So please, take a moment, and consider what you can do to help support the TTRPG creators, writers, artists, YouTubers, and others you depend on for entertainment and content so that we will still be here once 2024 rolls around, and we can keep giving you what you've come to expect from us.
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| Any and all help you can provide is much appreciated. |
Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.
Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!
The Struggles of The Year
Being a creative professional is no cakewalk. We're called "starving artists" for a reason, after all. However, 2023 has basically been kicking most of us in the stomach while we're trying to get up off of our hands and knees... and a majority of this is related to recent changes in the social media landscape, and the fresh set of hellish problems this has given all of us to overcome.
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| What was once a boon has turned to poison in our mouths. |
At the top of the list, we have the dumpster fire that Twitter has become. This website was a central gathering place for authors, RPG creators, and YouTubers (along with a huge number of other creative professionals), and it has been absolutely gutted since the owner-who-shall-not-be-named acquired it. This completely destroyed the platform that a lot of us had built over years of time, and even those of us who didn't use Twitter as our main source of social media promotion still felt the impact as it damaged all of our efforts to share our creations with an enthused and engaged audience. It still exists, but only as a shadow of its former self.
That would have been bad enough, but then things got worse.
This past spring, Facebook underwent some major changes to how the site works. While we've always had to fight the algorithm to get seen on that site, it's been absolute mess for most of 2023. Only a handful of posts actually get through into groups, and the rest are pushed into spam folders that many admins don't even see, effectively throttling your signal as a creator. On top of that, the site has grown even more restrictive with who sees your posts on your personal or business account, with the latter prodding creators to buy a signal boost with every post we make if we want our followers to actually see them.
Even Reddit hasn't been immune to this. Dozens of subreddits were shut down over the summer, and there were blackout protests over the tools being removed from the moderators. The list of websites and content varieties that the site's spam bots automatically removes grows daily, or so it seems, and there are several communities that were once oases that are now dry as deserts, as far as creators are concerned.
When you add in the massive surge in generative engines that are plagiarizing work left and right, the sectioning off of audiences under platforms like Discord and Mastadon, and how even the YouTube algorithm is making it more difficult for smaller creators to get their voices heard, the end result is that only those people who already had a large, vibrant following are still being seen and reacted to... and even they aren't immune to the squeeze being put on all of us by platforms that are getting more and more restrictive by the day.
What this means is that our reach has been cut, our views, our reads, and our sales (to say nothing of patronage and sponsorship) is drying up all across the board because no one can find us, and attempts to actually get seen are shut down almost before they begin. And if no one follows us and supports us, then creators simply cannot afford to keep making things.
Direct Support is The Best Support
If you want to help the creators you care about keep a roof over their heads, and food on the table, there are some specific actions you can take to make that happen. Not only that, but you should do as many of these things as you possibly can, because we need all the help we can get!
First and foremost... buy our merch!
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| Seriously... this is the MOST important thing you can do. |
You've likely heard the numbers recently regarding how Weird Al Yankovic, who had millions of streams on Spotify, was paid $12 for all of that listening time. That is the unfortunate reality that a lot of creators are currently dealing with. We might have gigantic numbers when it comes to pages read on Kindle Direct, or a huge number of reads on our blogs, or a massive amount of streams... and when the year is over, all of that effort is good for a sandwich. Whereas if someone pays to download one of Al's albums? Or buys a tee shirt, or other piece of merch? That single sale likely pays him as much (if not more) than 80 million streams on Spotify.
So whether you buy an album, a tee shirt, a novel, a TTRPG supplement, a patch, a pin, or even a sticker, you will have done more to support a creator with that single purchase than if you left their podcast or YouTube channel running in the background every hour of every day for an entire month!
And if a given creator doesn't have something for sale that you want? Well, you can sign up to become a Patreon patron, or buy them a Ko-Fi to essentially just put a tip in their jar so they can keep things going. This is especially important for creators who produce mostly free content (like my blogs, YouTube videos, etc.), because it's a form of direct support that has immediate consequences for us.
Incidentally, check me out at The Literary Mercenary on both Patreon and on Ko-Fi if you want to help me weather the holidays in one piece!
