Over the course of the past few weeks, I have received two different Mail Bag questions around Patreon. For those who are not familiar, Patreon is a service that allows you to subscribe to USCoinNews and support the site financially with a monthly subscription. I’ve toyed with the idea for a while now and want to offer – and kindly ask – this as a way to support the site.
Long time readers of the site know that I’ve been pretty transparent about the costs of running USCoinNews. On the average, it costs about $100 per month to run the site. That includes the material costs such as web hosting and advertising. So far, the site has yet to be break even but it is close. Advertising revenue and Today’s Deal revenue covers about $70 of the costs month-to-month on average. So not too far away. That’s where just a few readers could make the difference through a service like Patreon.
How it works is simple. Follow this link to go to USCoinNews’ Patreon site. Using a credit or debit card, you can send the site any amount of money you like per month. So say $5 per month. Complete the process and each month the site will receive your $5. You can stop it at any time and there is no obligation to continue but you will be put into an auto-renew each month until you do stop it. It is really that simple.
Right now, I’ve set it up in a basic account meaning that there no additional benefits to subscribing. I’m just being honest here folks. If there are a lot of readers who prefer supporting the site via the service, I can always add tiers which could give users exclusive content or access to special deals or a direct email link instead of the contact page, or the like. Honestly, I don’t know what that looks like yet. I’ll think on it and encourage you to do the same.
One thing that one of the folks who dropped this idea in the Mail Bag said was “This is not your coin fund!” And that actually is a really good point. Any funds sent to the site would only be used to maintain the site. If there is an overage of funds, those will be banked to help support the costs should there be a slow advertising month or something along those lines. Ideally, if I can get enough readers to use this service, I can start dropping the number of ads on the site. That, ultimately, would be ideal in my mind.
Finally, a huge thanks to those who have been supporters of the site, be it from the early days or just starting today. I truly appreciate it and continue to be amazed at the coin collectors out there who offer words of wisdom, support and yes, even criticism. I truly appreciate all of you and thank you for considering becoming a Patreon of USCoinNews.
Clinton