If you’ve spent any time on my YouTube Channel or any of my social media, you probably know that for many years now, I’ve had a Patreon page. Patreon is a subscription website where you can support creators, and mine has been active for quite a few years now. However, I am in the process of closing it down.
One of the things I’ve been realizing over the last couple of weeks is that any time there’s a change, it’s really hard. In fact, I’m realizing that I have a tremendous amount of resistance to changing things. I don’t like that about myself, but I’m acknowledging how hard it is in my own life to make some of these changes.
There are really two sides to being an author. There’s the creative side, which is writing books and telling stories. Then there is the business side, which is running your life as if it’s a small business. If you want to be a financially successful author, you have to run your life like it’s a business.
Every business, including being an author, is divided into what you might call bands. You can grow to a certain point, but then the actions that got you to that point stop working to propel you any further.
For example, if you are a new author, the actions that get you to earning, let’s say, $50,000 a year will not take you to earning $100,000 a year. You need different actions. For that first $50,000, you can just write books and publish them. If you write a good enough book, it will eventually be noticed by enough people, and you will probably be able to make about $50,000 a year. But to move from $50,000 to $100,000 requires different actions, like social media and building a community. Once you do that, you can start leveling up from, let’s say, $50,000 a year to six figures, $100,000 a year plus.
However, when you hit $100,000 a year, the things that got you there will not necessarily take you to the next level. I know a lot of people who get stuck in this loop of just doing the same things over and over again, and they never are able to break out past that.
In my business, one of the areas that I started developing very early in my career and then just never really put any time and attention into was my Patreon page. Even though it’s served me really well over the years, it just hasn’t ever grown beyond a certain point. So the things I was doing initially that got me from zero patrons up to 100 patrons stopped working to get me beyond that.
I had to change up my strategy. Over time and through changing strategies multiple times, I ended up getting about 500 patrons. The number would fluctuate anywhere from 480 up to 550, but then it just halted. The growth plateaued at 550 and I just stayed there. But the amount of work that I was doing continued to be the same.
I was putting out five chapters from two different stories every week. That is Monday through Friday, 10 chapters a week. Honestly, I would love to be able to sustain that pace, but I can’t. Even when I can sustain that pace, the level of stress that it brings is really high.
So, what does all of this have to do with anything? Well, just like you have to shift actions if you want to break through the ceiling of each band, I’ve realized that I have to shift actions if I want to take my subscription model any bigger. And I think I do.
So, I’ve decided to make some changes. I’m going to be shutting my Patreon down. Instead, I’m going to be moving over to Ream Stories. ReamStories.com is a writer-centric subscription website, similar to Patreon, but it has a lot of functionality that just makes it easier for me as a writer to do what I need to do.
I can upload entire manuscripts at a time that will automatically then be parsed out. I can simply set a release schedule and it will auto-release everything. I don’t have to sit there and manually go through each and every single post, uploading my content for that chapter and then determining who it’s supposed to go to. I can just automate all of that.
Not only does it save my time, but the mental burden of potentially having missed something on Patreon was just too high. So, I’ve been able to get rid of all of that trouble with Ream Stories.
Ream Stories also has a bunch of other really cool features for authors. So, if you’re an author and you’re interested in subscriptions, I would definitely recommend checking it out. Now, it is a new company, and that means that it’s still growing. There are still some challenges that need to be overcome. But the team over at Ream Stories is incredibly responsive to identifying those challenges, and they’re actually listening. Not only are they actually listening, but they’re actually fixing things.
This is one of the things that Patreon has just failed to do since day one. There have been a lot of different features that people have requested, and they just have never materialized. So, Ream Stories is taking a bit more of a hands-on approach, helped by the fact that it is focused exclusively on authors.
That’s the summary of why I’m moving over, because the features that they’re offering are just that much better. Now, what’s that going to mean as far as my 500 subscribers? Well, Ream Stories has a process by which they can move most of those people over. And while I’m expecting many of them to follow me to Ream Stories, chances are really good that I’m just going to lose a ton of money.
But that’s okay. One of the other pieces of this whole ‘you have to change your actions in order to level up’ is that you have to invest if you want to level up. So, while I’m going to be leaving some money on the table by not continuing with Patreon, I am convinced that making this move is going to allow me to go further, faster.
I think in the long term, I’m not only going to be able to break through that 550 subscriber mark, I think I’m going to get well beyond it. So, that’s really what I’m doing. I’m investing both in myself, in decreasing the amount of work that I have to do, and decreasing the amount of mental stress that I have. I’m also investing in what I think is going to be a really good piece of technology that will be widely adopted moving forward.
If you’ve been on Patreon, I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for many years of support. It’s no joke that Patreon really got my career off the ground. And if you’re going to be joining us on Ream Stories, I’m very excited about that. I think some really cool stuff is going to be coming there.
I’m going to be releasing more content on Ream Stories than I was able to on Patreon, again, because the overall burden is less, which is going to allow me to do more with my subscription content. If you’re interested in checking it out, you can go ahead and sign up at reamstories.com/SethRing.
And there’s actually a coupon code, ‘SETH’, all uppercase. It’ll get you a free month if you sign up and you want to check out my content.
YouTube Video Link: https://youtu.be/wh-w3nWzy_0
Thanks for reading and watching.
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