In the first few weeks of The Sound of Young America’s new, listener-supported era, we’ve gotten a number of contributions from listeners. We’re up to about $75/month in steady income, which certainly isn’t enough to live on (the ultimate goal), but will certainly give me some capital to reinvest in the show.
For example:
I’m preparing the big mailing to everyone who filled out our listener survey at the end of 2005. I finally found an old copy of Office 2000, and used it to complete the required mail merge… I’ll pick winners of all the many prizes (Onion books, DVDs, etc) soon and announce them in the May newsletter.
I also hopped onto Ebay to purchase a card laminator… everyone who responded to the survey will get a brand new Maximum Fun Club card, laminated by yours truly (well, my girlfriend volunteered to help). Hopefully I won’t burn my face off or anything.
Also! I just ordered some Sound of Young America stickers… the image on them is pictured above. Everyone will get one of those, too.
I’ve also got Dan Grayson, best known for designing the TSOYA website and co-writing (and singing) the theme song, “Maximum Fun,” working on two other merchandise projects as well… the first is a new “Maximum Fun” pin with the pink elephants graphic I’ve been using for The College Years.
The second is… wait for it… T-Shirts!
Once Dan’s done designing them, I’m off to Barrios Unidos in Santa Cruz to spend my life savings having them printed up. BU is a great non-profit that works with at-risk kids in Santa Cruz and Salinas, helping them build their community. We decided to print them on American Apparel shirts, not really for political reasons (my friend who’s a union organizer tells me that while they’re sweatshop-free, they’re also big union busters), but mostly because those are some really nice shirts. Shirts are so expensive, I’m not sure how we’ll distribute them, but I’ll think of something.
Anyway, I need to know what size people are, so click here to take the one-question survey.