I Let a Reader Pay Me

Last week, I did something I never thought I’d do. I put a “Support” page on my website. You can now support my game development journey with a single or recurring donation of $1 or more. As a thank you, I’ll list you as a “Supporter” on at least one of my game’s credits.

I actively avoided doing this for half a decade.

It’s not like I’m morally opposed to asking for money for my creative work. Far from it! I’ve been a creative professional for over twenty years. I’ve run two Kickstarter campaigns. I know my way around a CTA. No, the reason I never thought I would do it was far more… psychological.

This all started with a very strange notification email from Substack. I thought for sure it was spam. The subject line read, “A reader just pledged $8 to subscribe to Geoffrey Golden.” Substack has a feature that allows subscribers to tell a newsletter writer that if they decided to charge for their newsletter, they promise to give them $X per month. It’s a way to encourage readers to coax authors to “go paid” and begin charging for their newsletters, so Substack makes 10%.

This is a feature I actively turned off on Adventure Snack, my old Substack newsletter. There were a couple reasons I never went paid with Adventure Snack. I never felt like I had enough subscribers for the economics to make sense. I actually worked this out on spreadsheets and stuff! If I was going to start charging $5 a month (the base rate for Substack subscriptions), I would have needed to provide content worthy of that $5, like an extra interactive fiction game a month for paid subscribers. But with around 2,000 subscribers, I figured out approximately what percentage I thought would pay me (3-5%) and looked at the potential revenue… and it was never enough to justify the cost of creating extra content. Even the purposefully scaled-down games I made still took a long time to write and design. So I figured it would be better to just keep the content free, encourage the most subscribers possible, then turn on paid when I had a big enough following.

Only I never got a big enough following. My subscriber count peaked at 2,000. I was experimenting with paying for social ads to boost subscribers to get to the magic number of 10,000 readers, but it would have required a big up front investment I didn’t have, and a gamble on the quality of the readership I would obtain. I wanted engaged players. Would I find them using Facebook ads? I was skeptical.

There was something deeper happening in my head, though. There are plenty of great newsletters who treat paid subscriptions like a tip jar. The authors don’t provide any extra content for paid readers. Only gratitude. I could have tried this, but I was afraid. The successful tip jar newsletters tend to have lots of active commenters, a demonstration of a strong community. Adventure Snack did not get nearly as many comments. I didn’t feel like I had built a successful community, so I was afraid of putting out a tip jar and no one (or more likely, only a tiny few) caring enough to donate. Suddenly, the games publishing experiment would have this tiny monetary value attached to it. The project would feel worth less.

But this email I received wasn’t about a pledge to Adventure Snack. Someone wanted to subscribe to my personal Substack reader account, which I didn’t realize even had a “pledge” button. Someone wanted to subscribe to the human, Geoffrey Golden, not one of my goofy projects.

After examining the email closely – imagine me at my computer with a Sherlock hat and magnifying glass going “hmmm” – I could tell it wasn’t spam. Willa, one of Adventure Snack’s most enthusiastic commenters, pledged to my reader account. In her message to me, she said she did not know I had a paid tier. I do not have a paid tier on Substack. I never have. Huh!

I wrote her back saying I left Substack and didn’t have a paid tier. Then I told her about Equip Story and that it was completely free. No donation necessary. Willa replied saying she was already reading Equip Story, she just didn’t have a lot of time to comment these days. And she reiterated that she wanted to support my work, whether it was on Substack or not. She asked if I had a Venmo or something.

That is something I had never experienced before. I have been fortunate enough to make creative works that have sold well. Clone Drone in the Hyperdome is a bestselling VR game on Meta and Steam. There are folks drawing fan art of the characters I invented with our artist Isaac. (Some of it is even appropriate for work!) But this was different. This was a reader who wanted to support me personally as an artist. Not a specific game I designed, or a brand I was hiding behind, but just the idea of me designing. It was very humbling.

I consider myself to be self-sufficient. It’s rare that I ask for help or cash in favors. At the same time, I also feel like I’m not in community with the world as an artist. I belong to a few groups (most recently, the UVW union), but I have a hard time feeling accepted. In every group I’ve ever been in, there are always members I perceive as belonging more than I do. I know a lot of this is in my head. I thought of myself as a weirdo outcast in school, but ironically was voted “Most Friendly” in the yearbook.

In my head, a combination of dedicated self-sufficiency with outcast self-identification has given me a perennial cloud of isolation. Does my personal art matter? Is it helping anyone? Why make art at all? These are the kinds of questions I’m grappling with in Equip Story.

And then here comes Willa, who is saying not only does she care about my art, but she cares enough about it to support it without a promise of anything in return. Maybe my art is making a difference for people, even if I can’t always see it. Maybe I have a community that cares about my work, even if they’re not loud about it. I could feel a cloud moving inside me.

I decided to find a WordPress plug-in (literally called Tip Jar), blow the virtual dust off my Stripe account, and set-up a donation page. Then I emailed Willa back and told her she inspired me to start accepting donations on my website. I sent her the link.

A day went by. Then two. Then three. No word. Silence.

The clouds began to re-form. Maybe she was just being nice. Maybe she was having second thoughts. Nobody really cares about these weird games I’m making.

So I confronted those thoughts. What if she never donates? What if nobody ever donates? Would it feel better to take the page down?

No. Even if nobody ever donates, that’s okay. I will leave open the possibility that others will want to support my game design. I will keep the door open, instead of locking it in the name of self-sufficiency. Yes, I suddenly felt more vulnerable, but being part of a community means opening yourself up to others. This was going to be part of my journey.

Two emails from Willa appeared in my inbox. One was a reply to my last email, the other was a notification saying she was now supporting my work at $8 a month. Willa emailed saying she was on a camping trip and was happy she inspired me. I smiled.

At the end of her email, she said there were likely other readers like her who would want to support my work. For me, there’s an inherent value in opening the door to let in a nice, cold breeze.

🎲 Your Turn: Have you ever done something that made you feel vulnerable, like a creative risk? Did it pay off? Would you do it again? Let me know by replying to this email or tell the whole world by hitting the orange button below and leaving a comment.

Image by storyset on Freepik