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Thoughts about writing and the future...
4 years ago
General
I wonder how many people actually read these journals, or I suppose more importantly, will read this one. I might just be spitting my thoughts into the empty void for nobody but myself to see, but I think I'm alright with that.
So, I've written six stories on here so far. I'm already in the early process of a seventh, and between my own plans and the requests I've now got waiting, I'm going to be writing at least six more after that. I'm having a blast with it; it's quickly becoming one of my favorite hobbies to be doing in my free time. I've spent more time doing it lately than playing video games, which was previously my main hobby in life. It makes me want to be able to spend more time doing it... But of course, that conflicts with reality, and the fact that I need a job.
Which in turn brings about an obvious question: Could I make this my job?
Hypothetically, yes. Realistically, however... I feel like the answer is no; at least right now.
Obviously, if I were to make this my job, the foremost issue is money. As much as I'd love to just stay home and write furry smut all the time, if I'm not making money off of it, I can't. Especially since I live in the United States, where capitalism is everything. So I would need to make money off of it, and that would have to be a minimum amount of money, or else I would still need a job on top of it.
Now thankfully, I'm in a fairly privileged position in life; I still live with family, and while I still have financial responsibilities and don't just live as a freeloader, I certainly don't need to be making as much money as I would if I were living alone. It's because of that that I only have a part time job instead of a full time job, which is what gives me the free time to spend on this hobby. I won't say what the exact number is that my monthly expenses usually come to, but I'll say for the purposes of this that, oh... About $800 a month would be enough; actually just $700 a month would still be enough, but would be cutting the margins fairly close, leaving me with little spending money and little money to put into savings, which would mean that any sudden problem like a medical emergency or my computer breaking down would be an enormous pain to deal with. So, $800 is the minimum number I would say I would need to go for in order to possibly quit my part time job and just write furry smut on the internet.
How could I possibly make that money? Well, the most obvious and straight forward answer would be commissioned writing, but that faces two problems that are intermingled with each other. Namely, could I get enough commissions done every month, and how much would I charge for them? Even assuming I could double my most optimistic writing output if I didn't have to worry about a job, and put out 2 stories every week, that's still only about 8 stories a month; that means I've got to find 8 people willing to pay at least $100 each for a story, every month. Is anybody even willing to pay that much for an erotic furry story online? I'm certainly not... Well, that's not a fair comparison since I'd just write my own instead; I suppose I should imagine possibly paying $100 for an erotic drawing instead. I could imagine myself possibly doing it, if I knew the artist would do a really good job and I liked their style, but only as a rare occasion thing, maybe once a year at most, and certainly not once a month. Also however, if I'm charging $100 or more for story commissions, how do I make sure the pricing is fair for each commissioner? Guarantee a minimum number of words in each story? Would I have to start compromising on writing certain things I don't want to write, like rape or bestiality? Lastly, even assuming it all worked out, that would leave me no time to work on stories of my own, which is the main thing I want to do here.
So overall, no, I don't think commissioned stories are the answer now or will be the answer at any point in the future.
So what does that leave? Well, I could imagine setting up a Patreon; it's a model I certainly like when it comes to artists. For instance with my favorite artist, Melon Heart, I alone as a single patron pay $5 a month and get access to three/five sets of exclusive artwork every month. I pay less than I would if I was commissioning him, but since I'm just one of many patrons, Melon is probably making more from us than he would if he only did commissions. (I know he does commissions too, but he mainly does Patreon.) Now, I don't know exactly how much Melon makes from it; I know he has a $1 tier and a $5 tier, and has 797 patrons in total, and though it doesn't tell me how many of those are in which tier, I can confirm that at least 69 (nice) of them are in the $5 tier. Even assuming that every other patron outside of those 69 is only paying $1 a month, that still works out to at least $1,073 a month. Well, that would be enough money for me!
... But I'm not Melon Heart. I shouldn't even pretend that my erotica can possibly pull as much interest as his drawings do; yeah, my latest work pulled in over 200 views in less than 48 hours, which I'm happy about, but his latest work pulled in 1,972 views in less than five days, and has 800 favorites versus my measly 4. Besides, what would I offer to patrons? I don't like the idea of locking my stories behind a paywall, and I'm not sure how well that would work anyway when my work can simply be ctrl+c and crtl+v into a pastebin online for anyone and everyone to see; besides, if I'm not putting out some content free for anyone to see, I wouldn't be drawing in potential new patrons. As lofty as it would be to expect strangers online to pay at least $800 a month in total just towards a, "help me not have a real job," fund, that's most certainly a completely unrealistic expectation. So I would still have to offer SOMETHING to patrons. It couldn't be that each patron gets a story written by me for them every month; even if I set a minimum payment of $10 every month, it would still take at least 80 patrons for me to make enough. There's no way I can write more than 2 stories every day.
