stripe

Some Housekeeping.

~ Taran ~ 3 Comments

It’s time I got off my posterior and started working out making the site pay for itself at least. I enjoy the writing, I do, yet the bill collectors like me to pay things. They’re silly that way, and if you – like I – take issue with that, I will happily send you their email addresses so you can tell them what you think of holding me hostage to their prices and, in Trinidad and Tobago, sometimes dubious service.

I finally moved over images from one of my drives so that I can add eventually to the photo prints available, though I’m unsure I’ll use the same service. I have over 6,000 left to go through, so that will be a bit of a process.

I’ve also made it possible to buy me a cup of coffee, which I can almost guarantee will be used to buy me coffee. It’s not a hard sell, but it’s what is available since WordPress.com, Medium, SubStack and probably the old typewriter in the thrift store you saw the other day are all using Stripe – but Stripe doesn’t service Trinidad and Tobago, which is unfortunate.

Stripe does offer to incorporate you in the State of Delaware for $500 US, and they’ll run it for $100 US per year. Thinking like a business, that seems a bit much, particularly with the 8.7% State Tax, the Federal Tax, and probably the “we need to look at your underwear” tax and all that comes with it.

I’m not sure it’s worth it. I might do it yet. It’s a thought and if I get enough in the way of coffee, I may go that route.

In all, I’m focusing still on creating value. In fact, I feel a little bad about this post because it doesn’t truly add value in that regard, but since I have not posted in a few days largely because I found nothing worth sharing with you, gentle readers, I busied myself with other tasks.

The flip side is you may see more of my original photography in my posts – as above – and I hope you enjoy them. I will tell you I did enjoy taking them, and I absolutely hate having to go through them to find the ‘keepers’.

Frankly, I’d rather be writing – and I have been over at RealityFragments.com, which is more of a free flow for me.

Writing For Myself: Issues.

~ Taran ~ 2 Comments

NSB Aug 25 2014I’ve been looking into self-publishing, and other ways to write the things that I want and make a bit of cash on the side. Certainly, it’s not a way to get rich since we all can’t be bestselling authors, but it’s a way to do what I enjoy and derive some income. I know people who are on Substack, who are on Medium, etc, but all of those sites are dependent on Stripe.com, which doesn’t work well with being in the Caribbean unless you start incorporate in the United States. That seems like a ridiculous step, really. And given Stripe.com is the default for WordPress.com for accepting revenue, and my sites are on WordPress.com, it’s even sillier. Not that PayPal is much better. They are good enough in countries they support, but really, they suck outside of them, and with the issues I have had in PayPal in the past with them just deciding to lock an account for no reason and then unlock it without explanation… well, you can see how that would be a problem.

The Caribbean has had many writers of value out there, published, etc, so the problem is not the content in the Caribbean. It’s that the Caribbean is not getting a fair shake.

I am not ashamed to say that the acquaintances I have on social media do not seem to read, or share. Facebook algorithms presently have me in account restriction because I had uploaded a parody video that got their algorithm hot and sweaty, which in turn means my posts there aren’t highlighted at the top.

So Facebook is useless.

What does one do? Well, I’m not sure yet, but I know I’ll keep writing and working on the book. Maybe I’ll just self-publish and let the public sandpaper it into shape.

Still, it makes one think about the disparity caused by the way that the entire Internet socioeconomic ecosystem works, and what feeds the artificial intelligences that they are training online. That isn’t too far from technocolonialism.

Thus, a challenge. Something I’ll continue working on.