can cross our Patreon goal, we'll begin to have the means to do even more with WBW. But for now, we just want to keep things going.
Thanks for any support you can offer if you decide to, and thanks for being a reader!
– Tim