Dear young folks,
Today, Lucy and I celebrate seven years of The Young Folks!
Back in 2010, Lucy and I had big dreams for TYF, and we still do, but that thing called life happens. Things change in seven years, and what started as a fun project between the two of us grew into this big website with a staff of 50+ writers. Because of our vision and a wonderful group of talented writers, we managed to hit a ton of milestones on this seven year journey, and we don’t want it to end here.
Unfortunately, the nature of free digital content is not lucrative. (Go figure.) While the site’s growth is something to be happy about, it also brings about higher hosting costs, in addition to costly upgrades to continue optimizing the site for a bigger audience. It shouldn’t exactly be a surprise that ad revenue alone doesn’t match the cost of these rising bills.
There is also another thing that bugs us: we can’t pay our editors and writers. And that is a shame. We desperately want to reach that goal amount where we can pay each and every editor and writer for their contributions.
With all that in mind on TYF’s 7th anniversary, we are excited to announce our Patreon campaign! Lucy and I have spent the last few weeks putting together a list of rewards that we hope will encourage you to subscribe, but also allow us as creators to establish a genuine connection with you. The Young Folks is a place for voices from all backgrounds, where they can express their thoughts on the things they love with a diverse group of interested peers.
The focus with our Patreon campaign is to connect, to get to know our readers, like they have gotten to know us through our reviews and articles these seven years.
Our hopes is that this new branch of The Young Folks available through Patreon will allow us to grow in ways we haven’t before and reward our writers for their work as well as our readers with stronger content. Your support, whether it is a click or a subscription, means the world to us. Without you, we wouldn’t have made it this far, and we hope with your continued support, we all will get to see our fully-realized dream of what The Young Folks can be.
Click here to visit us on Patreon and learn more about our goals and rewards.
Happy Birthday, TYF. It’s been an amazing seven years, and here’s to the next seven being even better.
Sincerely,
Gabrielle Bondi
P.S. Find out from our staff why you should support us on Patreon in the video below.