As I said towards the start of this though, I do think it is, hypothetically at least, possible. As I have thought of a few things I could possibly offer to patrons in exchange for their money. First, I could make a discord server for them to have exclusive access to; however I don't think anybody would pay for just that alone, so really it would be a little, "cherry on top," offering of the other things. Second, I could let the patrons see the story outlines I've written for each story; I've been considering uploading those into my scraps folder anyway, for anyone curious to see what part of the creative process for me behind the scenes is like, but in this idea, patrons would be able to see the outline as soon as I'm done with it, rather than only after the story is complete. Third, I could let the patrons see the work in progress version of my stories, every time I'm done with a writing session rather than wait for the whole thing to be complete. Fourth, and the one I could see being the highest draw for potential patrons so in the highest tier of either $5 or $10 a month: A chance at a monthly story raffle/poll. The way I'm imagining the potential idea, is that every month I would put up a post on Patreon asking for my patrons to comment with a story they'd like to see me write. Then I'd take a certain number of the comments that I like and put them together into a poll for the patrons to vote on, (probably all the patrons, not just the patrons of the highest tier,) and write the story that gets the most votes. Then maybe to keep things a bit more fair and against bias, I'd also write a second story from the same poll selection, chosen via RNG.
... Of course, then it all comes back to a really big question towards the start of this journal entry. Is this at all realistic? Would you pay $5 or $10 a month for a CHANCE that I would MAYBE write the story idea you want me to write? I don't know. Would you even pay just $1 a month if the only thing you got was access to a discord server and early viewing of a cliff notes version of my stories? I kinda doubt it. Am I thinking about all this stuff way too early considering I only have 10 followers, and my most viewed story has only 318 views, of which I think I'm technically one of? Probably yes.
Thankfully though, this is all just ideas that have been floating around in my head, and they don't need to be any more than that; for now this is still just a hobby of mine. Maybe someday I'll still set up a patreon anyway, to see if I can make a little extra from this on the side, but not yet. If you actually read through this whole mess of rambling thoughts from my head, thank you.
So, I've written six stories on here so far. I'm already in the early process of a seventh, and between my own plans and the requests I've now got waiting, I'm going to be writing at least six more after that. I'm having a blast with it; it's quickly becoming one of my favorite hobbies to be doing in my free time. I've spent more time doing it lately than playing video games, which was previously my main hobby in life. It makes me want to be able to spend more time doing it... But of course, that conflicts with reality, and the fact that I need a job.
Which in turn brings about an obvious question: Could I make this my job?
Hypothetically, yes. Realistically, however... I feel like the answer is no; at least right now.
Obviously, if I were to make this my job, the foremost issue is money. As much as I'd love to just stay home and write furry smut all the time, if I'm not making money off of it, I can't. Especially since I live in the United States, where capitalism is everything. So I would need to make money off of it, and that would have to be a minimum amount of money, or else I would still need a job on top of it.
Now thankfully, I'm in a fairly privileged position in life; I still live with family, and while I still have financial responsibilities and don't just live as a freeloader, I certainly don't need to be making as much money as I would if I were living alone. It's because of that that I only have a part time job instead of a full time job, which is what gives me the free time to spend on this hobby. I won't say what the exact number is that my monthly expenses usually come to, but I'll say for the purposes of this that, oh... About $800 a month would be enough; actually just $700 a month would still be enough, but would be cutting the margins fairly close, leaving me with little spending money and little money to put into savings, which would mean that any sudden problem like a medical emergency or my computer breaking down would be an enormous pain to deal with. So, $800 is the minimum number I would say I would need to go for in order to possibly quit my part time job and just write furry smut on the internet.
How could I possibly make that money? Well, the most obvious and straight forward answer would be commissioned writing, but that faces two problems that are intermingled with each other. Namely, could I get enough commissions done every month, and how much would I charge for them? Even assuming I could double my most optimistic writing output if I didn't have to worry about a job, and put out 2 stories every week, that's still only about 8 stories a month; that means I've got to find 8 people willing to pay at least $100 each for a story, every month. Is anybody even willing to pay that much for an erotic furry story online? I'm certainly not... Well, that's not a fair comparison since I'd just write my own instead; I suppose I should imagine possibly paying $100 for an erotic drawing instead. I could imagine myself possibly doing it, if I knew the artist would do a really good job and I liked their style, but only as a rare occasion thing, maybe once a year at most, and certainly not once a month. Also however, if I'm charging $100 or more for story commissions, how do I make sure the pricing is fair for each commissioner? Guarantee a minimum number of words in each story? Would I have to start compromising on writing certain things I don't want to write, like rape or bestiality? Lastly, even assuming it all worked out, that would leave me no time to work on stories of my own, which is the main thing I want to do here.
