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PropertyWebBuilder is currently sponsored by Coddde, Ruby On Rails consultants based in Spain and Chile: uh they sponsored you for 2 dollars? This might be you

PropertyWebBuilder is currently sponsored by Coddde, Ruby On Rails consultants based in Spain and Chile: uh they sponsored you for 2 dollars? This might be you problem. Also until you have users you aren't going to and shouldn't make money.

bartread 9y ago
> Also until you have users you aren't going to and shouldn't make money. How then do you explain crowdfunding, which is effectively what this is?
- egypturnash 9y ago
  Have you ever looked around Kickstarter? I mean really looked around Kickstarter? There are a lot of campaigns that are going nowhere. Same on Patreon, same on any clone of either of those two sites. You’ve got to have something people want, and find a way to tell the people who want it that you’re making it. You don’t magically have people show up and rain money on you just because you’ve put up a page on a crowdfunding site. (FWIW, I’ve done three comics kickstarters, and have a Patreon that pays most of my rent drawing comics on months when I’m cranking out pages at a good pace.)
  - bartread 9y ago
    I get that, I'm just querying that a line should be drawn quite so directly between "you don't have any customers" and "you can't make any money" because a similar point could be made about even successful crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter. Those people aren't customers because there's no guarantee they're ever going to receive anything. (See my other comment, above I think, about Patreon - you need tens of thousands of subscribers, from what I can tell, to get even a fairly basic level of income from it.)
    - egypturnash 9y ago
      My Patreon numbers, roughly: 51 patrons, $100 per page of comics I draw. On a productive month I can get eight pages drawn, which is currently about 2/3 of my rent. It would be all of my rent if I wasn't living alone in a two-bedroom Seattle apartment. (Yes there are other sources of income.) When I'm regularly drawing comics and posting them for free (I haven't been lately due to the last KS taking forever + some Life events) I see a slow climb in the number of patrons; it's been pretty much steady for the year or so I haven't been getting much in the way of comics done. I think it took maybe a year at most to rise to that level; I wasn't building my fanbase from scratch or learning my craft, so that helped a lot. I estimate that getting back in the groove of posting pages regularly would see my whole rent covered in six months to a year.
  - Applejinx 9y ago
    I agree with egypturnash. I did two failed Patreons and currently have a successful one that barely is enough to live on (in southern Vermont, on Section 8) which was launched off the existence of an existing business about four times its size. I can't speak for Kickstarter: that seems more of a 'from nothing' place and it'd be a gamble. I can say that if you are running a business charging money for what you do, you can do Patreon for the same thing and make a quarter to a half as much, IF you don't find viral success of some sort. One big difference: doing the Patreon, you get to give your life work for 'free' to your community, which might desperately need that sort of support. I give tools to musicians, and I passionately believe that there are many musicians/producers/etc who cannot blow lots of money on proper tools they need. And, the ones I want to hear are not necessarily the ones who have the spending money. So, my Patreon has other than monetary value to me. I take a hit in my income so that I can get the tools out there, across a wide range of host computers that sometimes aren't supported by the commercial sphere, and I get a lot of appreciation for doing it. Even to do that, you need to already have a following, and it had better be a following that's already paying you or hiring you to do something.
    - egypturnash 9y ago
      I fuckin' love that Patreon earns me more from drawing my comics than ads ever did. My stuff's all ad-free now. Which, yeah, it sure is nice to be able to have media that broke queer femmes can see themselves in as long as they have some kind of Internet connection. And other broke people who may not be seeing themselves in my protagonists but enjoy other aspects of my work.
      - Applejinx 9y ago
        Yeah, I was selling software as retail off my own storefront: I never tried to make it ad-supported, I hate that. Patreon seems like it's a cut above trying to be ad-supported or Youtube-supported. That doesn't make it comparable to operating on a true retail basis selling merchandise… but it's definitely better than 'everything being free' and trying to roll your own support system. I get people mad at Patreon wanting to send me money by PayPal. The thing is, if you do that, where are you going to be next month? I already know what total chaos of income and not being able to set expectations is like. It's called 'selling at retail and trying to get a next hit product'.

