A Calm Summer, 2022
As we settle into the summer, we’re taking an easier pace here at Write.as. Here’s what’s been happening lately, and what you can expect to see over the next few months.
A new company
At the beginning of the year, our founder Matt moved to his new home in New York City. Our small company naturally followed him there to make Brooklyn our new (apartment-based) headquarters. We’ve since re-incorporated as Musing Studio LLC in New York state, from our previously Florida-based LLC.
Going forward, you’ll start to see all our tools under this new banner, instead of revolving so much around Write.as. Gradually, your Write.as account and any subscriptions will become more of a Musing Studio account, to clarify that setting up shop here gives you easy access to all the integrated tools of our suite.
We think the new name more closely matches what we’re after: for us, a product studio making tools to help you publish on the open web, and for you, a creative studio for putting your work online.
Small improvements
In June, we ran a small survey asking what long-requested features people wanted to see most on the platform, and how everyone felt about our pricing. We hadn’t done this in a while, and the feedback was very helpful — so thank you to everyone who responded!
We’ll be using this input to prioritize development over the coming months, and you should expect to see some of those improvements soon.
Membership and discounts
As part of those improvements, we plan to offer new, affordable pricing options for Write.as. One of these will be a new set of discounts (for example, students and teachers), and an easier process for getting them. We know several people have been asking about these lately — you’ll be able to get them as soon as this new process is in place!
We also plan to launch a new paid membership tier soon. This will be a more flexible option for those who don’t need everything Write.as offers, similar to our Casual plan that was phased out in August 2019. This time, it’ll be priced on a sliding scale, where you can pay whatever you can afford. It will also give you access to some new community features, like Remark.as.
Better transparency
Over the years, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how we can operate as a small digital business. This is often difficult online — as users, we can’t always see the difference between a “big box” platform and a tiny one run from a Brooklyn apartment.
So this summer, we’re going to experiment with new ways to communicate this, and really settle into this identity as a “Main Street” online company. This might include operating more as an “open business,” where you can digitally see more of the things you would easily intuit if we were a physical store — how many customers we get, how busy we are, how active the place is, etc.
Besides helping you understand the kind of space you’re in here, we hope this might also give some useful insight to other entrepreneurs and operators of small digital services. As we mention on our Musing Studio site, we ultimately want to help more small businesses like ours grow on the web as alternatives to the giant platforms out there.
Relaxing a bit
Aside from these ongoing musings, we’ve been taking more personal time lately. The weather has been beautiful in New York, and the opportunity to meet new people in the city has been a welcome change. Matt has been taking the time to find new communities of creative people, and engage in some new artistic pursuits — writing, photography, and music.
To give a little space for this, and avoid burnout in general, we’ve paused major custom development projects for the summer, and worked to alleviate the support load a bit. For example, we’ll soon lift some of our anti-spam measures for users, especially as new abusive accounts have dropped significantly over the last few months.
Have a great summer!
This will probably be our one major post for the summer. To keep up with us, be sure to also follow our microblog on Write.as updates, plus our Twitter and Mastodon accounts.
Any thoughts or feedback to share? Let us know on Remark.as: Discuss...