Patreon???

[madelinemasoch]

I would like to start a patreon page for my writings and I'm wondering some key things:

1. What should I offer as benefits?

2. What should the highest benefactor tier be in dollars?

3. Do any of you have experience with this, and how has it worked for you if so?

 

[MillieDynamite]

I've never done Patreon, but I know people on Medium. On Medium, it requires postings several times per week to keep your followers checking out what you right. They have to be very short - short stories, or people lose interest. You receive money by the amount of time people spend reading individual stories. So short appears at first blush to be counterproductive. You must have 100 followers before you can earn money from readers. Readers who don't join the site don't pay to read, so you must hide the story behind the paywall. However, if you have a hundred followers, paid member, or free, you can post stories behind he paywall and make money. It seems unfair to me to get money without paying, though.

There is a place called Stacks that is similar to Medium, Simily (Yes, they spelled it wrong it should be Simli), and Patreon. I've been meaning to look into it.

PS: Medium allows erotica, Simily does not. Don't know about Patreon or Stacks.

 

[madelinemasoch]

PS: Medium allows erotica, Simily does not. Don't know about Patreon or Stacks.

To clarify, by Patreon I mean drawing a connection to that money stream and the work I post on here. I'm not gonna post the erotica on Patreon itself.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I would like to start a patreon page for my writings and I'm wondering some key things:

1. What should I offer as benefits?

2. What should the highest benefactor tier be in dollars?

3. Do any of you have experience with this, and how has it worked for you if so?

1. As far as I have seen, authors usually offer some voting rights to their patrons. Such as, which characters the story should focus on, whose relationships should be further developed, and so on. It is also common to publish the story first for your patrons and to publish it on Literotica with a certain time delay, so your patrons can claim to have the benefit of getting the story before the non-patrons. For the Patreon model to work, you need to establish yourself here first and get some following.
2. Keep the lower tiers cheap. It is also common to give stronger voting power to higher tiers and sometimes even let them have the story a few days or a week before the lower tiers.
3. I don't have personal experience, but I've seen a decent number of creators using this model I've just described. Once again, it will never work unless you establish yourself first. You also need to write at regular intervals, because patrons will expect it. Like a small chapter per week (let's say 5k words or so), or a 20k+ words chapter per month.

Good luck.

 

[alohadave]

To clarify, by Patreon I mean drawing a connection to that money stream and the work I post on here. I'm not gonna post the erotica on Patreon itself.

That's not really going to work. Your subscribers are going to want exclusive or early access to your work.

Who would subscribe to your Patreon when they can come here and read it for free? There needs to be a value-add for it to make sense.

 

[madelinemasoch]

That's not really going to work. Your subscribers are going to want exclusive or early access to your work.

Who would subscribe to your Patreon when they can come here and read it for free? There needs to be a value-add for it to make sense.

Right. Early-access makes sense, but I was thinking of emailing it to them instead of posting it on there. Depends on if it's allowed.

 

[NoTalentHack]

Be aware that Patreon also has some hard content guidelines. In particular, Incest of any kind is considered to violate the TOS. I think NC (even CNC) does as well, but you’d have to check it out. I know a lot of visual novel love interests suddenly changed to “landladies” and “roommates” a few years ago.

 

[MillieDynamite]

KiethD has suggested, and I know agree with him, your stories should be put up for sale first. Once the stream is out of the tail, assuming it has any steam, you can then put it here for free. People don't shell out good money to you if they can read the work for free here or at other sites. However, you aren't reaching the same market at Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Nobel, or other pay-to-read websites that you reach on this site. But if your work is out there, it can be found by a simple search of your penname so you know, why buy the cow when you can read her writing here?

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Be aware that Patreon also has done hard content guidelines. In particular, Incest of any kind is considered to violate the TOS. I think NC (even CNC) does as well, but you’d have to check it out. I know a lot of visual novel love interests suddenly changed to “landladies” and “roommates” a few years ago.

By default yes. Then they release an incest patch that changes it all back

 

[NoTalentHack]

By default yes. Then they release an incest patch that changes it all back

Shhh! Don’t narc!

 

[Britva415]

1. What should I offer as benefits?

Just some briainstorms, some of which are probably farther out-there than you'd really consider:

Low stakes/low effort:
Stickers with your brand
Early access to upcoming published works
Exclusive-to-patrons stories
Ask-Me-Anything events or patron chat gatherings

Higher effort:
A brief personalized story on request
A longer personalized story on request
A feedback mechanism for patron readers to collectively request upcoming content topics or styles

High stakes:
A personalized story about you and a high tier patron
A personalized picture of yourself
(You're probably going to get requests like the following anyway, I'm just saying)
Something intimate and tangible of yours (socks, panties, bra)
A cam session for the high-tier patrons
Private cam sessions for the individual high-tier patrons
(Don't hate me for pointing out the obvious. I'd never ask for these but you know what the internet is like.)

