Many of our members will know that zapsplat.com was originally set up as a hobby and I have grown it around my main business (custom sound design for games, apps, movies, software, audio branding etc) for the last 3 years. This has been a challenge due to the fact that I also have 4 children, so dividing my time between all these commitments can be mentally and physically exhausting.
In this time our generous members have donated to upgrade their accounts which has slowly but steadily grown and allowed me to gradually spend more time on producing new sounds for the library and also to reinvest the money back into development, equipment and other essential purchases.
Recently I have been spending in excess of 30 hours per week recording new content, creating the sounds requested in our forums, answering questions and the general day-to-day tasks involved with running a website which has been both exhausting and rewarding. Over this time I have started to wonder if I should simplify things in my life and start to spend more time doing the thing I love the most, working on this site and working to make zapsplat.com an even bigger and better resource.
So I have had to sit down and seriously consider my future and what I believe is the best and most ideal solution.
And so it starts, full time 100% commitment to zapsplat.com
You may be pleased to know that I have decided to give up all my other work commitments, stop working on custom audio (outside of zapsplat.com) and dedicated 100% of my time to zapsplat and you, our fabulous members.
Why is this the best option? Well for me, I can dedicated around 50 hours a week (if not more) to recording and editing more sounds, arranging locations for recording, travel to other countries for recording and build the library, user base and also the revenue stream the site creates.
With this money, I can start to pay myself a wage to cover my time, continue ongoing development, purchase equipment as required and build this site into an even bigger, better resource. I would also like to work closer with our contributors and I am even considering opening a store and selling sounds alongside our current free system for any sounds you can’t find. This may or may not happen so watch this space.
I am excited about the future and want to thank you all for your support so far… from here on in, you’ll start to see big improvements and changes that will bring even more free sound effects and more to zapsplat.com
Alan McKinney
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