I know what you’re thinking: “Wow! Once I got over my disappointment that this is not, in fact, a blog dedicated to dancing the polka, I realized that it is – hands down – the best motorcycle and occasional random shit blog in the history of the internet.”
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Inevitably, your feelings of love and affection for Dancing the Polka are driving you to want to support the site and help it grow. There are a number of things you can do:
Subscribe for free
One of the easiest things to do is subscribe to the newsletter. New stories are sent to your inbox, ensuring you don’t miss anything. As an added bonus – and I probably shouldn’t be telling you this – when you read articles in your email there are no ads.
Just enter your email address in the box below and click “Subscribe.” You’ll be given the option of paying £1.50 a month or £15 a year for a full subscription (more on that in a second) but you can also choose the Free option.
Spread the word
As a general rule, I hate social media. But the old marketing guy in me recognizes its value as a tool for letting people know about cool things like Dancing the Polka. As a result, the blog has a presence on Facebook, Instagram, Threads (Does anyone actually use that?), BlueSky (Does anyone actually use that?), and LinkedIn.
If you use any of these, please follow Dancing the Polka and do me the favor of liking every post you see. This helps things algorithmically, ensuring that posts show up in more people’s feeds.
Additionally, you can do the old-school thing of just telling your friends about the blog. Every little helps.
Become a paid subscriber
As mentioned above, when you subscribe to this site you will spot that there is an option to become a paid subscriber. Going forward, all Stories and other long-form articles, like the sporadic How to be a Better Man series, will be available only to paid subscribers. In addition, over the next year, I will be moving all of the site’s archives behind a paywall. (This site’s been around, in one form or another, for more than a decade, so it will take me a while to do that.)
You’ll still be able to get the latest news stories for free, but you’ll need to be a subscriber to access anything that’s more than 6 months old.
If you hate seeing ads (I try to keep them to a minimum), becoming a paid subscriber helps a lot. I plan to scrap advertising when/if there are enough subscribers to support the site.
Become a patron
To be honest, I’m never entirely sure what I want to do with Patreon. I would like to be one of those ‘creators’ who is able to offer all kinds of cool, exclusive extras – but I’m not creative enough to think of what those extras would be.
If you’re a paid subscriber, you get the benefit of extra content and archive access. If you’re a patron, you get the warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing that you’re helping to keep this boat afloat, along with the vague, indefinite promise that at some point in the unknowable future I would like to expand the offerings on Patreon.
But, maybe you’d like to show your support for Dancing the Polka without the big £15-a-year investment of a paid subscription. On Patreon, you can choose the amount of money you throw my way. Generally, I ask for one unit of your currency of choice (eg, £1, $1, €1), but you can make it less if you like. Or more. Up to you. Just don’t stress yourself out.
