What Do We Just Have? Membership!

Issue

Hello readers of 2coffee.dev. A week has passed without any new articles. Well, not exactly! Although I haven't written a new article, I've been diligently updating short news snippets for you in the Threads section. Here, I will update the most notable news of the day, or simply share something I find interesting. This means I haven't "abandoned" my readers even for a single day, right? 😅.

No new articles because last week was quite busy. Busy with work at the company and also with the blog. As you can see, I just added a series of interface snippets scattered across the website. When you click on them, you'll see information related to the content and a call to become a member right away! That's right, I'm about to sell something.

Sell what? Sell to whom? And why sell? Does this mean that articles are no longer free? All will be answered in the article below.

Membership

Five years ago, when I started building the blog, I simply thought it would be a trial to see if I could do it. The main purpose was to learn and gain experience. At that time, I had only graduated for about 2 years, with little experience, so what could I write? And even if I wrote, who would read it?... There were many questions I asked myself, but it didn't matter because I was basically someone who really enjoyed sharing what I knew.

Somewhere in the articles, you may have come across me starting to write since middle school. Back then, writing was very simple; I just wrote whatever came to mind, hoping someone would read it. And surprisingly, some people did read it. Do you remember those sites that created counters for xtgem? Just thinking about it brings back intense childhood memories.

Now, everything has changed dramatically in terms of both mindset and the knowledge I share. But one thing is for sure, my passion for writing has never stopped. Sometimes I ponder why I write and share? Is it just for fun or for self-expression? No! Definitely not! There are so many incredibly talented people out there; I am nothing compared to them. Writing is a way for me to learn and train myself, to spread positive energy. I don’t know if you believe it, but when I write, I feel a sense of peace in my soul.

Returning to today, I bring you a new feature called Membership. When you become a member of 2coffee.dev, you will have certain privileges that regular readers do not have. And of course, you need to pay to become a member.

So am I selling a course? Hmm... Not really!

As you know, there are many courses available online, bought and sold. Nowadays, you just need to type a few keywords about the content you want to learn, and you can find it all. In fact, many of them are free. Upon reflection, I find many courses so good and detailed that I have to exclaim: "Wow, if everyone pays for this course, my work seems to be stuck between two overlapping domains." So why should I reinvent the wheel? Instead, what I want to introduce to readers more are my experiences and insights.

You can imagine the stories in Membership as the content of books. They are experiences, knowledge, or research findings summarized by the author. Just like reading books to gain more understanding about the author's work, reading the articles in Membership also brings a similar feeling.

You might ask, why sell Membership? Well! This question is both easy and difficult to answer. Five years of blogging for me is neither a short nor a long period. I have written over 200 articles, along with hundreds, thousands of hours of practice and work. The ultimate goal is still to share what I know. But you know, to achieve bigger things, we need to have funding. Membership is one of the rays of sunshine shining on the future path.

Membership is simply an additional piece to the puzzle. It does not affect what is currently available. It may just add hundreds of hours of my hard work 🤓.

Benefits for Readers

Although I haven’t gone deep into it yet, I have been envisioning two groups of benefits for members. These are benefits regarding Experience and benefits regarding Knowledge.

Experience includes features added to enhance the readers' experience. These features include tweaks to functionality and interface. For example, a new interface, badges... or reading articles without ads...

Knowledge consists of exclusive articles dedicated solely to members of the blog. The content revolves around the author's experiences in solving problems or learning and doing something, documented systematically.

By becoming a member, you will receive all of the above benefits. And my readers need not worry about their normal activities if they are not members, as nothing will change.

Prospects

Membership is still under development. I have only launched a marketing version to gauge your interest. The more people are interested, the sooner it will be launched; conversely, if not, I will prioritize other more important tasks.

Membership will learn a lot from the way products are sold, similar to the Fonos app that I shared in a Threads.

Payment & Subscription are still an unanswered question.

In the end, this is just the beginning. There are still many issues to resolve ahead. What are your thoughts on Membership? Do you think someone would pay for "everything is free" or not? Please leave your comments below!