January 2023 Update - State of the Patreon (Patreon)

Hello Patrons, Supporters and whoever else might stumble in here!

Happy New Year!

This is a big update that I've been piecing together for a while, and it's going to come in three parts. I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season - I certainly had an eventful one. Let's jump into the update

Where Was I?

I haven't been around the last ten days, and that's not exactly because of the holidays - well, it's certainly a big part, but not totally. After my last releases in December it was time for me to jump into a project I promised fellow Erotica author CorruptingPower (originator of the Quaranteam stories) that I would help with - he's releasing the first 50 chapters of Quaranteam as a physical book. As thanks for him letting me play around in his world with QT:NW I offered to do a Copyediting pass on the whole thing for him. It's something I was happy to do, and I'm still technically working on, but it was also a big time investment. I'm also coming away from it with a fresh overall timeline Doc that I need to do some more work on with the side stories, but that's going to be a BIG help moving forward.

Anyways, I didn't post for about 12 days here, so the first order of business this week is catching up with the weekly stories - a Double Release of OFG just went out, and tomorrow will be a Double Release of AMA chapters as well. Well then be getting back on schedule with a single release of OFG, and single release of AMA, and then the next chapter of FoF and we'll be on track.

2022 In Review

My December 2022 update did a look-back, so I'll keep this brief. This Patreon has changed my life throughout 2022 - I first created it in January, so it's technically been a full year since it's birth, but I only really went active with it in August. That's the month I base everything off of. I've learned a lot about Patreon in that time in terms of what I can expect and what I want to do with it.

In 2022, thanks to you all, we've been able to build a support structure for me to seriously consider writing as a full-time endeavour. We're not quite there yet - the fluctuations mean that I need to look at the numbers with an understanding of the ebb and flow of things, but we're really close.

Across the stories in 2022, we published:

158 Mini-Chapters of OnlyFans Girl, totalling ~173,400 words
96 Mini-Chapters of AMA: The Boyfriend, totalling ~116,400 words
7 Chapters of Font of Fertility, totalling ~80,200 words
9 Chapters of Quaranteam: North West, totalling ~93,130 words
51 Mini-Chapters of Afterparty: Bully, totalling ~47,720 words
35 Mini-Chapters of Afterparty: Pool, totalling ~36,400 words
Masseuse and the Milf, totalling ~27,330 words

That's a total of ~546,957 words. That's more words than the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, and most of it in about 5 months!

2023 Plans

So, what does 2023 hold for us? Well, let's talk about Schedule first

Schedule Moving Forward

I've slipped on it in the past months as I've needed to shift focus back and forth through the weeks, but I'm committed to the concept of the weekly schedule. For the forseeable future that means:

7 Chapters of OFG per week
7 Chapters of AMA: The Boyfriend per week
1 Chapter of either FoF or QT:NW per week

With extra writing time getting devoted to Commissions and One-Shots (which will start getting voted on again once MatM gets it's final version)

Goals

My 2023 goal is based around August. At the end of December, the Patreon brought in ~$3,300 CAD for the month before cancellations and failed payments dropped us back down to our current standing in January. (Note: those drops happen every month). My realistic goal as a 1 Year Mark is for the Patreon to be bringing in $5,000 CAD in August. Of course, that's not my take-home amount - taxes being a major influence (yes, I do need to pay taxes). We're also going to reach a point where I am doing some re-investment based on the Patreon Goals. The first one coming up is doing some Character Art commissions from erotica artists. I've had my eye on a couple that I think would do a great job, and I'm excited to start contacting them once we're solidly at the goal amount. And we'll definitely do a Poll for what story and character get Art first.

Beyond a monetary goals, I have other things I'd like to accomplish (see below)

How We Get There

So how do we see more growth?

Posting

At the moment, CHYOA and Literotica are the core places where I'm posting work, and I'll continue to do so. I also need to get back on top of posting at MCStories regularly, and I need to take another run at posting on Reddit to see if it brings in new Patrons or not. The problem is that Reddit gets a bunch of Views, but I don't think it brought in many folks to the Patreon and it is a PAIN to format for.

Beyond that, I need to expand to new sites. My current top-priority one to learn more about is StoriesOnline.net, and I have a list of other sites to consider.

