Been thinking a lot about Patreon (wrote about it a bit in my latest HEAVY METAL EMAIL), and having been blessed with another paid subscriber this week, this bit from another writer caught my eye:
I have a small group of amazing people who pay for my writings, despite not getting anything extra in return, just to support me. And if you are one of those people: thank you so, so much.
I think Patreon has cursed us with this idea that if we accept support on a monthly basis there must be more. Something extra to shovel on top of the work we’re already doing.
I did this with my Skull Toaster Patreon back in the day. I had one extra for like $10/mo where I’d go to a music shop, buy a used metal CD, and send it to you. I think I called it Mystery Metal or something. It was insane, and a LOT of work, on top of all the other things I was doing, when in fact my main thing was posting 1-3 metal trivia questions PER DAY to social media, and sending out a 200+ word email every night with the answers.
That was a lot.
So I turned on payments with HEAVY METAL EMAIL. I was sending two emails a week anyways.
In those emails I had a section called ANTISOCIAL, which was links to horrible things that the social media platforms keep doing.
But I moved them out of those two emails, and packaged it into a Monday morning email called ANTISOCIAL. Paid subscribers get that.
Not a lot of extra work, and I’m still doing the core thing that I offer – write about how cool email newsletters are, and how social media is horrible (you can subscribe to HEAVY METAL EMAIL here).
Let people support you for what you’re already doing!