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But I am so stressed out I can't feel my fingertips and I can't see a way out of the corner I am boxed into:
A: Work has dramatically slowed down in the last year.
B: For reasons I am going assume for the moment are not due to deliberate choice on the part of the companies I freelance for, none of checks I've expected this month have materialized (if I am not stress-confused, I think at this point the most recent invoice that has been paid is about 2 months old); when companies were actually issuing checks they were irregular and unpredictable. This isn't specific to one company: nobody is paying me. Nobody. And even if all the money I am owed showed up today, I'd just be treading water.
UPDATE IN MID POST: in fact I just got email assuring me at least one check will definitely not be showing up for at least a week thanks to the new system (another company told me privately my checks might be cut in a week and then sent out a public email telling freelancers to expect the delay to be a month). I'd walk away from book reviewing at this point if there was anywhere to walk to.
Actually, the above is not quite true: while Romantic Times pays very, very little they have never promised to pay any more than that and they do pay on time. So kudos to them; they are the one bright spot.
[I spend a lot of my time telling myself that this is not a repeat of what Guardians of Order did to me, even though a lot of the same notes are in this tune]
C: There are bills I have been deferring for as long as I can and expenses I have cut to the bone as far as I can but I'm pretty sure all the plates I have in the air are about to come crashing down.
D: Can't afford to create the Millennium Reviews book and frankly I don't understand a lot of what people are telling me how to create it.
(That said, editing all the reviews and adding new commentary for all 35 essays would take me two weeks to a month)
E: Review site ditto: I know how to create content for it but I can't see how to create it and the advice I am seeing doesn't mean anything to me.
Open to suggestions here.
A: Work has dramatically slowed down in the last year.
B: For reasons I am going assume for the moment are not due to deliberate choice on the part of the companies I freelance for, none of checks I've expected this month have materialized (if I am not stress-confused, I think at this point the most recent invoice that has been paid is about 2 months old); when companies were actually issuing checks they were irregular and unpredictable. This isn't specific to one company: nobody is paying me. Nobody. And even if all the money I am owed showed up today, I'd just be treading water.
UPDATE IN MID POST: in fact I just got email assuring me at least one check will definitely not be showing up for at least a week thanks to the new system (another company told me privately my checks might be cut in a week and then sent out a public email telling freelancers to expect the delay to be a month). I'd walk away from book reviewing at this point if there was anywhere to walk to.
Actually, the above is not quite true: while Romantic Times pays very, very little they have never promised to pay any more than that and they do pay on time. So kudos to them; they are the one bright spot.
[I spend a lot of my time telling myself that this is not a repeat of what Guardians of Order did to me, even though a lot of the same notes are in this tune]
C: There are bills I have been deferring for as long as I can and expenses I have cut to the bone as far as I can but I'm pretty sure all the plates I have in the air are about to come crashing down.
D: Can't afford to create the Millennium Reviews book and frankly I don't understand a lot of what people are telling me how to create it.
(That said, editing all the reviews and adding new commentary for all 35 essays would take me two weeks to a month)
E: Review site ditto: I know how to create content for it but I can't see how to create it and the advice I am seeing doesn't mean anything to me.
Open to suggestions here.
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Date: 2014-07-25 07:03 pm (UTC)Plus the edited Millennial Reviews with new commentary as a plus for subscribers?
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Date: 2014-07-25 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-25 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-25 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-25 09:20 pm (UTC)You can do both a monthly and a per-review Patreon, though. Their FAQ says:
"I am a creator of multiple types of content, what do you recommend I do?
You have two options. You can do a monthly campaign where your patrons will support you for each month of all types of content you release. Or, you can create two separate Patreon accounts and pages."
It looks as if Patreon supports distribution of paid content as well. So you could consider uploading reviews there for distribution. But I'm not certain how this works.
I strongly suggest you immediately set up a Patreon for monthly payments simply for your LiveJournal content, and mention it here. That's the simplest to do and the least commitment, and gives you a chance to start working on a more complicated approach, per review or whatever.
There is no need at all to produce exclusive context for Patreon donors, as far as I know, but you could offer as a reward -- say, if you reach $500 or $100 a month or whatever -- to provide exclusive reviews or something. But I don't think you need to, or should, wait until you've figured that out. Set up something at once.
Edit to include Patreon's guidelines for rewards; note that they are fairly simple and non-elaborate:
We do not want fulfilling Patreon rewards to be a burden on our creators. We want you to have rewards that are scalable, cost effective, and easy to fulfill. NOTE: As a general rule, most pledges on Patreon are somewhere between $1 and $5. We recommend you focus heavily on your $1, $3, and $5 reward levels, making the $5 reward the most interactive of the bunch. Rewards might include:
Access to the Patron Activity feed
Social media connections
Live webcasts
Access to content EARLY
Behind the scenes photos
Producer or special thank you credit at the end of the video/piece
Anything else creative you can think of! Browse our creators in your category and grab whichever ideas you like!
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Date: 2014-07-26 02:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-26 03:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 08:14 pm (UTC)She doesn't promise anything, because it stresses her out. She is still getting $347/month, having promised to do absolutely nothing extra.
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Date: 2014-07-25 07:17 pm (UTC)You've ruled out cat pictures or videos, which of course makes the internet sad, but have you considered cat stories?
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Date: 2014-07-25 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-25 07:38 pm (UTC)But I haven't used Patreon at all, so I'd ask around.
(Have you been in contact with K.B. Spangler? She is also considering a Patreon, so odds are she's researched it far more than I have.)
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Date: 2014-07-25 07:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-25 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-25 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-25 10:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-26 06:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-25 08:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-25 07:54 pm (UTC)thinking out loud
Date: 2014-07-25 08:14 pm (UTC)If you do it by review, and charge $1 per, that's $2/week per subscriber, or $8/month (assuming this covers both your current review series). That's about in line with a monthly Spotify subscription, for instance (which is $10/month). If you get 100 subscribers, that's about $800/month. Price point is always tricky with these things; you want to make it low enough that lots of people are tempted, but high enough that it actually adds up to something.
Does Patreon support optional one-time donations? If so, that's how you could field review requests. Otherwise you could do it directly through Paypal.
If you do it by month, the tiers could be something like :
$3 - you get to read one set of reviews.
$5 - you get to read both.
$10 - extra content or the ability to nominate and vote on books to review, choose one.
$15 - extra content and the ability to nominate and vote on books to review.
I realize the second option depends on several unsolved technical issues. Maybe start with per-review, see how it goes, and then switch to the other?
ETA2: or you could just set a minimum, say $2/month, and promise little or nothing.
Re: thinking out loud
Date: 2014-07-26 01:41 pm (UTC)$5 - you get to read both.
Do I have to learn how to make the site visible to specific people, then.
Re: thinking out loud
Date: 2014-07-26 01:55 pm (UTC)As someone else said, Ursula Vernon asks for $1/month minimum, and that's it. Probably the most reasonable, strategic thing would be to start with $1 or $2 (I don't see why not to start with $2), with no rewards, and then add tiers later if you feel like it. But you've already got a number of people willing to pay individually for reviews, so just having a PayPal button on your site could let you do that, rather than making it a Patreon tier.
I remember at an earlier point, you said that separate streams for each review series would allow you to track how many people prefer which. It seems like there might be another, less technological way to do that, like occasional polls here.
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Date: 2014-07-26 08:09 pm (UTC)