Blogs and Money

Almost every day, I see an ad on social media touting someone’s methods for monetizing blogs.  I haven’t clicked on one yet.  When I started this blog, my motivation wasn’t to make money through Butchtastic directly, though I hoped my writing would get me there eventually.  And ‘eventually’ has arrived because by the time summer is over, I’ll have made money from three stories, two published in anthologies.

In the early days, I did sex toy reviews and I’ve done some movie and book reviews as well.  I didn’t get paid for reviews – which is proper – but I did get product and that was a nice perk.  The sex toy companies I worked with back then have cut back or eliminated their affiliate programs and my interest had waned even before that point.

Other bloggers are finding ways to monetize their blogs.  Sinclair Sexsmith of Sugarbutch Chronicles has been using Patreon to fund a post a week – chapters in a novella – the culminating work will be offered free to Patrons.  Patreon is a crowdsourcing platform built on pledges of monthly payments.  Sugarbutch had advertising at one time, but the cleaner format designed by rife is much nicer without all that commercial messiness.

Micah at NeutroisNonsense is also using Patreon to fuel a monthly feature involving a topic and guest contributors.  People are invited to contribute as little as $1 a month for access to special features from Micah.

Creating and selling products is another way of monetizing our creative urges.  BD Swain, another butch smut writer, doesn’t advertise or use Patreon or other crowdfunding, but recently created a deck of very sexy cards, 52 Pick Up – Play Dirty, for sale at $10 a piece.  Photos by BD.  Sinclair recently published an anthology of their work, Sweet and Rough (which I need to finish reading so I can post a review here).

Other blogs use advertising, sometimes with some of the previously mentioned tactics, to raise money.  I’ve shied away from advertising – I find it visually messy and I have the privilege of being able to support my hosting fees without it.  That said, things are changing in the coming year and I am looking for ways that my writing can start to pay its way in the world.

I met someone earlier in the week who introduced himself as a ‘working writer’ and that’s what I aspire to be.  Getting paid for anthology inclusion is a great way to start.  Finishing my eBook and getting that on Amazon would be another great step.  I’m also going to explore Patreon and consider how I can leverage that platform.  The initial goal is to pay for my hosting, which is about $120 per year and domain registration which is another $12 a year.  So if I could earn $132 a year and just pay for the blog, I’d break even.  The further goal is to have my writing pay for more and more of my kinky writer-life expenses: sex toys, registration for kink events, membership to the Seattle Center for Sex Positive Culture, registration for writing conferences, etc.  That would be super cool and a step in the direction of being a working writer.  I don’t expect all my income to be generated here, but I hope to use this as a platform for some of that monetary reward.

To recap, I’m going to finish my eBook and advertise it here and wherever else I can.  I’m going to look into Patreon, which brings me to the audience participation portion of this post:  What would you pay per month to support me?  What would you want in return? Some ideas are access to special writing features, free copies of some printed collections, photos, exclusive newsletters, etc. Help me brainstorm!  Ohhhh… and I had another idea, something Red and I have been kicking around – video taped pornscapades.  I’m sure we could find a way to monetize that, though I need to talk to my wife and get her blessing and consent.  Maybe we could use videos as a part of the exclusive Patron incentives.  Hmmm… ideas.

I really do want to hear ideas from you reader, whether you are a long time loyal Butchtastic fan or one of my new readers.  I’m looking for ways to creatively raise money through dirty stories and I want to make sure my investors are getting a good value back. Shoot me an email at Kyle at Butchtastic.net or comment here on the blog.

and THANK YOU!

Also in the thinking pan:  giving this blog a much needed face lift, most likely paying someone to help me design and update the whole thing.

This content is published under the Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported license.