Patreon – make words pay.

As some of you may be aware, I recently launched a Patreon channel in order to host more challenging exclusive editorial. Pieces on Patreon may be too political, feature too much social commentary, or indeed be too niche for many commercial publications. However, they are good stories. Currently the channel has copy covering Ukraine, West Africa, Lebanon, Malta and others. I’m aiming to add material every week or so, engaging with patrons and offering insights and practical advice were possible.

The Patreon model is subscriber-based. Patrons pay £5 per month for access to the site – the price of a coffee and a biscuit. It’s early days, but readership is growing. Journalism has yet to work out how to make words pay in a digital age. Patreon is one possible solution.

The advent of AI apps such as ChatGPT has recently been much discussed. Unlike the app I’ll try not to add to the noise. However, commercial web copy is now manipulated through Search Engine Optimisation to make it more attractive to computers. It’s only natural that the next step is to remove the writer and for that copy to be written by computers. Ultimately this may do us all a favour. Let the machines thrash about on the wider web while human words inhabit slightly different domains. We’ll see…

In the future I’d like to cover stories solely for Patreon. I’m not there yet. However, if subscriptions cover even the price of a low-cost airfare, it’s a start.

Sign up to my Patreon channel here – https://www.patreon.com/nickredmayne

There’s no contract and you can cancel at any time.