Today Think Wilder is turning seven.
That’s right—seven years ago I launched this blog, and a whole lot has happened since then. I’m going to keep this commemorative post short and just share a few changes starting today.
Early Access to Weekly Link Roundups on Patreon
I’ve been writing my weekly link roundup column (“This Week in Psychedelics”) every single week since June 5th, 2015. That’s nearly seven straight years of relevant links to the latest psychedelic news stories located in one place. To be fair, it has been delayed by a week or two a handful of times but other than that it’s come out each and every Friday for a long time. And I always went back and posted previous weeks’ links even if I didn’t get them out on Friday.
This column has been one of my gifts to the psychedelic community. It takes a lot of work to follow psychedelic news and over the years I’ve heard a lot of people say they really value my work, so after a lot of deliberation I’ve decided to explore a new way of growing the blog by giving my $2 tier patrons early access to my “This Week in Psychedelics”, starting immediately. Those patrons will still see each week’s roundup on Friday. That’s just 50 cents per roundup—or 40 cents for the months with three Fridays! Everyone else will not have access to the roundups on a weekly basis.
However, I also want to make sure this information is still available to the wider community for free, so at the end of each month I will share the full set of links on the blog. So if you don’t mind waiting a few weeks to get each month’s links then you will still be able to see them. On the other hand, if you’d like to 1) Stay even more up-to-date on the latest psychedelic news, 2) Financially support my work, or 3) Help keep the lights on here at Think Wilder, then please consider becoming a $2 tier patron today.
I think this will be a win-win-win because everyone will still have access to the information (albeit with a bit of a delay), people who want early access to each week’s links will have the option to do so, and I’m hoping enough of my readers will want to become a patron that it will help me grow my Patreon account.
Other Changes to Patreon Benefits
In addition to this change, I also made a couple changes to other tiers on Patreon. First, I removed the $5-and-up "monthly Q&A" benefit because not many people ever participated in them. If anyone is really interested in doing that in the future then let me know and I can always bring it back.
Second, I added a "patron recognition" benefit to the $10-and-up tier. From now on those patrons will get a mention in a "Patreon Sponsors" shout out screen that will appear on my YouTube videos! I will reach out to my existing $10 tier patrons to see if they want to be named, but moving forward anyone who wants to show up on my shout out screen can join this tier to do so.
This decision has been difficult for me to make, but I am hopeful that y’all will understand. It’s been a wild ride the last seven years, and I’m currently in a process of reshaping things here on the blog and my YouTube channel so things will continue evolving. I hope you’ll stick around to see what happens. I know I will!
Previous Years
Every year I celebrate my blogiversary by announcing improvements to the site. Here’s what I did to celebrate the first five blogiversaries at Think Wilder:
2021: Recapped Think Wilder’s history, two new archive pages (Resource Guides and General Archive), and narrowed the site’s focus
2020: Five new archive pages (Book Reviews, Film Reviews, Weekly Psychedelic Links, Monthly Psychedelic Recaps, and Yearly Psychedelic Recaps)
2019: Think Wilder brand logos and a Link Posts archive
2018: The creation of three new pages (Start Here, Hire Me, and Support), a Patreon account, and an option to give a one-time PayPal donation
2017: I made a commitment to write more feature posts for the site
2016: A site redesign that made it easier to navigate around the blog
