Welcome back, Stephen.

I sympathize with you about editing a publication on Medium. It is a lot of unpaid (although voluntarily self-inficted) work. And the workload only increases as the publication gains popularity. Fortunately for me, One Minute Wit has a fairly small number of contributions per week. And they are all very short in length. I can’t imagine the time you must spend on The Junction. You are a saint! It would be great if publications got a small percentage of the stories they published, but I don’t see that happening.

I looked into Patreon a while back and I have mixed feelings about them (actually, mostly negative.) I like the concept of directly supporting creators, but Patreon is essentially another middleman. Its website is mainly an advertisement for Patreon. Unless you sign up or support someone, it’s difficult to find any content. You have to use the search function. There is no content to browse on its main pages.

And since most people who aren’t creators have never heard of Patreon, you end up having to continually explain and promote Patreon. It’s up to you to get people to go to their website and join.

Patreon also forces you to do extra work—tier rewards—to get support from your patrons. It seems to me like selling “extras” instead of getting support for your creative work (patronage.)

I also have a suspision that you need to have a massive following for Patreon to be worthwhile. Although many creators have accounts (Medium publications also.) I wonder how many writers or publications are making enough money to make the extra work and promotion worthwhile? My cynical nature leads me to believe that the bulk of the supporters are a publication’s writers. Which is a small pool compared to hundreds of thousands of You Tube fans. And how many publications can most writers afford to support?

If you go the Patreon route, I would find a one tier, small monthly fee the most appealing.

Well, that is my Mr. Negativity response. And I could be totally incorrect. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. Or last.

Best wishes and happy reading.