There Are Other Things You Can Do, Too
If you don't have the spare scratch to buy merch and leave tips for every creator, does that mean you just can't help anyone? Of course not! However, it is important to remember that these steps are the next tier down... so they do help, but not as much as just giving artists money to help pay their bills.
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| We must do battle with the algorithm. |
First and foremost, do interact with the stuff made by creators you love. If someone makes a video or writes an article you like, watch it, upvote it, leave a comment (even if you're just saying, "I'm so excited to see where this series goes from here!"), and share it on your own social media pages, or in your groups. If you bought a book or a TTRPG supplement, do all of these things, but also leave a review on Amazon, Drive Thru RPG, Goodreads, or whatever other platforms you can find it on!
As I explained in Leveraging The Algorithm: How You Can Help Creators You Love Get Seen, while your individual interaction may be very small, every one of these things helps meaningfully boost a creator's signal. Each interaction makes us more popular in the eyes of the algorithm, and that makes it more likely to work for us, rather than against us, helping us actually reach more people. The more people we reach, the more fans we can find, and the more interactions we will get... it's even possible that we'll make more sales, too!
Perhaps most importantly, though, is to remember that even if the traffic we generate doesn't pay us a lot of money (whether it's a Spotify stream, a Twitch chat, or a YouTube video), creators who have a sizable audience are also the ones who get approached by companies with sponsorship deals. So while we might only get a handful of dollars in exchange for hundreds of thousands of views, a sponsor might pay us a thousand or more to mention their product, or even to create a piece of content around it to help promote it to our audience, if we have enough reliable eyeballs on us.
I talked about this back in Unfortunate Facts: Without Sponsorship, Most Artists Can't Eat, for those who want a more detailed breakdown.
Lastly, make sure that you're connecting with the creators you want to support so that you don't miss when they're releasing new stuff, or working on new projects. Whatever social media sites they're on, follow their pages. If they're on video platforms, subscribe to their channels, and turn on your notifications. If they have a newsletter, subscribe to it (and make sure you actually get it, and it isn't just being eaten by your spam folder).
We don't ask you to do these things for funsies... we do it because these are literally the lengths we have to go to in order to make sure our audience actually sees the posts we make, and that we aren't being throttled to death by the algorithm!
Where You Can Support Me!
So, everything I've said up to this point could apply to any creator out there, and I fully support everyone who has read this far in going and helping as many artists as you can so we can all get through the holidays, and start 2024 off on the right foot!
But if you're someone who specifically wants to help me, first of all, thank you. Secondly, please consider the following:
First, check out the Azukail Games YouTube channel, which hosts a lot of my audio dramas, in addition to the shows Speaking of Sundara, Discussions of Darkness, and now Tabletop Mercenary! We're about a thousand watched hours out from getting monetized by YouTube, so please put on a playlist while you're wrapping presents, or just trying to avoid awkward family discussions!
Also, If you want even more content (particularly bigger, more expansive audio dramas) you should also subscribe to my Rumble account, The Literary Mercenary!
If videos aren't your thing, though, I've got plenty of other options for you!
For example, in addition to my blogs The Literary Mercenary, and Improved Initiative, I also have a Vocal Media archive! It just hit 300 articles this week, and I make $6 for every 1,000 reads those articles get. So if you want something to scroll through on your lunch break, consider checking out some of my stuff over there, and sharing it around if you find something you really like!
And, of course, you can always buy some of the stuff I've written!
My novels and short story collections are all listed on my Amazon author page, and there should be some new releases getting added there in the near future! These are particularly nice stocking stuffers, which is worth keeping in mind this time of year. Additionally, I currently have 168 titles on Drive Thru RPG, which vary from World/Chronicles of Darkness, to DND 5E, to Pathfinder, general genre supplements, modules, and more! Whether you buy one, a few, or a slew of them, that would go a long way to keeping the wolf from the door!
Lastly, you can follow me on all my social media spaces. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Pinterest are the places where I'm most active, but you can also get a bunch of my news and updates by checking out my Link.tree, or subscribing to my bi-monthly newsletter... that's twice a month, not once every two months, to be sure you know what you're in for!
Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!
That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!
Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Daily Motion channel!. Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!
To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!
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