Money Time Again (Patreon)

Tomorrow is billing day, so I thought I'd take a look at the ugly financial backside...  Pay no attention to the number on my front page; it is a fine example of Patreon Bistromathics and bears little relation to the actual money I get.  I looked at my patrons list and did my own calculations, and here are the results.

I have 57 patrons who have actually given me money (i.e. they've been here more than a month and paid on the previous billing day.)  These patrons are pledging a total of $265 (minus Patreon's 5% cut).  THANKS!  You guys are the best.

There are two declined patrons from last month who pledged a total of $42 but their payment didn't go through.  When I cleaned all of the fraudulent pledges out of my list, I left them because I'm not sure about the difference between "declined" and "fraud."  After this billing cycle if they are still showing red, I'm going to block them out.  Their pledges do not seem to be figured into the front-page amount, but they are added to my pledge total on the patron list.

As of right now, I got 35 new patrons in October, pledging a total of $84.  That's good!  That's freakin' AWESOME, in fact!  However $40 of that is from four Doodle Club patrons who have been silent all month and not requested anything.  Maybe they just want to lurk, or maybe they're being strangely honorable and waiting for their first payment to clear before asking for stuff .. however, based on past experience with the fraud rate around here, I think I'll be lucky to get $30 of those new pledges.

Which means we're probably not gonna break the $300 barrier.  I re-wrote those goals a little bit today because last night I had an idea to make it sweeter all around; better for me and better for my fans.  When we hit $300 - and maybe it'll be next month - I'll start posting Zandar's Saga on FA at the rate of one page a month (it will still be "at least" two pages per month here).  Hopefully this strikes a balance between the free-readers not forgetting about me, and the patrons still getting something that's worth their money.  I hope it works!  I HOPE!  I HOPE!!