First of all, thank you so much to every one of you who has been supporting me and this blog via Paypal and Patreon, it really helps me out. I am deeply grateful that you enjoy my work enough, and believe in me enough, to support the blog financially. I feel the love, truly. ❤️

For those of you who might not know this, the pandemic has put my work on hold indefinitely, and I’m now blogging full time and trying to make this into a viable income source, if possible. Ad revenue works out to be not very much, so your support via Paypal and Patreon plays a huge part in helping to keep this blog going.

This is my 9th month now, on Patreon, and today I realized that I needed to make a key change to my Patreon settings, which is why I’m writing this post, so that I can tell you about it.

The Situation and The Key Change

Before

When I started out on Patreon, I had my settings such that patrons would be charged only on the first of the month, meaning, if you signed up on the 15th of the month, you wouldn’t pay anything until the 1st of the following month. This was my way of showing trust in and appreciation for all my patrons; I wanted you all to feel like you already knew and enjoyed the benefits that your pledges entitled you to, at the point when your account first got charged.

The problem

However, in the last several weeks and months, I’ve noticed that certain individuals – or perhaps a certain individual – would sign up on Patreon, and then almost immediately delete the pledge, within a day.

This means that the loophole, that you wouldn’t get charged until the 1st of the following month, was being taken advantage of, because these people – or this person – would gain access to the Early Access posts, and not get charged anything, before deleting their pledge. Not gonna lie; this pattern of behavior made me feel taken advantage of, and I didn’t like that very much. 😔

Each sign-up has been with a different email address, so if this is being done by a serial ghoster, there is no way I can block this person, since each time, a different email address is used. 🙁

The solution

I’ve realized that the only way to protect myself, is to change my Patreon settings, such that new patrons are charged upfront, at the point of signing up.

What this means

What this means is that it will no longer be possible for someone to take advantage of my Patreon posts by signing up and then immediately deleting the pledge.

What this also means, is that if you were to sign up on, say, the 15th of the month, you’d be charged on the 15th, and then charged again on the 1st of the following month. I am hoping that the many existing Early Access posts that you will gain instant access to upon signing up, will make this feel worthwhile to you. As I type this, there are a total of 289 Early Access posts available on my Patreon page.

To be clear, this change does not affect existing patrons. (Edit! As it turns out, this does have some implications for existing patrons, and the details of that are in this Patreon post here. I’m sorry for the incomplete information earlier! 😝)

The Patreon benefits

In case you didn’t know, the main benefits I offer on Patreon, are Early Access episode notes to selected dramas that I’m watching. To get an idea of what episode notes might look like, they are very similar to what I post on my group watch open threads (example here), just without the screenshots.

Eventually, a good chunk of the episode notes will go towards a review for the drama in question, which would be complete with screenshots and all the usual trappings, but the Early Access posts will give you a glimpse into my thoughts on the drama while I’m watching it. You can also choose to watch a drama “with” me, ie, you can pace yourself so that we are watching the episodes at around the same time. We’ll also have the chance to exchange thoughts on the episodes as we go, since Patreon posts also have a comment feature, similar to this blog. 😃

There are different tiers, and each tier offers Early Access to a specific group of shows, with each higher tier’s benefit progressively building on the previous tier’s.

This month on Patreon

$5 Early Access: She Would Never Know

$10 Early Access Plus: +Mr. Queen

$15 VIP: +Sisyphus: The Myth

$20 VVIP: +Run On

$25 Ultimate: +River Where The Moon Rises

This means that the Ultimate tier receives episode notes for all 5 dramas on this list.

I’ve also added the benefit of making all Episode 1 notes available to all tiers (including the $1 Adblocker Tier), with Ultimate patrons also receiving Episode 1 notes for shows that I am not covering on Patreon, in the hope that these will help you get a sense for whether a drama might be for you. 😊

If you’d like to support the blog and join me on this journey, you can find my Patreon page here. You can also read more about all the whats, whys, and hows of helping this blog here. Thanks for all of your love and support, it really means a lot to me. ❤️