In my latest episode of the On the Edge with Andrew Gold podcast, I chatted with the brilliant YouTuber and ex-Jehovah's Witness Lloyd Evans. He convinced me of the benefits of getting on Patreon - link to my page, where those who enjoy your creative works can contribute to help to keep your endeavours running. Even Shakespeare had patrons who supported him (there were rumours abound that he was sleeping with those men in return - I even wrote an essay on that back at university!). By the way, here's that episode with Lloyd - it's a good'n.
Anyway, Lloyd wasn't the first to tell me about Patreon. David Firth - the animator who made Salad Fingers - told me on an earlier episode, and my friend Jess Shulz kept pushing me to get on it. Kindly, both Jess and Lloyd have since begun contributing.
The truth is that ad revenue was always fairly low for independent creators, and with COVID, it's now as low as ever. That's why so many newspapers are going bankrupt (and not just morally he he he). I had a quick breeze through Patreon and found that some podcasters are making around $150k a month. I couldn't believe my eyes.
That said, I don't expect to ever reach anything like that. But if I could start making, say, $1k a month at some point, it would enable me improve the content of the podcast I put out each week and to cut down on my other copywriting projects that just about keep me afloat. To be honest, those jobs might soon be taking that decision out of my hands. My copywriting work is mostly for travel companies - and they're running out of cash for SEO writing in Lockdown.
I have started conversations with Acast about starting ads on the podcast. It's something I was reluctant to do, because I like my episodes being ad-free. But I'm left with no choice right now, even though the revenue per week from those ads is likely to be too low to make much impact on my life. I figured - if I start a Patreon page, I want to make it worthwhile for my listeners. Well, the first step was by allowing you to become an assistant producer of the show and have access to the ads-free version (once ads make it to the show). Then, as you'll see, there is a range of benefits, allowing you to become my director and ask questions on the show, or to be a showrunner who has monthly meetings about how the show is going and its future. I'm also going to start editing the full videos of each episode for my YouTube page.
This is really exciting for me, because, aside from the additional funds, it'll make the whole podcast a more interactive and tight-knit community. Let me know if you have any questions: who knows...you might just be my next producer director!