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johannestevans · 1 year

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The Precarity of Subscription-Based Income

We’re basically busking online. No wonder we have anxiety about it.

This piece is also on Medium.

So let’s start out by saying that in the scheme of things, I am doing okay. I am not starving, I am not at risk of losing my home, and most months I can afford all the medications and medical care I am prescribed without difficulty.

This is a piece intended for online artists and other creators to work through the emotions of this kind of precarity and insecurity — it’s not intended to make any of my fans or my regular readers feel guilty for not giving me more money, or to guilt people into giving me money when they do not have it to give.

In fact, that mutual — if not near universal! — feeling of financial anxiety is precisely what this piece is about.

I have one novel out, for which I do earn some royalties, but the vast majority of my earnings come from Medium and Patreon. All of my streams of income together — book royalties, Medium, Patreon, and scattered bits and pieces here and there — I earn about $1400-$1500 USD a month most months, sometimes less.

Previously I earned less on Patreon but I was earning more royalties on books then, but as time goes on you tend to reach a plateau on book sales as you reach the organic audience for that book — the only way I’ll get a bigger boost to sales now is if I get very lucky with a review on a big publication or, (this will likely come sooner), I finish up another novel.

Some months I earn more, because I earn a bunch of tips, or there was a big boost of sales to one of my books. Most months, that does not happen, especially now that Twitter has died off as a platform — when I did TweetFics that got big, I was often able to boost my tip jar, but now that Twitter’s lost a lot of its traction, that’s no longer a possibility.

It’s not terrible money. It’s actually more reliable as income than when I worked hospitality as a porter, where between my own chronic illness and injury, and hotels loving a bit of casual “accidental” wage theft, I’d often end up with less pay than I was expecting.

What I make is enough for me to live on, for the most part, and I know I’m very lucky to make that much.

I make ~€1300/a month ($1400 USD a month. About $350 a week), rent is €460 — after rent, I have about €210 to live on per week.

My asthma inhalers cost about €80. My testosterone, which I get every 12 weeks, costs about €80. Normally as per the Irish drugs payment scheme, I can get them at the same time and pay €80 for everything. It costs €35 — €50 to go to the doctor and get my testosterone administered, depending on if I’m also getting bloods done at the same time.

My teeth were majorly fucked up, and for a while the cost of my dental care was fucking destroying me, especially when I had to get surgery to remove some teeth, but thankfully I’m mostly on top of that now. I am dreading, on the other hand, having to start a different med to treat my arthritis or otherwise becoming injured or further unwell — I should be in physiotherapy, but the cost is prohibitive; my counsellor takes a voluntary contribution because I see him through a charity for rape survivors, and thank God, because regular private therapy is pretty expensive.

The cost of groceries in Ireland is… high.

To be honest, the cost of most things in Ireland is high, which is part of the reason I want to move back to the UK — with that said, because of the Artists’ Exemption for artists in Ireland, my income goes a bit further it isn’t taxed, I only my universal contribution. In the UK there’s no similar scheme, and the orchestrated fuel “crisis” where energy companies (and the politicians they went to school with) are hiking prices as high as possible to make record profits is even more hard-hitting than in Ireland.

I would love to say that that the tax exemption exists solely because Ireland is a wonderful place for artists, and because Ireland does so much to encourage its artists to create, to have time to create, to have money to create. Ireland is not perfect, but it absolutely does do that, it does try, and it does better than a lot of places. Ireland has a lot of initiatives in place for artists and I love and appreciate that so much!

But also, artists are often fucking impoverished, and very few of them make enough money to live on. Most writers in Ireland make a few hundred euro a year, let alone enough money to survive on.

I do. For the most part, I do make enough money to live on, and not just survive, but do okay. Yes, I panic about money every other week, no, I don’t put money away in savings or a pension scheme or health insurance because I simply don’t have the money, but mostly, I do okay.

And this is with writing being my sole income, without working another job at the same time. A lot of people are doing this sort of subscription-based work whilst being in full-time or part-time employment at the same time — and a lot of people are like me, who just physically can’t really do that, even though it would lead to mildly more economic stability.

I say mildly more because, let’s face it, wages are pretty low, not remotely in line with the cost of living, many hours are demanded from workers — often unpredictably — and bosses know that workers do not have much other option than taking their worst treatment.

Every time someone unsubscribes on Patreon or Medium, I notice, and I panic a little bit — and the thing is, the difference is only going to be, what, $2 or $3 a month? That’s an incredibly small amount. Yes, some people do subscribe on Patreon for larger amounts (for which I’m very grateful), but most people really can’t afford that much because they are also experiencing the weight of a cost of living crisis, the prohibitive cost of being chronically ill during a worldwide pandemic, the impact of not just wage stagnation but casual workers’ abuses, etc.

