Why Patreon is a Lifesaver For Authors (Like Me)

People who look at my resume may wonder why it is I urge people to support me on Patreon so often. After all, I run two blogs, I have an entire archive of work at Vocal, I have a respectable body of fiction on the market, and I'm constantly producing content for game companies. Why do I need you to donate $1 a month to me?

It's pretty simple, actually. None of that other stuff comes anywhere close to paying my bills.

Pennies in the jar add up, but you don't cover your rent that way.

If you'd like to understand why, I'll start at the top, and work my way down.

Ad Revenue (And Why It's A Drop in The Bucket)

First, my two blogs. Both The Literary Mercenary and Improved Initiative have ads on them. You'll see them, if you don't have an ad-block program on. While this blog only nets between a dozen and a few dozen hits a day, my gaming blog tends to fluctuate between 300 and a few thousand hits. Depending on what I've said lately, and whether the Internet has taken offense to it, or not. And that sounds impressive, but when all is said and done, an average day nets me about $0.08. From both my blogs. On days where the social media community has fixated on my latest post, and the flame wars are burning hot, that might get as high as $0.50. One time, I pulled in a whole $1.00!

What I'm saying is that ads earn me next to no revenue. Worse, I need to get that revenue up to at least $50 before it shows up in my bank. So, unless I manage to divert a four-lane highway of traffic onto my blogs (which happens from time to time, but pretty damn rarely), it takes me between a year to a year and a half to get an ad payment.

Isn't there a better investment out there?

But what about Infobarrel? After all, I have a respectable archive, and it's growing every month. Surely with thousands of hits, there's a viable check coming from them?

Yes and no. Infobarrel does pay me more than I make with my blogs' ads, but it's a matter of degree. You see, on an average month, the traffic I net there earns me between $10 and $17. Some months it's been as high as $20, due to total flukes in viewership. Again, though, it has a $50 payout, so I'm getting an average of 4 checks a year from them. While it's true that more content will generate more traffic, the total amount of ad revenue I make between this site, and my blogs, is enough to buy about half a tank of gas.

Would that change if I had more traffic? Absolutely! But if getting more traffic, and more followers, was something I could pull out of a hat I would have gone through my closet and wrecked my haberdashery some time ago.

Royalties

There's just something nice about the word royalties. A sort of ring that you don't get from any other source of income. Despite the size of my Amazon author page, however, it's more like one of those royal families where the name is impressive, but the fortunes are all but nonexistent. Part of that is because most of the books that pay me royalties are anthologies, so an already small percentage of the earnings gets diced into an even smaller amount before it gets handed my way. The other part of it, though, is that I'm really not all that famous.

Most conventions I attend, I'm affectionately referred to as, "who?"

That is not to say that I don't sell books. However, most of my sales are made in-person, where I can talk to readers, and intrigue them with my pitch. While I pick up the occasional random sale online, and get a positive review from the ether every now and again, my personal royalties are so small that if I wanted to pay a bill with them, I'd have to save all year to do so.

Of course, if you'd like to read a free sample of New Avalon: Love and Loss in The City of Steam, you might find it's just the thing for the steampunk noir lover in your life. But if traditional fantasy is more your thing, check out my novel Crier's Knife instead!

What About Freelance Work?

This is the bulk of where I make my income. I write a great deal of content for RPGs, and you'll find my name attached to projects like Feats Reforged IV, The Demonologist, and others. In addition to working for half a dozen RPG publishers at a time, I also ghostwrite and freelance blogs for a lot of clients. On average I write at least 3 freelance blog entries every day, and I tend to put out RPG content at least once every two months. Sometimes faster, unless I find myself up to my elbows in a project with a particularly large word count.

Those of you skilled in pattern recognition likely sense a "but" coming.

The problem with freelance work is that you get paid on acceptance, or in many cases upon publication. So, while I can easily complete a $250 assignment in a weekend (with the proper supply of caffeine and someone to occasionally wipe sweat from my brow), I might not see that check for six months. So, while I do make the bulk of my income from jobs like this, it requires me to have so much content going out that there is always a check from something coming to me. Even if that check is for something I wrote so long ago I completely forgot about the project.

