The Future of Club 15

We’re back at Club 15, well, at least I’m back. This is probably the first time a lot of you have gotten to peek inside, and I hope things look all right. It’s a pretty exclusive place, as you readers know, although the cover charge is fairly reasonable.

That said, I have some news, and that is Club 15’s days are numbered.

There are a couple of reasons for this. First of all, part of why I started Club 15 was to have a paid tier, which unfortunately has not panned out. This is not meant to whine or shame anyone or fish for subs or whatever. It’s just a fact.

And I get it. We’re still in a down economy, especially in certain parts of the United States, plus, it’s human nature to not pay for anything we don’t absolutely have to pay for. And we all need extra money, so a lot of us have taken on side hustles. Club 15 was supposed to be one of my side hustles, and we all know that when a side hustle doesn’t work out, we try something else. It is what it is.

This leads into the second reason, which is that I’m running out of ideas. I had been hoping that people would join and we could do some trivia contests or brackets or something, but it’s no fun playing to an empty room. Plus I don’t have endless family recipes I can post. Well, at least not yet. I’m hardly Rosanna Pansino or Giada de Laurentiis. 🙂

I’m not bitter or angry or anything. A little disappointed, but that’s about it. It’s no big deal.

So. Here’s what’s going to happen. I’ve removed the paywall from any Club 15 post not containing a family recipe. If anyone’s super curious about the recipes, I would suggest paying the seventy-five cent monthly fee and then printing them if possible just to make sure you can hold on to them (and I highly recommend Judy’s Chocolate Chip Cookies, by the way). The rest are free to view.

As far as Club 15 is concerned, I think I can keep it up until about June or so, after which the Club will be closed. It’s been fun writing the posts, which were a little more off-kilter than I normally do, and I hope everyone enjoys reading the free stuff, which can be found on the Now Entering Club 15 menu. The paywalled articles are indicated by a (P).

Now Entering Club 15

None of this is to say that I’ve completely given up on monetizing Taking Up Room, which will always stay mostly free, but it’s probably better to wait until times are better before I try again, and maybe by then I’ll have something that will really grab people. I might even try doing a podcast, maybe under the Club 15 name. One can hope, right?

All right, another post is coming up tomorrow. Thanks for reading, all, and have a good one…

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