This week marks the start of a new era of Discovering Latvian Roots!

I’m committing to a new blogging/social media schedule, and the reason for that is I’m also opening up my offerings to include Patreon! You can find the details of that new blogging/social media schedule at the link.

In brief, Patreon is a website that allows people to pledge regular support to creators – bloggers, independent musicians, etc. In return for pledging a certain amount of money per month or per creation (blog post, video, etc.), patrons receive different types of perks. I’ve decided to join the site and pursue the per month model, because that lends itself better to what I do – not just blogging, but also information via social media (Facebook and Twitter), as well as additions to the Latvian Surname Project, which can’t really be quantified appropriately for a per-creation type of pledge, so monthly is the best model for me.

The fact that this is a recurring monthly pledge is what makes it different from a one-time project like a Kickstarter campaign (and don’t worry, I’m hard at work at that fiction project too!). However, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t come with specific goals – for example, for my Patreon campaign, once it reaches a pledge level of $100 per month (not $100 from one person, $100 from everyone all together) then I will start publishing indexes to the First World War refugee registers every month.

And what kind of perks do patrons get? Besides the thank-you and insider news on all of my new projects, different monthly pledge levels get increasing amounts of perks, starting with a weekly newsletter that will have translations of birth, marriage and death records at the $5/month level, and then at the $100/month level you get not only that newsletter, but also a newsletter on revision list and census records, you get to submit ideas for blog posts and records for the newsletter, access to print-and-play games related to Latvian history, genealogy and migration, access to all of my ebooks as they’re published (fiction and non-fiction) and I will also manage a Latvian One-Name or One-Place study for you. That’s a lot of stuff! Of course, there are also several other pledge levels – $10, $25 and $50 per month – between the $5 and $100 options.

And if you sign up before 23:59pm Eastern European Standard Time on June 30th – that’s about 24 hours from now – regardless of your pledge level, you will get a bonus personalized THANK-YOU video from me, filmed at a RÄ«ga location of your choice. So don’t delay!