New Stories

There is a natural truth that One-Shot stories, and new stories, are more likely to draw folks to me as an author. So while my Bread and Butter writing will always be on the series, I need to start writing more one-shots and miniseries to help catch the eyes of more readers who haven't discovered me yet. And that includes on both Literotica and on CHYOA. Actually, on CHYOA in particular, the OFG and AMA series are only really gaining about 400 frequent readers because they are both posting as variations and the stories are seeing more success on other platforms after the fact.

Discord Server

I've been asked about this by a vocal minority of folks, and I've pushed it off because I wanted to make sure if I did it I was executing it well.

My current plan for a Discord has three factors.

1) Patreon-only sections. The discord is going to have an open area for any fans of the stories to jump in and chat about them, but a significant portion and all the Original Content will be Patreon-only.

2) A Discord-based Story. Discord messages (without paying for a subscription) cap out at 2000 characters. I think it would be neat to try and write a story one post a day in Flash Fiction style chunks (about 3/4 of a page at a time). I'm still deciding what the story could be, because I would want to make it very influence-able by the Discord users.

3) A Text-based RPG. For those who may not have clued in yet, I happen to be a big ol' nerd and one of my favourite things is TTRPGs like Dungeons & Dragons. This is the MOST questionable element of whether I include it or not, but I think it would be cool to run a text-based adventure for a select number of community members, or maybe for a group of fellow erotica authors for the community to watch as the story progresses.

Of course, the Original Content above would eventually migrate as readable-sized chunks from the Discord to here on Patreon for those who don't want to delve into Discord.

Anthology Project

This has been on my mind almost since I got back into Erotica in August, but I wanted to make sure I was in a stable employment state before I started reaching out. With my background as an Editor, and some of my other skills, I would very much like to put together a Harem Anthology with other erotica authors. So this is me manifesting the idea into the world - throughout January I'll start reaching out to folks.

The hope would be something like 6 authors with original Haremy novella-length stories, which we would crowdfund to do digital sales and possibly even a limited physical-copy run. If things went well, I could turn the Anthology into a regular thing and bring in new authors as well.

A Comic

This is technically the current final Patreon goal at $7,500 CAD, but I love comics so much that I might do this earlier. My vision for this is similar to my original vision for FoF - I want to cross the 'Porn Comics' that you might find online with a more traditional story.

The genre of the comic will likely be a Poll - I have all sorts of ideas to use.

The key is that if I'm going to do it, I want to do it well. That means hiring a skilled Comic artist (not just an artist or pinup artist), and Comic pages aren't cheap when you pay people what they're worth. That's why this is the furthest-out project idea at the moment.

The Series

We've got 4 currently-running series, but here's my current thinking on everything that I think it makes sense to comment on...

Font of Fertility - I want to be publishing 2 chapters of FoF a month. I maintained 1 chapter a month in 2022, but I know with a little more time and focus 2 chapters makes sense on a Bi-weekly basis. Now, that being said, I think we've got about 8 chapters before a natural point where I can take a brief hiatus to work on an extra One-Shot story or two. The break wouldn't be long, but enough to refresh my energy for a new phase of the story after a big event that's been looming.

Quaranteam: North West - Just like with FoF, we've been hitting 1 chapter a moth and I think I can hit 2 chapters a month moving forward on a bi-weekly basis. To be frank, working with CorruptingPower in this world is always an excellent experience and the sheer amount of ideas I've been putting together for Harri and the House of Black to tackle is getting really interesting. QT:NW is also definitely going to (eventually) have the largest Harem of all the stories by a mile. So many hot lady ideas! So much danger to face! And as with FoF, I will likely find a natural point to take a brief hiatus, but rather than one-shots I might end up writing a short or two in the Quaranteam world to flesh out some things that aren't happening in the other series based on conversations I've had with CorruptingPower. It's exciting stuff!

OnlyFans Girl - Weekly releases are resuming, but I'm going to be honest - I'm losing patience a little bit with the Office Drama only because as interns John, Sabrina and Gemma have very little influence or connection to the actual legal issues going on. Legal Dramas aren't actually about the lawyer stuff, but the stories are still rooted in them. I can't really do that here. Now, that being said, OFG has a LONG road of stuff that I've planned ahead. I have bullet-point notes for 2+ years in the timeline ahead, let alone the rest of the summer and moving into their final Undergrad years. I've mentioned it before, but we'll likely see some more time skips - small, maybe a few days at a time, but at this point we don't need to see every day at work, or even every date in detail.