So overall, no, I don't think commissioned stories are the answer now or will be the answer at any point in the future.
So what does that leave? Well, I could imagine setting up a Patreon; it's a model I certainly like when it comes to artists. For instance with my favorite artist, Melon Heart, I alone as a single patron pay $5 a month and get access to three/five sets of exclusive artwork every month. I pay less than I would if I was commissioning him, but since I'm just one of many patrons, Melon is probably making more from us than he would if he only did commissions. (I know he does commissions too, but he mainly does Patreon.) Now, I don't know exactly how much Melon makes from it; I know he has a $1 tier and a $5 tier, and has 797 patrons in total, and though it doesn't tell me how many of those are in which tier, I can confirm that at least 69 (nice) of them are in the $5 tier. Even assuming that every other patron outside of those 69 is only paying $1 a month, that still works out to at least $1,073 a month. Well, that would be enough money for me!
... But I'm not Melon Heart. I shouldn't even pretend that my erotica can possibly pull as much interest as his drawings do; yeah, my latest work pulled in over 200 views in less than 48 hours, which I'm happy about, but his latest work pulled in 1,972 views in less than five days, and has 800 favorites versus my measly 4. Besides, what would I offer to patrons? I don't like the idea of locking my stories behind a paywall, and I'm not sure how well that would work anyway when my work can simply be ctrl+c and crtl+v into a pastebin online for anyone and everyone to see; besides, if I'm not putting out some content free for anyone to see, I wouldn't be drawing in potential new patrons. As lofty as it would be to expect strangers online to pay at least $800 a month in total just towards a, "help me not have a real job," fund, that's most certainly a completely unrealistic expectation. So I would still have to offer SOMETHING to patrons. It couldn't be that each patron gets a story written by me for them every month; even if I set a minimum payment of $10 every month, it would still take at least 80 patrons for me to make enough. There's no way I can write more than 2 stories every day.
As I said towards the start of this though, I do think it is, hypothetically at least, possible. As I have thought of a few things I could possibly offer to patrons in exchange for their money. First, I could make a discord server for them to have exclusive access to; however I don't think anybody would pay for just that alone, so really it would be a little, "cherry on top," offering of the other things. Second, I could let the patrons see the story outlines I've written for each story; I've been considering uploading those into my scraps folder anyway, for anyone curious to see what part of the creative process for me behind the scenes is like, but in this idea, patrons would be able to see the outline as soon as I'm done with it, rather than only after the story is complete. Third, I could let the patrons see the work in progress version of my stories, every time I'm done with a writing session rather than wait for the whole thing to be complete. Fourth, and the one I could see being the highest draw for potential patrons so in the highest tier of either $5 or $10 a month: A chance at a monthly story raffle/poll. The way I'm imagining the potential idea, is that every month I would put up a post on Patreon asking for my patrons to comment with a story they'd like to see me write. Then I'd take a certain number of the comments that I like and put them together into a poll for the patrons to vote on, (probably all the patrons, not just the patrons of the highest tier,) and write the story that gets the most votes. Then maybe to keep things a bit more fair and against bias, I'd also write a second story from the same poll selection, chosen via RNG.
... Of course, then it all comes back to a really big question towards the start of this journal entry. Is this at all realistic? Would you pay $5 or $10 a month for a CHANCE that I would MAYBE write the story idea you want me to write? I don't know. Would you even pay just $1 a month if the only thing you got was access to a discord server and early viewing of a cliff notes version of my stories? I kinda doubt it. Am I thinking about all this stuff way too early considering I only have 10 followers, and my most viewed story has only 318 views, of which I think I'm technically one of? Probably yes.
Thankfully though, this is all just ideas that have been floating around in my head, and they don't need to be any more than that; for now this is still just a hobby of mine. Maybe someday I'll still set up a patreon anyway, to see if I can make a little extra from this on the side, but not yet. If you actually read through this whole mess of rambling thoughts from my head, thank you.
in my opinion as you've said that last option would probably work out best at least i pweronally wouldn't mind spending 5-10$ on that if it's a person who's work i love but that would of course only work once you have more of a folowing so untill you have been here for a while and posted some more to get a sort of realistic view on how many people would be interested in your work in the years to come
in the mean time tho you could considder setting up a ko-fi