Sometimes that works. Every now and again it works beautifully, and I get a string of projects all clearing at once. There's a lot more famine than there is feast, sad to say.

And That is Why Patreon is So Important

One of the common themes of all the sources of income I've mentioned is that they fluctuate based on my audience. So, while it's possible I could write a blog entry that goes viral, post an article that gets a huge amount of traffic, or become an overnight bestseller, that's the same as saying it's possible to pick the right slot on a roulette wheel. It can be done, and if it makes me a small fortune, so much the better. It hasn't happened yet, though I keep spinning.

Patreon is different, in that it is more reliable. My Patreon payment comes in on the same time every month, and I can easily calculate how much I earn based on the current support level of my patrons. While it can and does fluctuate (new patrons come, and sometimes old ones decide they can no longer afford me), I always get a warning when changes are made.

And then I know when I need to gear up to rob another bank.

This Isn't All About Me, Either

I've been talking a lot about myself in this entry, but that isn't because my situation is special. If anything, it's because my situation is fairly typical. Most creative professionals have to take a similar, patchwork approach if they want to make ends meet. So, if you see someone who makes something you like, and they have a Patreon page, it's because they need your support. Trust me, if we didn't need money, we wouldn't have a tip jar out on the counter.

For all those who liked today's post, let me know in the comments below. Like, share, and if you've got the spare scratch, why not drop by The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page? $1 a month makes a huge different, and it gets you a free book! Lastly, if you haven't followed me on Facebook, Tumblr, or Twitter yet, why not start now?

Wil Wheaton is Right: Authors Every Year Die of "Exposure"

Authors, and really creative types in general, are used to be treated like some bizarre kind of second-class citizen when it comes to our work. On the one hand, people love and value what we do, assuming the existence of movie theaters, book stores, art galleries, comic books, and all the other things produced by creative people and devoured by the populace for entertainment are a guide to go by. On the other hand, no one seems to want to pay for it.

This situation flared up again, when the Huffington Post contacted geek demigod Wil Wheaton and asked to republish a piece that he wrote. For exposure. You know, in case you didn't know who he was, or something.

Huffington Post: An Artist's Interpretation

What Happened?

So, here's the way things went down according to Mr. Wheaton's blog post on the subject. An editor from the Huffington Post contacted him, and asked if he would be willing to let them re-publish his article "Seven Things I Did To Reboot My Life". It's a solid piece, it generates lots of traffic, and it makes sense that the Huff Po folks wanted to get in on that. Wil said sure, that sounds great, what sort of payment are we talking about? Huff Po's answer included terms like "unique platform" and "wide reach".

Boiled down, the answer amounted to, "we're not going to pay you for it, but we're going to put it in a place where a lot of people are going to see it, and we'll make a lot of ad revenue from it."

The Literary Mercenary's Post-Engagement Breakdown

I made my feelings known on this issue pretty clearly over two years ago in my entry Professional Rule #1: Never Work For Free. However, because of the nature of this particular incident, I feel that more than a blanket statement about how creators need to pay artists the value of their work is necessary.

Value will vary, based on work.

All right, let's rewind back to the beginning of this sorry situation. We have an article that's been written by Wil Wheaton, who is a celebrity with a known fan base. That's important to mention because when you have someone that's a Name, with a capital-N, that person brings a guaranteed readership to the publication. It's why reality TV personalities and rock stars get book deals with no questions; publishers know they are going to move copies based on that person's name. So, we have the winning combination of a well-received article, and a famous author.

That's a solid one-two punch from Huff Po's perspective. If they can get the go-ahead to reprint this, they're going to see a jump in traffic. More traffic means more advertising, and more advertising means more money for them. In case you were wondering, the Huffington Post is valued at several million dollars. Also, in case you were wondering, they pay exactly $0 of that to their contributors.

