Gift Economy
Free Doesn't Mean Worth Less
This project is offered through a gift economy because creativity, healing, and learning should be accessible to everyone. Instead of fixed prices or transactional exchange, you are invited to receive what’s offered and give in a way that feels aligned, sustainable, and honest for you. A gift economy is rooted in trust, reciprocity, and respect for each person’s unique circumstances.
The Gift Economy Experiment
At PurposeCreator Project, we’re experimenting with a different way of sharing creative work one rooted in trust, generosity and love rather than fixed prices or transactions. A gift economy is a system of exchange where services, creations, and offerings are given freely without a required payment. Instead of telling you what something is “worth” before you’ve experienced it, you’re invited to receive first and then decide what, if anything, you feel moved to give in return.
This isn’t the same as “free stuff”, it’s an invitation to explore value beyond money, to notice how you truly feel about what you receive, and to discover your own relationship with giving and receiving. A gift economy builds connection, honours generosity, and invites creativity to flourish without barriers.
The Difference between a Gift Economy VS Capitalist Economy
The current problem with a capitalist economy is that it slaps a price tag on everything. It tells you what something is worth before you’ve had the chance to feel it for yourself.
It doesn’t invite you into a relationship, it hands you a transaction. You either pay, or you walk away.
A gift economy is different. It trusts that people are capable of generosity without being forced.
It allows you to ask, how much is this worth to me? and What do I want to give in return?
That question can stir something much deeper than price ever could. It helps us recognise value, honour what we’ve received, and give back, not from guilt, but from love.
It is a perfect system but much harder, because it requires faith, real desire, and actual emotional change. It asks you to examine your entitlement, your habits of taking, and to maybe change your heart a little. But it also holds the potential for something far more transformative than any transaction can offer: a culture where giving and receiving are both acts of love.
World's Economy
- Prioritises profits
- Rewards exploitation
- Seeks control, dominance, and power
- Built on fear and scarcity tactics
- Based on barter and addiction
- Says life is about work and money
- Puts a price on basic human needs
- Everything is behind a paywall
- Driven by transaction – give only if you get
- Rewards hustle, scale, branding
- Measures worth in numbers, followers, income
- Audience = consumers
- Art is created by what is trendy and popular
- Art often serves the artist or algorithm
- Art is created just for the sake of it
- Treats creations as products
- No automatic function – requires hustle, burnout
- Demands recognition, honour, payment, accolades
- Says: You must earn your worth
- Says: Perform to be loved
- Promotes a replaceable, grind mindset
- Says: Change comes only through working harder
- 🤖 AI excels here
God's Economy
- Prioritises people and what is most loving
- Rewards loving action
- Seeks love, truth, and equality
- Built on abundance, generosity, truth, and love
- Built on love and no expectation
- Says life is about enjoyment, passions, love, soulmate and receiving God's Love
- Human needs are freely provided (water, food, shelter, clothing, spiritual knowledge)
- Says money doesn’t exist and is not needed for soul progression
- Rooted in reciprocity – give and it returns multiplied
- Rewards love, truth, integrity, faith, and soul-offering
- Measures only what is loving or unloving
- Audience = my brothers and sisters
- Art is created through a desire to love
- Art is selfless, to benefit humanity
- Art is created with beauty and function, to nourish soul and body
- Sees creations as offerings/gifts
- Every creation is living, with built-in instinct and automation
- Success = meaning and love
- Says: You are already worthy
- Says: You are loved unconditionally
- Sees each being as unique, equal and irreplaceable
- Says: True change comes through emotional transformation
- 💫 The soul excels here
- All creation has purpose
- Gives freely with no emotional demands
Current Attitudes towards Gifts
We live in a world overflowing with free gifts – music, art, essays, videos, and open-source tools offered generously by creators who often expect little or nothing in return.
Take YouTube, for example. People spend hours, sometimes weeks, making videos, music, animations, or deep dives and give them away with no paywall or entry fee. The only “cost” is a few ads.
And yet, free often brings mixed reactions:
Some assume it can’t be good without a price tag.
Others get suspicious, waiting for a hidden catch.
Many take without acknowledgment, treating it as entitlement.
Or they enjoy it, but never engage or support.
Free content is abundant and valuable, but it’s often overlooked, undervalued, or taken for granted but there are so many benefits to a gift economy.
The Benefits of a Gift Economy
The purpose of a gift economy is to help both the giver and the receiver grow in love, and to heal fears rooted in scarcity or lack of abundance. God desires for us to release selfish attitudes, entitlement, expectations and beliefs that lead us to devalue the gifts we receive. Money, being a man-made construct, is not the source of true value. God envisions a world where all Her children operate from a gift economy.
God is the perfect example of a Gift Giver, offering countless blessings – land, water, and the raw materials needed for shelter and clothing. It is only through greed, power, and control that these gifts have been monetised and restricted.
Through engaging a gift economy, it is going to expose the emotional injuries we all have around money for both the giver and receiver with the incredible potential to grow in love.
The Giver can enjoy:
- Giving gifts
- Working from a place of love and not fear
- Receiving gifts from others gratitude and appreciation
- Learn about their limiting emotions about money through the Law of Attraction
The Reciever can enjoy:
- Being given a gift
- Having no demand placed on them to reciprocate this gift
- The opportunity to give a gift in return
- Learning about their limiting emotions linked with money by observing their attitudes and desires
Does Gift Economy mean 'Free'?
