Advancing to Level 2

I’ve now been on Patreon for one year. It's been good, but I think I need to level up. Would you like to help? If so, I have a new flashy object with your name on it. Read on.

Review and Projections

First, a little review of my Level 1 experience thus far. Patreon growth rates seem healthy enough, as you can see below. No particularly spectacular hockey-stick trajectory, but slow and steady seems good to me.

According to my Youtube metrics on Socialblade.com, I’m currently on track to have 11k subscribers by this time next year, and more than 1 million views. In 5 years, I’m on track to have 143k subscribers and more than 14 million views.

As far as I can tell from piecing together podcast market data, the Other Life podcast is somewhere around the 80th percentile globally. Not bad, but I think I can do better.

Thus far, I've done almost everything — livestreams, videos, and podcasts — with just two pieces of cheap, basic gear: The Blue Yeti mic and the Logitech c920 webcam. Each one was about 100 bucks.

Leveling Up

Now that my audience seems to be growing consistently — especially in the past few months — I think right now is the time for some long overdue upgrades. Especially the audio on my livestreams and podcasts — I really want to give listeners a noticeably more enjoyable experience. When my wife and I took a little road trip a few months ago, it was the first time I drove a car in many years. After listening to some random True Crime podcast for hours at a time, I really changed my mind about the importance of audio quality for podcasts. Professional audio quality is like an ear massage. Professional audio quality won’t make you interested in a podcast, but if you are interested in a podcast, then professional quality dramatically expands how long and deeply you will listen. On that drive, I sadly realized that very, very few people would ever choose to listen to my podcast for several hours on a long road trip. Nobody can listen to anything for that long, unless it includes a free ear massage. I am sure that haphazard audio also decreases word-of-mouth recommendations.

And now that I'm even livestreaming / podcasting with other people in a shared physical space — and potentially with guests passing through town as well — we really can't all sit around one USB microphone anymore.

So the time has come for a basic but adequate, entry-level-professional setup. A few dynamic mics, possibly two cameras, and some solution for mixing multiple mics into livestreams, videos, and/or podcasts.

This will get expensive, so for the next two weeks I’m going to conduct a light but frank campaign to boost my Patreon numbers. I promise not to do this again, at least for another year (one short and sweet annual campaign seems reasonable for "content creators").

In the past year, a lot of people have told me about their plans and intentions to eventually become a patron. If you're one of these people, I’m writing this post to remind you. If you've been meaning to become a patron, just do it now.

If you're a fan of my stuff and you'd personally enjoy higher production quality — perhaps you wish my podcast was audibly pleasing enough for long drives — then become a patron now. Or if you're already a patron, consider bumping your pledge temporarily as I level up.

A Special Gift (possibly — probably? — worth millions one day...)

If you become a patron before September 18, you’ll be grandfathered into the official class of Other Life OGs. After September 18, you can still become a patron of course — but you’ll never be able to say you were with me from the beginning. C’mon, you want to tell your future kids that you supported me before I blew up…

To recognize and appreciate the official class of Other Life OGs, I’m introducing the very first piece of Other Life “merch" to ever exist. Here’s a preview.

It’s just a little sticker, but hey — a $2k baseball card is just a little piece of cardboard. Nobody in the world has this sticker yet, and nobody ever will — unless you’re an active patron of mine on September 18, 2019. It’ll be priced at cost, about 2 bucks.

If you decide to become a patron now, thank you.

If you boycott Patreon for political reasons, you can help fund my work through other channels: Donorbox, Paypal, crypto, etc.

Within a few weeks, as you start to notice better production qualities, you can take all the credit...