2. What should the highest benefactor tier be in dollars?

I think it really depends on the highest tier of the benefit you're offering, as well as the frequency of your content releases.

3. Do any of you have experience with this, and how has it worked for you if so?

No, but I have followed and patron'd enough content creators to have seen a pretty good selection of approaches to their Patreon offerings.

 

[Seadog777]

I chose not to do Patreon after I found out that you get taxed after making $400.

I was going to offer REAL LOOKS at my life, for the higher paid tiers.

My work with ERT and SRT, teaching self-defense classes, refereeing and/or judging boxing events, etc, etc.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

early access -> personalized stories -> pics, panties, and cam sessions

Whoa, that escalated rapidly.

Not criticizing you, @Britva415 , just taken aback that this is how it works.

 

[Britva415]

Not criticizing you, @Britva415 , just taken aback that this is how it works.

I mean, it doesn't have to. I don't know where OP's limits are.

(Maybe) better that they hear it from me before hearing about it from patrons. Who knows, maybe they're totally up for lucratively monetizing their Patreon account. Either way, they're armed with information to consider now.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I chose not to do Patreon after I found out that you get taxed after making $400.

I was going to offer REAL LOOKS at my life, for the higher paid tiers.

My work with ERT and SRT, teaching self-defense classes, refereeing and/or judging boxing events, etc, etc.

Death and Taxes, those are the only sure things in life.

 

[Seadog777]

Death and Taxes, those are the only sure things in life.

That is true.

 

[BreakTheBar]

Actual Patreon career writer here, so speaking from experience. I am an outlier, but I have been able to go full-time erotica writer because of Patreon and writing here and on CHYOA.

- Your first big hurdle is going to be content limitations. It's been mentioned above by others, but you need to be strict about not writing incest and non-con, along with all the stuff Literotica already doesn't allow. This isn't a major hurdle for some people, and for others it is massive. (Like, for instance, it is much easier to grow a following on Lit with Incest/Taboo stories than most other content).
- Your second hurdle will be that, as you are producing 18+/Adult content, you will need to do an age verification with Patreon through a 3rd party system. If I remember correctly it was holding a Government ID up in a picture of your face or something like that. If you don't like that, then you can't do 18+ content.

Realistically speaking, the most successful Erotica writers on Patreon have some similar qualities:

- Producing a lot of content. That generally means at least 10k words a week. I produce about 100k words a month across 4 series, commissions and occasional one-offs.
- Writing series more than writing one-offs. People will invest in you and your characters, not in short strokers. If they want that they'll get it for free here or elsewhere. Often long series are more successful.
- Frequent communication through updates, messages and comments with patrons. This includes polls that may influence what you write, or the content in your writing (this also serves as excellent statistical feedback though, as even on patreon people are more likely to click and vote than comment)

I've consulted with several folks now on launching a Patreon, both writers and artists, and while there is no one 'right' way to do it, there are some obvious pitfalls:

- No obvious 'value added' benefits: All of my content, barring a few exceptions, end up posted for free SOMEwhere. People want a reason to back you beyond the content. Everything OTHER than the content that you offer (polls, updates, early access, etc.) is their reward for supporting you.
- Minimal Content: Make sure you have content on your Patreon BEFORE you launch (at least 5 posts of significant content that isn't somewhere else yet) so that folks signing up have something immediately, and have some sort of content (erotica or otherwise) planned to post moving forward at least twice a week.
- Embarrassed to mention it: Learn to be open with your audience in regards to holding out the hat. THIS TedTalk from Amanda Palmer, who has only gotten weirder in the years since, influences me a lot in how I view being a Creator and engaging in crowdfunding my career.
- No obvious niche: Writing erotica isn't enough. You need to know what your common theme or angle is so that your audience will generally know what they are signing up to get from you going forward. I write 'Haremy erotica with lots of complicated romance and steamy sex scenes.' I don't write 'Harem' niche because my relationships are more complicated. I very specifically have cute but complicated romance elements, it's not just 'wham bam thank-you ma'am' or easy-breezy fall in love at first sight and move on. My sex scenes, especially with new partners or novel elements, are long and often intense. If you can't distinguish three elements that unite your writing, your audience isn't going to be 'sure enough' about your content.
- Don't Suck. Well, I guess the pitfall would be 'Sucking,' but you get what I mean. There's no way around it really - to get people to take notice of your writing enough that they want to pay for it, you need to hit a minimum level of quality. There are outlier ways to get around this (I'm reminded of the massively selling erotica ebooks back in 2016 that were things like 'Fucked by my husband the bigfoot refrigerator' that were sold purely on ridiculousness) but in general you need to be good enough that people would buy the art at the community art show to hang on their wall, not to comment how nice it is and how good you're getting at your hobby.