bartread 9y ago

> Also until you have users you aren't going to and shouldn't make money. How then do you explain crowdfunding, which is effectively what this is?

egypturnash 9y ago
Have you ever looked around Kickstarter? I mean really looked around Kickstarter? There are a lot of campaigns that are going nowhere. Same on Patreon, same on any clone of either of those two sites. You’ve got to have something people want, and find a way to tell the people who want it that you’re making it. You don’t magically have people show up and rain money on you just because you’ve put up a page on a crowdfunding site. (FWIW, I’ve done three comics kickstarters, and have a Patreon that pays most of my rent drawing comics on months when I’m cranking out pages at a good pace.)
- bartread 9y ago
  I get that, I'm just querying that a line should be drawn quite so directly between "you don't have any customers" and "you can't make any money" because a similar point could be made about even successful crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter. Those people aren't customers because there's no guarantee they're ever going to receive anything. (See my other comment, above I think, about Patreon - you need tens of thousands of subscribers, from what I can tell, to get even a fairly basic level of income from it.)
  - egypturnash 9y ago
    My Patreon numbers, roughly: 51 patrons, $100 per page of comics I draw. On a productive month I can get eight pages drawn, which is currently about 2/3 of my rent. It would be all of my rent if I wasn't living alone in a two-bedroom Seattle apartment. (Yes there are other sources of income.) When I'm regularly drawing comics and posting them for free (I haven't been lately due to the last KS taking forever + some Life events) I see a slow climb in the number of patrons; it's been pretty much steady for the year or so I haven't been getting much in the way of comics done. I think it took maybe a year at most to rise to that level; I wasn't building my fanbase from scratch or learning my craft, so that helped a lot. I estimate that getting back in the groove of posting pages regularly would see my whole rent covered in six months to a year.
- Applejinx 9y ago
  I agree with egypturnash. I did two failed Patreons and currently have a successful one that barely is enough to live on (in southern Vermont, on Section 8) which was launched off the existence of an existing business about four times its size. I can't speak for Kickstarter: that seems more of a 'from nothing' place and it'd be a gamble. I can say that if you are running a business charging money for what you do, you can do Patreon for the same thing and make a quarter to a half as much, IF you don't find viral success of some sort. One big difference: doing the Patreon, you get to give your life work for 'free' to your community, which might desperately need that sort of support. I give tools to musicians, and I passionately believe that there are many musicians/producers/etc who cannot blow lots of money on proper tools they need. And, the ones I want to hear are not necessarily the ones who have the spending money. So, my Patreon has other than monetary value to me. I take a hit in my income so that I can get the tools out there, across a wide range of host computers that sometimes aren't supported by the commercial sphere, and I get a lot of appreciation for doing it. Even to do that, you need to already have a following, and it had better be a following that's already paying you or hiring you to do something.
  - egypturnash 9y ago
    I fuckin' love that Patreon earns me more from drawing my comics than ads ever did. My stuff's all ad-free now. Which, yeah, it sure is nice to be able to have media that broke queer femmes can see themselves in as long as they have some kind of Internet connection. And other broke people who may not be seeing themselves in my protagonists but enjoy other aspects of my work.
    - Applejinx 9y ago
      Yeah, I was selling software as retail off my own storefront: I never tried to make it ad-supported, I hate that. Patreon seems like it's a cut above trying to be ad-supported or Youtube-supported. That doesn't make it comparable to operating on a true retail basis selling merchandise… but it's definitely better than 'everything being free' and trying to roll your own support system. I get people mad at Patreon wanting to send me money by PayPal. The thing is, if you do that, where are you going to be next month? I already know what total chaos of income and not being able to set expectations is like. It's called 'selling at retail and trying to get a next hit product'.