Six Month Update - Thanks To You All

Dearest Patrons,

One of the biggest criticisms that I’ve seen down the years when it comes to Patreon creators is that they have a tendency to take the money and run with very little in the way of communication. It’s been an extremely busy and turbulent time but I figured since as we’re at the six month landmark since I became an independent it’d be a good time to tell you what I’ve been able to achieve thanks to your support.

As your support has provided me with a financial stable base I’ve been able to become a one man newsroom over at my Substack. I have been nominated for Esports Journalist of The Year again and I believe this makes me the first person ever not affiliated with a publication to receive a nod. This is likely a result of the in-depth investigative reporting I’ve been able to do such as the Evil Geniuses exposes or The Hunden Files. Both of those projects took dozens of man hours to complete and represent the type of work that has little value in the eyes of digital publishers these days. The importance of a piece is a secondary, if not tertiary concern when the business model in digital media relies on fast turnover about mainstream issues. It’s fair to say that if I was employed elsewhere these pieces might have never seen the light of day.

Good work leads to growth and the numbers six months in to the Substack continue their upward trend. We recently surpassed one thousand paying subscribers and have close to 6,500 overall, which has qualified me as a Substack “best seller” and certainly puts us way out in front for esports content on Substack. The really promising part though is that the gap between content views for both esports and non-esports content is shrinking with each release which means I can feel comfortable creating content about sports and politics without too much anxiety about having to go back to my beat.

In trying to create value specifically for those who subscribe, which includes you here on this platform, I’ve created two exclusive audio podcasts, one for esports and one for politics, which are receiving high engagement. While many have asked for them to be released on other platforms I feel it’d be a disservice for those that pay for the content so unless something drastically changes that model will continue. As always Patrons are welcome to suggest content ideas either here or via the Discord.

The stable financial base has also allowed me to create other content more frequently without worrying I should be streaming on Twitch. For example, many of you will have seen that I am currently working on a movie podcast called “Four Play” over at the Last Free Nation content hub. This doesn’t generate any revenue for me at the moment but is just something I’ve wanted to do for a while with people I like talking to. While it’s not directly funded by you guys it’s basically enabled by not having to justify time expended in dollar signs. Similarly at the end of the year I will be giving some serious consideration to self-publishing my first book. I have had a number of discussions with publishers down the years but in general the book they want to sell and the book I want to write are very different.

In regards to the bespoke content for the $100 patrons I am behind on this front although a fresh batch is currently with the editors and I’m recording some more next week I anticipate will bring me up to date. We have also started the movie nights and had the first one featuring Bill Wheatley’s 2011 movie Kill List. We have five more to do before we are all caught up so I will be announcing them in advance via the Discord announcements channel. I did think about how best to add more value for you guys that can’t attend these so I will endeavour to record commentaries for each of the movies we view in my downtime, that way you can have something similar to the experience if you miss the nights themselves. These will be on a Subscribers only tab on the Substack.

Finally, I know some of you have had some problems with the Substack occasionally toggling off if you’re a Patreon subscriber. Sadly there’s no interactive functionality between the two platforms and the “automation” I put in place occasionally bugs out at this volume. I am adding people manually now so if you are affected by this in future message me or one of my moderation team and we will get it resolved in around 24 hours.

Thanks again for the continued support. Without you guys I’d probably be giving 8 out of 10 reviews over at IGN or some similar fate. I hope I continue to earn your trust as we move forward.

Richard