AMA: The Boyfriend - Weekly releases will also be resuming for AMA, and I'm excited to get back to the story. I think the current set-up has been PERFECT for the Polls, and finding methods to work in what you all vote on is super fun. I also get great insight into which character might need more screen time to tempt you all on the next vote. Mwahaha! It's far down the line at this point, but I foresee a point where we'll reach the end of the Trip with Robbie, Cassidy & Co which will open up a space to use the CHYOA formatting to give AN end, but not THE end to the story. Likely I'll write AN ending that ties things up in a nice little bow, take a brief hiatus from the story, and then comeback with a much messier version of that ending and continue on from there to explore what happens when they return to Vegas and their lives. (I've had a specific scene in my head since Chapter 1 that won't happen until they are back in Vegas).

Erection of the Runelords - Many of you may not even remember this story, but this is another one that I was writing on CHYOA for a time, and then I transitioned to writing it more traditionally with larger chapters for a bit. Here's the deal - I really like the characters here, and I love the idea of writing them through a sexually-explicit version of the Adventure Path, and even doing that with more of them in the future. I love fantasy, I love the TTRPG elements. BUT I just don't know how popular is compared to my other work. It's a slow start and it's very fighty as well as fucky, and to be frank the first real sex scene being a comedic goblin gangbang of a female PoV character is probably the wrong choice (yeah, you read that right). To be honest, this is the story I saw getting character art done for since Fantasy Character are much more interesting in the physical design than anything else. So yeah, I want to come back to EotR. I just need to do some work to figure out the format, and probably do some back-additions to make the right promises on what the content will be like early on.

The Afterparty:Bully and The Afterparty:Pool - We've finished both of these series in 2022, and each of them has had an open-ended The End. I'm not sure if there's anything interesting to do with the Pool versions of John, Nicole and Miranda that would make for a good return, but I know I have ideas for some hot scene and plot developments with the Bully versions of the characters, so it will continue to appear on future One-Shot polls.

Pushing - To date, Pushing Boundaries is still my most successful story over on Literotica. Austin, Alanna and Malena were my first more realistic look at what a Throuple/Polyamorous realistic concept might be since there's no magic or other weirdness going on. I very much want to do another bigger story with them, and I've said in the past that I've been looking for the right hook for the story since I don't want it to just be a rehash of Boundaries, but I think making it game-based should still be a theme for the big addition. I've gone back and forth a bit on what that looks like and how it develops - I've done Dares a lot, especially with the Afterparty series, so something else is needed. I know whose going to be in it, I just need that one last piece to fit into place. Also, before I write it, I'll likely do a big editing pass on the first three stories. Following that, I think another Vignettes will eventually happen.

Technically We're Estranged - Occasionally I get asked about this series and these characters. For now, TWE is still finished. Going back to them would be masturbatory (figuratively... but probably also literally). Unless I'm brought some amazing idea to work from, there are so many other stories to write that I can't justify going back and cracking open a solid 'The End.'

Commissions

Following the final draft of Masseuse and the MILF, I have another interesting commission that a fine Patron has been talking with me about for some time. It will be a larger one that I'm excited to work on. Following that, my commission prices are updating to reflect my (somewhat ridiculous) writing schedule:

Patrons can commission work that fits my usual themes or interested kinks at $30 CAD / 1000 words, or outside of my usual themes/kinks at $50 CAD / 1000 words.

Non-Patrons will commission at $40 CAD and $60 CAD with the same guidelines.

For those who wonder where those prices come from, most freelance writing is based on a Per Word rating and 3 cents a word is considered fairly low. I know that companies aren't exactly coming around looking for freelance erotica, so I want to keep the prices low enough that folks with the disposable income for a luxury service like custom erotica can have it relatively affordable, but I can't give away my time for free!

That's all for now

... I think. I'm sure I've forgotten something that I've intended to include, but I guess that can wait for a February update.

If you have somehow kept your patience with this big State of the Patreon, please feel free to ask any questions or give comments on what's above. This Patreon is only possible through the generosity of you all, and feedback from the community on what I'm thinking is valuable and very important to the healthy progress.

Cheers all, and here's to a great 2023!
~Break.