The amount people spend to subscribe to my body of work is equivalent to a few coins out of their pocket, and I’m constantly aware that many people can’t even afford that at times, which is part of why I have so much free fiction available and why I never guilt anybody for “pirating” my work.

But when people do unsubscribe and I get that moment of panic, I feel guilty for it — Hell, I feel incredibly guilty for wanting to make more money and working to make more money, because I know that every additional few dollars a month from someone on my subscription services is a real person who’s putting money my way.

And that feeling? That shame and guilt for wanting to make more money, because I want to make enough money to be comfortable and to be secure? That comes from knowing how many other people are just like me or are doing worse, and don’t even have the precarious security of income that I have.

So many of my friends gain their incomes from Patreon, Medium, or Substack, from regular tips on sites like Ko-Fi, or from sites like OnlyFans and JustForFans, etc.

We either earn money per item or piece of material (for me that would be book sales, but for others it might be sales of pictures or videos, pieces of art, online resources, etc), or we earn tips here and there on free content (which are inherently unpredictable, much like tips IRL for buskers and entertainers), or we have people who subscribe monthly or annually for a a regular amount.

As a “content creator”, regardless of what that content is, there is constant fear and anxiety.

Is this content appealing to a wide enough audience? Should I be appealing to a wide audience, or should I aim for a specific niche audience?

A wider audience means more people to market to who might give you money, but a niche audience means that while the audience pool itself is smaller, that audience is going to be more inclined to pay you, because they are starved for content otherwise.

I’m gay, trans, and disabled, and much of my work centres around gay, trans, disabled men — and much of my audience is of similar men or other queer and disabled people. Yes, it’s a smaller niche than the broader straight audience, and we’re far less likely to have as much money as straight abled people, but because there’s barely any work created with us in mind, people are more motivated to shell out for the content they crave.

“Content,” because while I’m an artist and an author and a creator, it’s not just about my actual fic, but also about “content” such as Tweets and asks and advice and funny posts and selfies, all of which are nebulously shoved into the same label of “content” for the social media mill, to be “consumed”.

I resent this language, naturally, because for the most part I don’t think a lot of my social media stuff is considerable enough to be content I would charge for, but also because it flattens all manner of art and material and acts of creation into one marketable word, and while it’s partly done because of the endless tread of capitalist nonsense, it’s also done because capitalism demands artists — and art — be defanged and made marketable.

But another piece of language that I really don’t like and avoid using myself is “donations”. I have a tip jar, and I’m grateful when people tip me, but they are tipping me because they enjoy some aspect of the entertainment work I do, whether that’s my Tweets or Tumblr posts, my movie reviews or commentary, my fiction, my selfies, whatever.

It’s not a donation. It’s not charity. There’s nothing wrong with accepting or needing charity, but it would bother me to solicit charity, because I don’t believe I am sufficiently deserving of it, and if someone’s giving money out of charity, I’d rather they give it to someone who needs it more than I do.

Some cishet people will absolutely feel guilty after reading some posts and be like, “oh, I’m gonna give some money to this trans guy on the internet to assuage my guilt about not doing enough to protect or care for trans people in my actual community,” and that’s annoying, but it’s not surprising — but cishet people’s guilt isn’t something that I really want to play on, because there’s other people who could and should benefit from it far more than I would.

But to other trans and disabled people, I’m absolutely not going to present myself as being on the brink of poverty, because I’m not! God knows there are enough grifters online who present a lot of their solicitations for money as charitable giving, either for themselves or others, in order to spin a profit — and more importantly, there are a lot more people who fucking need to rely on charity and/or reparations from the guilt-ridden who can’t produce the sort of work that I can on the scale that I do.

Which, this year I’ve been publishing a piece every week or so — a piece for me might be an erotic short or other short story, an essay or significant blog post, a serial chapter, etc.

I feel incredibly guilty when I struggle to put out a finished piece a week — ridiculous, given that that’s a lot for one person to put out per week, and is a lot more than many creators manage, but also?

In my back catalogue of published short stories and essays, there’s over 200 completed pieces, most of which are thousands of words long apiece, some being short novellas that are 20k+ long, all featuring a variety of different characters, tones, genres.

This isn’t even mentioning my serial fiction, where my serials together comprise of hundreds of thousands of words of fiction across a few genres and tones.

What do I have to feel guilty for? Why should I feel so much shame for not delivering “enough” to my audience, when I do deliver so much?

Because there’s a constant fear that if I don’t do enough (if I don’t do more than enough), that everyone will unsubscribe and either go to different creators or go to new people entirely. Because it feels like all my success as a creator is based on my personal performance and my goodness as a human being — because when we talk about being a “content creator”, a large part of the “content” being sold is oneself.

You’re not just selling your work: you have to sell your identity.

I have to sell that I’m gay and trans and disabled; I have to sell that I’m sexy and funny and confident; I have to sell that I’m witty and biting, but not too flawed in a way that will make people hate me and change their minds about financially supporting me. There are absolutely people who engage with my work — either initially or over time — because they find me personally sexy, which is fine, I am sexy!