Put another way, that's like Random House asking to republish a novel from Stephen King or George R. R. Martin, and then paying the author nothing for either the rights to the book, or royalties from its sales. In short, the Huffington Post is sitting on a mountain of advertising money that comes from the ads on their site, but when it comes time to compensate the people making that money by creating the site's content, the company line is, "you should just be happy we're putting your work in a place where so many people will see it!"

That takes balls.

Not just because you're telling your authors, who are making you money through their sweat, effort, wit, and audience clicks that you can't afford to pay them, even though you're a multi-million-dollar website. Publishers can set up whatever pay structure they want, and if you approach them as an author you're pretty much agreeing to play by their rules. No, this took balls because Huff Po knocked on Wheaton's door, said, "that's an awfully nice blog entry you've got there. Would you be willing to give it to us so we can make money off of it without sharing any with you?"

What Needs to Change

In a nutshell, authors need to get a slice of the pie.

My go-to example here is a platform like Infobarrel (if you're curious about what I write there, here's my archive). While it isn't as big as the Huffington Post, and certainly doesn't have the reach, what it does do is cut its writers in on the site's profits.

Here's how it works. Authors create content, and the content is then posted on the site. Infobarrel tracks the views, ad clicks, and all the other activity that goes on during the month. At the end of the month it splits the money each article made, keeping a portion for itself, and giving the rest to the author who is responsible for the traffic. So, if you join the site, write an article, and your post goes viral, generating millions of hits over the next month, then you are going to have your rent, food, and possibly a small vacation, taken care of. Not only that, but the site is also going to see a big influx of cash. In a situation like this, everyone wins!

There is, of course, no guarantee that using a site like Infobarrel, or Helium, or whichever other sites are still online, is going to mean money in your pockets. After all, there's no guaranteed way to predict whether your latest makeup tutorial, movie review, or explanation of the behind-the-scenes causes of World War I, is going to be a huge success. However, the more content you produce, and the bigger your audience grows, the more likely you are to bring in regular traffic that makes you, and the site, money.

Paying authors will probably cut down on the number of Ocean's 11-style heist plans, if nothing else.

There are, of course, a thousand different discussions branching off this main one. For example, should authors be paid up-front for their work, especially since there's no guarantee it will be a traffic magnet? Should authors with a bigger fan base or following be paid more, regardless of their skill? What, precisely, are we using as the basis for when authors are being taken advantage of?

Actually, I have a simple answer for that last one. If you want to take an author's hard work, and then use it to generate a profit, but you are not willing to pay that author in any way, shape, or form besides allowing them to sign their name to the piece, then you are exploiting that author. Pay them by the word, share your ad revenue, and by all means try to get a good deal on the work, but do not simply swipe it, post it online, and then roll around in the money like some kind of political cartoon.

As always, thanks for stopping in. If you'd like to help support me and my blog, then stop by The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page, and drop a dime in my jar. If you want to make sure you don't miss any of my future updates, the please follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter!

Make Money Writing (By Joining InfoBarrel.com)

When I was in middle school and adults asked me what I wanted to do for a living I told them I wanted to write books. They laughed and told me with an imagination like mine I should have no problem, but that I should have a normal job as well. All writers, or so they assured me, had to be teachers or garbage men or something until they became famous enough to live purely off their books.

This ladies and gentlemen is what we refer to as Grade-A Bullshit.

If there's one thing I know, it's bullshit.

If you want to follow in the footsteps of such luminary authors as Stephen King by becoming an English teacher and writing in the copious amounts of free time you'll have (if you aren't laughing you've clearly never seen how time-consuming teaching actually is) then by all means do so. If you think you've got the drive and sheer balls to hold down a day job and then spend hours a night banging away on a keyboard then I salute you.

This post isn't for you.

This post is for people who want to make money writing interesting articles. It's for people who want to take a chance that the fickle finger of the Internet gods will fall on them and fill their bank accounts to bursting (or failing that at least give them enough money to pay bills with a little cash left over). It's for people whose eyes light up when they hear the word royalties and who see no reason to start earning them years from now instead of right now!