The Great Things About A Writing Career On Patreon
- I am self-employed, doing the thing I really like doing. I get to write what I want, and the people who support my Patreon come to me through one story or another, but they support ME and celebrate me taking risks.
- I am making way more now than I did in my last career, which I loved but was chronically underfunded/valued.
- I am able to live off of my Patron monthly income and re-invest the commission money I bring in to commission artists to push out bonus content to my patrons.

The NOT Great Things About A Writing Career On Patreon
- I worry about Patreon changing it's ToS again and me needing to scramble to build a new platform. (A few others, notably AllTheseRoadworks and RawlyRawls, have created their own platforms and I hope to move that way sooner than later).
- Patreon has pretty awful customer/creator service.
- I produce a LOT of content on a monthly basis. This requires juggling a lot of stories in my head, but also leaves me frequently stressed about missing my own weekly deadlines and falling behind.
- I worry about the need to obfuscate my career from friends and family who wouldn't 'get it.' And even some who would. The reality is that I work in a sector of the porn industry now.
- My writing is directly tied to watching submission numbers, which is different that sales numbers because I don't just start at 0 and sell copies; I see every person who stops supporting me right alongside the people who start. It's like getting a negative rating/review, except it's tied to your bills. Thankfully most people fill out the 'Exit Survey' and usually mark they either only planned to support 1 month, or their financial situation has changed (totally understandable reasons).

I think that's all I have time to rant about for now on the topic, but if anyone has questions to clarify the above or on other things on the topic, I'll be checking back in as I procrastinate against my deadlines.

Cheers!

 

[Bramblethorn]

- Producing a lot of content. That generally means at least 10k words a week. I produce about 100k words a month across 4 series, commissions and occasional one-offs.

I'm never going to have the output for Patreon myself, so this is idle curiosity - do you give yourself holidays, sick days etc? If so, how do you plan for that?

There's an artist I back there who's very prolific but has some health issues. Every time they come up he'll be like "well I broke my arm but the pain's not too bad so I'm planning to work through it, comic might be a week or so late, very sorry everybody" while the rest of us yell at him to go take time off and heal properly, not that he ever listens. I'm not sure how much of that is his own overdeveloped work ethic and how much is genuine worry that he'll lose backers if he takes sick time. I'd like to think 99% of folk would be fine with him taking the time, I'd kick in a few bucks extra if that was what it took to get him to look after his health, but I don't know for sure how it goes.

- Embarrassed to mention it: Learn to be open with your audience in regards to holding out the hat. THIS TedTalk from Amanda Palmer, who has only gotten weirder in the years since, influences me a lot in how I view being a Creator and engaging in crowdfunding my career.
- No obvious niche: Writing erotica isn't enough. You need to know what your common theme or angle is so that your audience will generally know what they are signing up to get from you going forward. I write 'Haremy erotica with lots of complicated romance and steamy sex scenes.' I don't write 'Harem' niche because my relationships are more complicated.

IIRC, OP has this one covered - from what I recall, her stories had a pretty specific flavour. On Literotica I think that was probably hurting ratings because it involved a combination of several different kinks that audiences here aren't used to seeing combined, but on Patreon where the objective is "find people who like this enough to pay money" rather than "impress people who are coming here for free stuff" it might work a lot better, assuming nothing in the content restrictions trips her up.

I very specifically have cute but complicated romance elements, it's not just 'wham bam thank-you ma'am' or easy-breezy fall in love at first sight and move on. My sex scenes, especially with new partners or novel elements, are long and often intense. If you can't distinguish three elements that unite your writing, your audience isn't going to be 'sure enough' about your content.
- Don't Suck. Well, I guess the pitfall would be 'Sucking,' but you get what I mean. There's no way around it really - to get people to take notice of your writing enough that they want to pay for it, you need to hit a minimum level of quality. There are outlier ways to get around this (I'm reminded of the massively selling erotica ebooks back in 2016 that were things like 'Fucked by my husband the bigfoot refrigerator' that were sold purely on ridiculousness)

And even there, that kind of thing tends to wear off. It might get you a one-hit wonder, but probably not a sustainable career.

The big exception there is Chuck Tingle, but that's because underneath the attention-getting absurdity of titles like "Space Raptor Butt Invasion", his books are actually good, in their own inimitable way. I picked up a couple of his non-erotic stories out of curiosity, not expecting much more than light entertainment, and was surprised by how smart and sincere they were.

(Also because he works hard and can put out topical titles like "Pounded By The Pound: Turned Gay By The Socioeconomic Implications Of Britain Leaving The European Union" at the drop of a hat, which goes back to the other stuff you mention.)

