End of Year Nine

Today marks the end of Year Nine of the Retreat.

The Retreat, at long has, has hit its stride. Brian Niemeier's recent post on this sort of thing applies here. Therefore the Retreat isn't going anywhere. The Clubhouse, by comparison, is finding its feet far faster than the Retreat did, so that will definitely continue.

That cannot be said for the other two blogs I have here.

The Study is shutting down by the end of the year, and some of what I intended to do there will be rolled into the Clubhouse. Empire has its audience, but Substack is flat-out better for that now so I'm going to migrate it over there as a new Substack article feed by the end of the year.

The reason is simple: monetization.

I consistently state that hobbyist futures are to be self-sustaining. Blogger hasn't got that in-house; Substack does. I want anyone who would be a paid subscriber here to do so for the Clubhouse instead, as having the ability to pay even just a fraction of regular living expensives is a great benefit going forward.

(Yes, I have set up at other popular sites; I still don't know what I would want to do with them yet.)

The TLDR is that the Retreat has proven itself worth maintaining while the Study has not and Empire would benefit from a move so that's happening. Blogging is a fast-moving affair, so it is no surprise that conditions that made one platform attractive change to depreciate it later on. That this one is still worth it for me after nine years says a lot, but even so I do wonder how much longer that will be the case. We'll see by this time next year.

As usual, there will be a Bonus Post later today because is Admin Posting.