Want to support Adventure to Awaken but not interested in upgrading your membership?

Buy Me a Moleskine™ Journal 😂
It's kind of like Buy Me a Coffee, which you could also do, by making a one-time contribution of any amount to support the creation of this newsletter. Your support really makes a difference. 🙏 Thank you!
FAQs
I signed up with my email but I never saw an option for a paid membership?
Did you click the link to confirm your email address? If you don't do that within 24 hours, you aren't actually signed up. Once you click that link, you will be taken to a page that shows you the membership options to confirm your choice.
What is the difference between the paid and free memberships?
The free membership gets you access to Adventure to Awaken, my weekly newsletter with stories from traveling the world, finding myself, and healing. You’ll get the newsletter delivered to your inbox. The paid membership gets you access to 100 Dollars A Day, my biweekly newsletter with money saving tips about how to travel the world on – you guessed it – 100 dollars a day. That’s how much money I budgeted and spent, and I’ll show you how to do it too. The paid membership also gets you access to the comments on all posts across both newsletters, if you are interested in joining the community discussion.
Why do I have the option to receive the paid newsletter as a free subscriber?
This is an option in case you want email previews of the content that the paid members are receiving, to see what you’re missing out on, if you’re considering an upgrade but unsure if the content is useful to you.
If you don’t want these occasional email previews, toggle that option off in your account settings -- accessible by clicking your profile icon after you sign in -- so that you only receive Adventure to Awaken.
I want to become a paid subscriber to comment, but I’m not interested in receiving the 100 Dollars A Day newsletter.
Okay! Toggle that newsletter subscription off when you sign up, or later in your account settings, accessible by clicking your profile icon after you sign in.
I really want to become a paid subscriber but Stripe doesn’t work in my country!
Welcome! It’s great to have you here! Send a note to support [at] adventuretoawaken [dot] com and we’ll get this taken care of.
Why don't you write email addresses like a normal person?
Spam prevention. Bots can't read it when I take out the @ and .
I’m not interested in your money-saving travel tips, but I still want to support you financially for the work you put into the free newsletter.
Wow, thank you! There are two options to do this. The first is to become a paid subscriber (you’ll have access to comments) and toggle off your subscription to the 100 Dollars A Day newsletter (either at sign up, or later in your account settings). The second is to make a one-time contribution. Stripe requires that I input a “suggested” amount, but you can contribute any amount.
I can’t support you financially – is there another way I can support you?
Yes! I wrote a New York Times bestselling memoir, and it is looking for a publisher. If you know a publisher, agent, or someone who has published a book, I’d love to be connected! clara [at] adventuretoawaken [dot] com, subject line: BOOK
Also, if you love this site, would you share it with someone else who you think might love it too?
I am interested in your travel tips and saving money, but I'm unsure if I want to spend $10/month or $100/year on this newsletter. Will you offer a free trial period at some point?
Actually, no, and here’s why – when you become a paid subscriber, you have access to the entire archive of content.
Here's a free money saving tip: if money’s tight and you need to save every penny for your trip, don't pay for the newsletter yet. Instead, pay for the newsletter when you are starting to plan it. Maybe that's next month. Maybe that's next year. Either way, you save on a few months of subscription fees and you get access to the entire archive of travel tips right when you need it.
Yes, that's right. I'm telling you how to game my own system so that you can get the most value by spending the least amount of money. How could that advice possibly be beneficial for me? It's not. But it's beneficial for you. And that's the point of the paid newsletter. I am going to give you honest, game-the-system tips that will save you more money on travel. What you pay for the newsletter will pay for itself if you follow the tips I give you.
Why are you charging money for travel tips? Aren’t a lot of bloggers offering travel tips for free?
Walk with me for a bit while I put on my philosophical hat. I question the use of the word “free” here because it implies that when you type into a search engine “what is the best travel insurance” it comes at no cost to you. (Wait a minute, you are saying, but it does come at no cost to me…)
Actually, no. When you read on various blogs their opinions about what the best travel insurance is – it’s World Nomads (and now you are saying, how did you know??? But I’ll get to that in a minute) – you are receiving that information alongside advertisements and affiliate links that pay the creator so that you get the answer “for free.”