 

[joy_of_cooking]

"Pounded By The Pound: Turned Gay By The Socioeconomic Implications Of Britain Leaving The European Union"

Customers who viewed this item also bought

"Pounded In The Butt By My Handsome Sentient Library Card Who Seems Otherworldly But In Reality Is Just A Natural Part Of The Priceless Resources Our Library System Provides"

and

"Not Pounded By The Physical Manifestation Of Someone Else's Doubt In My Place On The Autism Spectrum Because Denying Someone's Personal Journey And Identity Like That Is Incredibly Rude So No Thanks"

This is amazing. This is honestly the first time in years I've wished I had an amazon account.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Sorry, y'all were having a serious conversation. Please carry on.

 

[BreakTheBar]

I'm never going to have the output for Patreon myself, so this is idle curiosity - do you give yourself holidays, sick days etc? If so, how do you plan for that?

My transition into erotica happened in a wonky way. I left my previous career and was able to give myself 2 months to prove I could make money by returning to erotica instead of looking for some sort of office job. In those 2 months I made enough, and saw enough growth, that I set myself some reasonable goals - I met those goals early, and set new goals for my 1 year mark which I have now accomplished a week and a half early. I treated it like a business coming off the ground - and most businesses coming off the ground fail. I don't like failing, so I put in a TON of work, especially in the first 3 months. I had a bit of a burnout in month 4 where I slowed down, and started to even out the work a little more, but I basically isolated myself from friends and extended family for about 8 months with only little outings here or there as I tried to make sure this thing would stick. I'm now (almost exactly) 1 year in and am still fixing my social life and getting back to losing weight (I had lost about 50lbs prior to the whole career change, and have gained back about 30 of it from going from a fairly active job to a sitting almost always job - another casualty of stress and life change).

In that time I did get sick for a bit, I've had multiple life issues arise including COVID in my immediate family, and I've always been able to take the time needed to handle things but constantly felt the pressure to get back at it because, at the end of the day, being a full-time writer is being a small business owner. Patreon is my shop, and I can't close the shop for too long. I was also able to just take a week to myself out in a cabin in the woods, but I treated it as I have every other year I've gone when I wasn't self-employed - which is to say as a reading and writing retreat. I finished reading 4 books and wrote about 28,000 words of a non-erotica novel (which, to showcase the importance of polls, my Patrons voted for over me writing some erotica one-shots).

So, thankfully so far, I've been able to manage sickness and holidays fairly well. It took a bit to learn that it's better policy to just post an update to my patrons than try and struggle through.

That being said, I know a fantastic artist on Patreon who had a bad month with sickness and his pet needing to be put down and he saw a major enough dip in patrons that he did a commission sale to try and make up the cash prior to tax season. THAT is the kind of stress that I worry about. Well, that and my next trip to the dentist.

The big exception there is Chuck Tingle, but that's because underneath the attention-getting absurdity of titles like "Space Raptor Butt Invasion", his books are actually good, in their own inimitable way.

That's who I was thinking of! Couldn't remember the name at all.

 

[ElectricBlue]

To clarify, by Patreon I mean drawing a connection to that money stream and the work I post on here. I'm not gonna post the erotica on Patreon itself.

Why would anyone bother with Patreon then, if the content is here on Lit? For free.

 

[BreakTheBar]

Why would anyone bother with Patreon then, if the content is here on Lit? For free.

I'll point you to my rather large post above, but also give you a TLR - People support creative works that they like a lot. I've made my career off of people wanting to support my erotica, almost all of which they can get for free here and elsewhere.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'll point you to my rather large post above, but also give you a TLR - People support creative works that they like a lot. I've made my career off of people wanting to support my erotica, almost all of which they can get for free here and elsewhere.

My quick read of your TLDR is that you have a ton of content accessible through Patreon. In the post I responded to, the OP expressly says, the content won't be on Patreon, it will be here on Lit (where she currently has some content but not much). Hence my question, why would you bother, especially with a new writer with not much content?

You might be one of the few who do make money, but I think there are many more who haven't done much homework, but still think they're the next breaking thing.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Why would anyone bother with Patreon then, if the content is here on Lit? For free.

Sometimes it's just about throwing money in the hat. Most of my Patreon subs fall into that basket; there are a couple where it gets me extra content, but mostly it's just that I appreciate folk who make nice things and I want them to have food, housing, and healthcare.

"Not Pounded By The Physical Manifestation Of Someone Else's Doubt In My Place On The Autism Spectrum Because Denying Someone's Personal Journey And Identity Like That Is Incredibly Rude So No Thanks"

This is amazing. This is honestly the first time in years I've wished I had an amazon account.

That one is the first of his I ever read, and it does what it says on the tin. Even came with a free bonus story "Not Pounded By My Soul-Crushing Job Because I Quit".