A quick guide to getting paid by your audience for movement journalists

I’m watching the play by play of the ICE raids and community response in LA closely. I notice that once again many of the reporters covering it are out there on their own.

Even those who are reporting for outlets will not get paid what they should be paid for the dangerous situations they are putting themselves in. We’ve seen journalists get teargassed and hit in the face with various weapons launched at them by the militarized police many times before and we are seeing it this time too. We’ve seen them be arrested or harassed by law enforcement too.

So, with your cost of living, your potential medical bills, your cost of reporting, your legal expenses, your cost of gear and maybe damage to that gear, it’s expensive to be a movement journalist.

But yesterday, when I went to Venmo some of these journalists, it was not easy to find how to pay them.

Maybe you don’t want to be paid or you’re getting paid enough elsewhere but if you do want funding from your captivated and grateful audience, here’s a few things I recommend you do, in the order I think you should do them.

1) Put a payment link in every social media bio. Use Venmo, CashApp, PayPal, Ko-fi or Buy Me a Coffee.

2) Put a payment link on your website. Add it to the top menu or the contact page. You can also embed it if you use Ko-fi or Buy Me a Coffee (as I did on my site)

3) Set up an automatic tweet/post that runs at least a few times a week or even a couple times a day that tells people where they should follow, support and pay you. Use a tool like Publer, HypeFury or any tool that recycles posts for you.

4) Set a monthly target for this type of contribution. Ko-fi and Buy Me a Coffee let you do this publicly so supporters can see how much was contributed but you can just do it for yourself and you can optionally tell your audience how you’re tracking towards it to motivate them to give more (which works really well when you have time to do it).

5) If you want more reliable support, set up a monthly subscription option. Use Ko-fi, Buy Me a Coffee, Stripe by itself, or your newsletter platform. I don’t recommend Patreon because their fees are above 10%. Ko-fi and BMAC are 8% including Stripe and with Ko-fi you can pay $12/mo to eliminate fees which you should do if your fees are regularly higher than that. Most newsletter platforms don’t take a cut except for Substack. You can also just make a subscription in Stripe directly.

Choose two monthly tiers only: a small “no brainer” tier and a big “I have money and love you” tier. No more than that, especially if you’re not doing perks. I don’t think you need any perks, but if you do want to make your subscription more enticing to a wider group, a subscriber-only WhatsApp or Signal chat with more real time updates or a curated version of what you produced on social media could be good options.

6) Promote each other’s links. Are you often on the ground with the same people? Keep a digital note in your phone of everyone’s payment links and blast this out whenever y’all take breaks in reporting. Amplifying each other goes a long way towards getting more eyes and more dollars.

7) A couple times a month, or whenever there’s a break in the action, post a summary of how much was contributed (“thanks to everyone who contributed a total of $$$ for my coverage about X”) and remind people where they can contribute. Drop. that. link.

8) Optionally follow up with your contributors to bring them into your world more. Message back people on Venmo, etc and let them know how to get on your email list OR how to become a monthly contributor. If you can control what the receipt says (you can on Ko-fi, BMAC and Stripe), make sure to include the email list and monthly supporter option as well.

9) If you don’t have an email list already, make one. You don’t have to start a newsletter, but having your audience’s emails will make it easier to get contributions. You can send notes whenever you want to, recapping your coverage and asking for contributors or monthly subscribers.

Use MailerLite’s free plan if you don’t want a newsletter. It’s free up to 1000 subscribers and it’s easy to start capturing emails and sending emails.

Use beehiiv if you do want a newsletter soon (free up to 2500 subscribers). It’s slightly more work to configure.

Use Buttondown only if you want monthly contributors and if you want something fast to set up. They take no fees on that revenue but you do pay them a monthly subscription. This is the in between option which can serve as either an email list or a newsletter and is flexible enough to support a transition elsewhere should you want to lean more into publishing here.

10) Consider what other revenue streams could bolster audience funding. Being backed by your audience is great. It’s also good to have 1 or 2 other revenue streams that you can activate. That might be freelance work or syndicating your work or it might be getting a paid partnership (don’t think that’s not possible just because of your movement coverage). Check out 13 ways to fund your work here.

For more tips on getting paid as an audience-funded journalist, check out all the posts in Journalists Pay Themselves and come to our events with the Project C community.

Don’t be worried about asking for money too much. You can’t. It’s impossible. Your reporting depends on you getting paid. Journalists who don’t get paid what they need to get paid leave the field, and then that reporting doesn’t exist anymore. We want you to keep it up as long as you are willing to and we know that that requires funding.

Let us fund you. Just tell us how.