Built on Generosity
A gift economy is reliant on humanity developing a generous attitude towards others — not because they are pressured, marketed to, or guilted into giving, but because generosity rises naturally from within. It’s based on trust, love, and the idea that value is not something we extract from each other, but something we offer freely when we feel moved to.
A Will to Love
That feeling, that shift from obligation to genuine desire, is the seed of something powerful. This is what a gift economy invites us into. It softens us. It opens our hearts. It gently nudges us from being selfish and rigid to being a little more human — into exercising our will to love. It asks, What would you like to give? Instead of here’s what you must pay or miss out.
No Demand
In a gift economy things are offered without a fixed price or obligation with no demand to reciprocate in return. However, while there is no demand to reciprocate, your generosity can be freely given from your own free will and desire, out of appreciation, joy, love and gratitude for the gifts received. In order for a gift economy to succeed, it’s about creating a flow of giving and receiving (without demands) that nurtures everyone involved.
No Set Price
While gifts do not have a price tag on it, it is an opportunity for both parties to work through any money limitations and express generosity without it being forced. Just remember: free doesn’t mean worthless. Free still means someone put their heart and soul into making something for you. And that, in many ways, makes it more valuable than something with a price tag slapped on it.
Transparency
To engage the Gift Economy ethically, I will endeavour to provide full transparency on the full breakdown of all my costs to run my business and also how and where the money is being spent. This is so you understand from a business perspective the financial cost it requires me to run my business, and so you can make informed decisions and connect emotionally to the amount of donations you gift in return.
How to Make a Donation
Whether you are watching my videos on YouTube, joined me on Patreon, downloaded my music or gifts on Gumroad, you can access and receive it freely or leave a donation of your choice. If you would just like to donate you can do so via my Paypal.
Step 1 – Choose Your Donation Type & Use the Reference
Donation Type
Souslet Studios
Thalia Coaching Gift
(General living expenses – rent, food, water, utilities, bills, other essentials)
Ref: TS_COACHING
1. Direct Bank Transfer
2. Wise USD
3. Wise GPB
4. Paypal
Step 3 – Process Payment
Be sure to include the Reference Code in the transaction. This is to help us know how the funds should be allocated
AU Bank Account
Account Name: Soulset Studios
Branch: ANZ Leichhardt
Address: Shop 5 Leichhardt MarketPlace, 200 Marion St, Leichhardt NSW 2040
BSB – 012172
Account Number – 476084537
SWIFT CODE ANZBAU3M
*We receive 99% of your donations.
Account holder: Thalia Sylvena Skopellos
ACH and Wire routing number: 084009519
Account number: 9600012305445084
Account Type: Checking
Address:
Wise
30.W.26th Street, Sixth Floor
New York NY 10010
United States
https://wise.com/
*We receive 99% of your donations.
Account holder: Thalia Sylvena Skopellos
Sort code: 23-14-70
Account number: 39848229
IBAN: TRWI 2314 7039 8482 29
Address:
Wise
56 Shoreditch High Street
London E1 6JJ
United Kingdom
Website: https://wise.com/
*We receive 99% of your donations.
Account holder: Thalia Sylvena Skopellos
Institution number: 621
Account number: 200110590020
Transit number: 16001
Wise’s address:
99 Bank Street, Suite 1420
Ottawa ON K1P 1H4
Canada
Website: https://wise.com/
*We receive 96% of your donations.
My Experience so far!
At the moment, I have only three Patrons who support me monthly, one of them being my partner. This means that, right now, the gift economy experiment isn’t yet sustainable for my creative practice.
Most people who follow me seem to download only what’s free, without offering appreciation or support in return. That’s simply the reality. Out of 78 people who downloaded a free gift over the past two years, only 6 made a donation — that’s about 7.7%. Donations were usually between $5–$10, with one especially generous gift of $60.
This tells me something important: many who are here may not yet truly value or appreciate the gifts being offered. And I’m not sharing this out of bitterness, but from a place of honesty and reflection.
In my experiment so far:
I’ve mostly engaged this path haphazardly without fully understanding how to communicate to people online when they download my gifts without donating.
I have not truly understood how to engage a gift economy lovingly either so my experiments haven’t been thorough or well thought out.
I have let every low donation slide and have not followed up to discover the motivations behind such low donations.
I have not followed up or communicated with those who downloaded the gifts without donation either.
I have also not been fully committed in my soul to intentionally engage this path as a result I often get caught up on looking for work or other means of income.
Various attitudes have been exposed to me such as ‘why should I do things for free all the time – I’m sick of being a black slave’
Emotions that come up for me when engaging this path can vary from:
Anger about not being appreciated
Anger about being undervalued
Anger about being taken advantage of
Anger about being used
Deep fears about survival and going homeless
Deep fears about going into more and more debt
Deep fears about ‘I’m never going to fulfil my dreams’ or ‘I’m going to be stuck here forever’
Feelings of hopelessness – ‘whats the use – this is never going to work’
This is what I’ve discovered so far and as I continue to experiment I will update this as I go.
Despite this, I am going to continue with my experimentation with the Gift Economy with more commitment, structure, organisation and processes and engage this path with more sincerity, service and love to see what truly might be possible – God’s Way.