Typically Internet content can be split into three categories: discoverability, community engagement, and sales. It seems silly to put the first two behind a paywall. Better I think to have paywalls in the fiction industry for physical goods—doesn’t Sanderson send out loot boxes and fancy editions? I think the problem for authors is that offering things like that takes a lot of initial investment and it’s much easier to just sell "talking to me." But that just wont push big numbers until one's audience is more mature.
I think this answers differently at different levels of scale. Specifically, the scale of your audience or market.
For authors who are starting out with under 100 regular readers or maybe up to 200 say, the Patron model may not work for you, or work immediately for you. If you don't have a large library or aren't a Pulp Speed author who can generate a chapter or so of Patron material, in addition to work on your regular projects, then starting a Patron site is likely not the best use of your time.
Step to the next level where you have 5 to 10 books on your library shelf, and you have expanded to perhaps 250 to 500 or more regular readers and the Patron model can make a good deal of sense. At a $5 per month support level ($60/yr) for the Patron, a readership of 300 generates $1500 per month.
The question becomes less either-or, but when do you introduce a Patron-style element to your sales and marketing efforts based on the activity of your reader base, and to some extent, the depth of your available library for purchase.
Getting people like Brian Niemeier and Jon Del Arroz to comment on this would be good, as they are both doing builds on Patron sites, and might be able to offer some additional insights to this question.
DeviantArt has become even worse in that regard. The unholy cross between having their own AI image engine and Subscriptions, paid sub-galleries, and now a built in "Adoptables" system has led to AI Guys with galleries full to the brim with nothing viewable except for a thumbnail exhorting you to cough up $5 a month in order to see hundreds of naked AI renders of Anime girls, with 20-30 new images added daily.
Oh DA is soooo bad, and what's really annoying is that people are throwing money at the AI accounts. This artist I follow is watching those AI accounts rake in the dough. and when he mentions it, people get MAD. DA is such a mess.
Someone else pointed out how some of those accounts are faking profits. When you can pay for things with Points, DA doesn't take a share. So you can set up spare accounts and recirculate the same points over and over again. Buy things from the art account and just give points back to the buying account, ad infinitum.
You make a very interesting point here! I'm definitely planning on doing the patronage method, but I'd like to focus it on things that a reasonable person might want to support--something that will provide genuine value. You've given me food for thought about how I should go about that!
Sad to say, this is part of why I left the RealmMakers community and stop following people who paywall their content and focus on community interaction with professionals who are doing what I desire. It's sad, because I can't find a good place to mingle with fans either, thanks to FB basically making it impossible to speak your mind anymore and fill most of the content with ads.
Typically Internet content can be split into three categories: discoverability, community engagement, and sales. It seems silly to put the first two behind a paywall. Better I think to have paywalls in the fiction industry for physical goods—doesn’t Sanderson send out loot boxes and fancy editions? I think the problem for authors is that offering things like that takes a lot of initial investment and it’s much easier to just sell "talking to me." But that just wont push big numbers until one's audience is more mature.
I think this answers differently at different levels of scale. Specifically, the scale of your audience or market.
For authors who are starting out with under 100 regular readers or maybe up to 200 say, the Patron model may not work for you, or work immediately for you. If you don't have a large library or aren't a Pulp Speed author who can generate a chapter or so of Patron material, in addition to work on your regular projects, then starting a Patron site is likely not the best use of your time.
Step to the next level where you have 5 to 10 books on your library shelf, and you have expanded to perhaps 250 to 500 or more regular readers and the Patron model can make a good deal of sense. At a $5 per month support level ($60/yr) for the Patron, a readership of 300 generates $1500 per month.
The question becomes less either-or, but when do you introduce a Patron-style element to your sales and marketing efforts based on the activity of your reader base, and to some extent, the depth of your available library for purchase.
Getting people like Brian Niemeier and Jon Del Arroz to comment on this would be good, as they are both doing builds on Patron sites, and might be able to offer some additional insights to this question.
DeviantArt has become even worse in that regard. The unholy cross between having their own AI image engine and Subscriptions, paid sub-galleries, and now a built in "Adoptables" system has led to AI Guys with galleries full to the brim with nothing viewable except for a thumbnail exhorting you to cough up $5 a month in order to see hundreds of naked AI renders of Anime girls, with 20-30 new images added daily.
Oh DA is soooo bad, and what's really annoying is that people are throwing money at the AI accounts. This artist I follow is watching those AI accounts rake in the dough. and when he mentions it, people get MAD. DA is such a mess.
Someone else pointed out how some of those accounts are faking profits. When you can pay for things with Points, DA doesn't take a share. So you can set up spare accounts and recirculate the same points over and over again. Buy things from the art account and just give points back to the buying account, ad infinitum.
You make a very interesting point here! I'm definitely planning on doing the patronage method, but I'd like to focus it on things that a reasonable person might want to support--something that will provide genuine value. You've given me food for thought about how I should go about that!
Sad to say, this is part of why I left the RealmMakers community and stop following people who paywall their content and focus on community interaction with professionals who are doing what I desire. It's sad, because I can't find a good place to mingle with fans either, thanks to FB basically making it impossible to speak your mind anymore and fill most of the content with ads.