Let Me Tell You About InfoBarrel

Some of you have likely looked into websites that will pay you to write before coming across my blog. HubPages is perhaps the most popular website out there, but its competitors like Triond, Xomba, and even Helium.com are all ready and willing to take your content and publish it for you. The problem with these sites is that if you don't have a Google Adsense account then there's no way you can get paid.

That's what makes InfoBarrel different from other sites.

That, and the fact that they pay you in cash instead of promises.

At a glance InfoBarrel is just like any popular site out there driven by user-created content. You set up an account, and start writing articles. InfoBarrel puts ads on your articles, and based on how well they perform you get paid. Some of the ads need to be clicked by readers, and some of the ads just need to be viewed a certain number of times, but whenever you meet the threshold you have money in the bank.

The site has two ad tiers; Tier 1 which is Google Adsense ads, and Tier 2 which is miscellaneous ads.

I Thought You Said I Didn't Need Google Adsense?

Keep your stockings straight, I'm getting to it.

In case you're not a regular reader I'll give you some background. Up until late 2014 I had a Google AdSense account of my own, and it was tied right to this blog. Then I was kicked out of Google's super-secret clubhouse, and told that I can never have an AdSense account ever again. You can get the full story on that right here. I also had over 400 articles on Yahoo! Voices when that site shuttered its doors in August 2014 (which cut another few hundred bucks out of my monthly earnings), and I needed a place to put them.

I had an InfoBarrel account from several years ago, so I fired it back up and started posting.

For the first two months I received Tier 2 earnings only, which amounted to a little over $5 or so. I went to my user account, agreed to the latest terms and conditions, and then clicked the Advertising Profile tab and enabled First Tier Ad Management.

And then money?

The way Google AdSense works is that Google tracks everything with your account number on it, tabulates your cut of the advertising money, and then kicks it to you on a monthly basis. If you don't have a Google AdSense account then you can't use any website that works with Google to pay its writers. How First Tier Ad Management works is that you are joining a collective AdSense account for all the authors on InfoBarrel that have also clicked that little box. Infobarrel manages the AdSense for all the views on all your pages, and at the end of the month you get your portion deposited into your account.

In this way you can make AdSense money without needing to have your own personal AdSense account.

What Can I Write About?

Anything you damn well please, within reason. When creating your content you need to write about something interesting, which is going to be just as relevant in five years as it is tomorrow, and which has pretty pictures in it (seriously check out the image I used for The Succubus. It's no wonder it pulled over a thousand hits). Whether you're a fan of history or celebrity trivia, cars or life hacks, you can put up articles about anything as long as it doesn't advocate violence, show people how to do something illegal, and wouldn't be considered pornography.

If you're looking for examples check out my InfoBarrel author page and read some of my posts.

How Much Can I Make?

Depends, how many page views can you get?

InfoBarrel is just like any of the aforementioned sites in that you are there to get your ads seen. That means you need to have thousands of hits per month (or per day if you can swing that bat) in order to hit the $60 minimum payout (don't complain, Google AdSense's minimum payout is $100).

It also depends on how creative you get.

There are a lot of ways to start stacking greenbacks in your account. One way is to create a lot of content so that you'll get a huge amount of page views just be sheer weight of numbers (this is kind of how Dean Koontz got rich). Another method is to create very targeted content that will have a lot of appeal to a certain demographic; flower arranging, green energy home solutions, tabletop roleplaying guides, all of these are meant to pull in people who share a narrow interest. Some people just hope they become a viral sensation, bringing in a few hundred thousand hits with nothing more than luck and the power of zeitgeist.

Will you make enough to quit your job? Not for a long while, barring some stunning luck. Will you be able to create an income stream that will help support you and which can win you a bigger audience?

Yeah, you should be able to manage that.

If you'd like to join Infobarrel today just click my referral link!

If you'd like to support the Literary Mercenary then stop by my Patreon page and become a patron today! Seriously, as little as .50 per entry or $1 a month can make a big difference when everyone works together. If you want to make sure you don't miss any of my updates then make sure to follow me on Facebook and Tumblr!