But that’s a lot of pressure, and there’s not really a choice to opt out of that pressure to sell one’s self because of the constant grind of social media, the desperate need to stay relevant, and also to cultivate some form of parasocial loyalty from one’s fans.

So when someone unsubscribes on Patreon, there are so many initial fears — Did I do something wrong? Did I not post enough? Did I post too much of the wrong thing? When I said this, was it read as offensive or cruel? Was it taken out of context? Are people talking about me and deciding together that I’m not worth the money anymore? Do people hate me personally? Was I too gay or too trans or too disabled? Was I too horny, or not horny enough?

I don’t have OCD, but all of the above can really easily feed into OCD spiralling, and for many creator friends of mine who do have OCD and grapple with these sort of moralising self-analytical intrusive thoughts, it’s constant and really difficult not to think about.

And the thing is, those are all the wrong questions to ask.

People might well hate me or not think I’m worth the money, or I might be posting the wrong content at the moment, or they might have outgrown me or grown bored of my work, or they might find me dickish and annoying — that’s none of my business. None of those people are my friends, and they don’t owe me an explanation or an answer to any of those anxieties.

They were paying me money in exchange for being entertained by me, and if for some reason they stopped being entertained by me, then it’s right that they should stop paying and go do something else with their money!

But the more likely explanations for people unsubscribing are ones like this, because many people have limited cash to spend:

Recently I’ve been having to work a lot more hours and I’m not reading as much fiction as I did.

Recently I’m sick and tired and struggle to concentrate on fiction.

I’m subscribed to a bunch of creators on Patreon and Johannes’ work is the one I have the least time for/motivation for, so if I’m going to cut one out, it will be him.

I hate reading fiction on Patreon or I otherwise dislike the platform and so I’m just unsubscribing from all the creators on there.

I used to read a lot of this guy’s TweetFic because it was so easy to read, but his other fiction is harder for me to get into, and I can’t justify the cost for work I’m not engaging with.

I’ve read through all of this guy’s back catalogue quite quickly and I’m going to unsubscribe and come back to his work in a year or two when he puts out more work.

For a while he was writing fic about specific characters or in a specific genre that I enjoy, but he’s currently focusing on other things. I will return when he does my favourite things again.

Johannes is posting too much and I’m finding it overwhelming and it’s making me guilty that I don’t have time to keep up, so I’m going to unsubscribe and come back when I have more time.

I’m unsubscribing from Patreon so that I can subscribe on Medium instead.

Or many other reasons.

In short, every single person who is subscribed to me and my work on one of these platforms is a person with their own vastly complicated life and potential reasons for subscribing and unsubscribing. While I’m sure a handful of them might well be unsubscribing with the intention of punishing me or “voting with their feet” to go elsewhere, for a lot more, I’m sure it’s not really a thought.

It will be as simple as “I am spending money on this. Am I using my subscription and engaging (and enjoying engaging with) what the subscription is for? No? Then I will unsubscribe,” which all of us do all the time, and is quite natural!

This will be the case for people who subscribe to me for fiction, but also who subscribe to any other creators for art, for video essays or other videos, for essays and media analysis, for critical commentary, for pornography and erotica, for tutorials, for all manner of creators who earn money from individual subscribers.

How do we cope with that?

How do we remember that, when everywhere we go we’re blasted in the face with the principles of Hustle Culture and Grind Culture and whatever other awful euphemisms that are pushed at us? Where your identity is the work you create and the value you have, and whenever you’re not working, you must feel shame for being alive?

Once I have the trick of it, I’ll be sure to share it around. In the meantime, I do think that transparency and thinking out loud about the reality of the mental toll can help a bit.

If you can’t economically support your favourite creators, do remember that just sharing their work with others or engaging with it — via review or recommendation or just commenting and so on — also really helps them because that engagement boosts their reach to others through you, but also like…

I don’t think you should ever feel guilty if, for any reason, you can’t do that either. So many feelings of guilt or shame are already preyed upon by commercial forces for the purposes of gaining access to some of your money, and on social media, your attention and your emotion are reached for in the same way, and it just sucks.

In an ideal world, things wouldn’t be the way they are — in the world we live in, my goals are to make more money by reaching a broader audience and delivering a broader variety of work to click with that audience, and doing my best to avoid making anyone feel guilty in the meantime.

That’s the crux of it, I think — as a creator, I feel a lot of those horrible feelings of guilt and shame and anxiety because of the way our economy and my financial precarity exist, and what I don’t want to do is pass on those horrible feelings to fans so that they’ll give me money. Rich people use that cycle of emotion to accumulate as much wealth as possible — normal people just do it to fucking survive, and if I can survive without contributing to it, that’s what I’ll do.

#hustle culture #marketing #content creation #patreon creator

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