But it isn’t free, because it has cost you your attention, and what you don’t know, is that if you follow the advice, it has also cost you money. (HOW???)
World Nomads is great insurance, don’t get me wrong. It’s the Cadillac plan of travel insurance. And therein lies the problem. Because while World Nomads is great insurance, it may also be overkill depending on your travel plans, risk tolerance, health conditions, age, and more factors that are unique to you. Every creator recommends World Nomads, because World Nomads pays them to recommend it, and it’s a pretty safe recommendation to make because it’s the Cadillac option. But I recognize that not everyone needs the Cadillac option, and my goal is to save you money. So I have tied my financial incentives to saving you money, instead of tying my financial incentives to whoever is paying me to get your attention.
And that is why there are no advertisements on the site, and there will never be advertisements on the site.
What? You are saying. No ads?
Our advertisements policy is as follows:
- No ads on the site.
- No ads in the paid 100 Dollars A Day newsletter.
- We may experiment with ads in the free Adventure to Awaken newsletter, in the event that companies want to offer you discounts or promotions that we think you might be interested in. You can always click the link at the top of the newsletter to read an ad-free version on the site. Also, there is a way to do it where no ads appear for paid subscribers. Regardless, if and when we are approached by advertisers, we will source feedback from you before we start running ads. Your agency and experience with this site is our number one priority. We will only run ads that feel like they could be as valuable to you as they are to us.
But aren't ads the primary way blogs make money on the internet?
Yes. But that is not the ethos of this site. No ads without consent, because you are not a product.
The whole point of the life journey that I am on – and that likely you are on too if you find yourself here – is that we are in a collective existential crisis because we and our bodies and our eyeballs have been commoditized to the point where we don’t even know who we are anymore or what we want. We are doom scrolling while tech companies tell us what we want or what we should want and we are not happy.
You get enough nonsense that you didn’t ask for served up to you on Facebook and Instagram and every other platform every day. I am not here to create more noise. I am here to help you cut through the noise. To help you find quiet. A place to rest. Come home to yourself.
And if you enjoy spending time here, in this quiet place, with this community of people who want to know themselves and this world and feel presence and gratitude and awe, and if you want more of that, you might choose to vote with your dollars to support the existence of this space. You might choose to use your purchasing power to support me. You might choose to exchange money to get more benefit from the travel tips that go out to premium members. But that is a choice you get to make for you. Agency and choice matter to me. Here is one place where you are not a product. You are a human being.
No ads.
Why don’t you just use Substack like everyone else?
If I lived my life doing what everyone else did… well, I wouldn’t have any content for this site at all. 😆
But the less cheeky answer is that I want to deliver a beautifully designed, digital magazine style reading experience to you. I found Substack to be limiting to the vision I had for this publication. Also, like social media, Substack owns the content on its platform, whereas I’ve created a site that I have full ownership and control over, safeguarding you from any future changes (cough, Twitter, cough) that might affect your experience on the platform. I hope you’ll come to love this community as much as you love Substack! (And if you really love it and want to move your own publication over to this CMS, have a look around Ghost.org and then drop me a line using the information on the Contact page!)
Do you offer refunds?
No refunds.
How can I change my profile picture?
Ghost uses a site called Gravatar to generate your profile image. Here's how to change your Gravatar:
- Go to the Gravatar website: https://en.gravatar.com/ and log in using the same email address you use for your Ghost account.
- Upload a new image: Click on the "Choose Image" button to select a new image from your computer to use as your Gravatar.
- Save changes: Once selected, save your changes on the Gravatar website.
I have a question you didn’t answer!
Drop me a note at hello [at] adventuretoawaken [dot] com and I’ll get back to you within 72 hours. If I don’t get back to you within 72 hours, I’m either dead (unlikely) or on a grand adventure without access to email (highly likely), in which case, I’ll get back to you when I get back to email and with a photo to appease you for the long wait. 😉