Unfortunately, Patreon has decided to ask me, as the owner of GaySpiralStories, to remove all content which is about “non-consensual sexual scenarios”.
I tried to argue with them, that this is all fiction which would not be possible in real life, but they didn’t follow my argument.
So I was left with no other option than to stop the site’s integration with Patreon. All current Patrons will no longer be charged and the Patreon site referring to GaySpiralStories is down.
I want to stress how much love and appreciation I have for all you Patrons who have made this site possible! For now, all you ex-Patrons will all keep your Patron star and the Patron-exclusive email notification feature.
I will look for an alternative way to fund the site. Don’t worry, it’s existence is not in jeopardy for the immediate future. Currently, the site creates regular expenses of around $175-$200 per month.
Please answer in this thread to let us know your opinion about this. Also, suggestions of how we could refinance these expenses in the future are very much appreciated.
I have no suggestions, but I want to thank you for all the WORK you do for this, Martin–even beyond the server costs. It takes your time beyond the cost of hosting the website, and I, along with many others, appreciate that.
As a Patreon supporter, I’m happy to transfer my monthly support over to another venue when one is available/decided upon.
Can’t you just keep it and have it be us providing support for you as a creator. I mean I support a writer who doesn’t provide any stuff on patreon itself.
If you can’t and have to go somewhere else I will probably follow, as long as said site doesn’t require fourteen emails and multiple steps to confirm and such.
I’ve heard of an alternative website to Patreon called Subscribestar. I don’t use it myself so I don’t know much about it but I’ve heard it has less strict rules than patreon. I’d say it’s worth looking into.
I’m not sure if kickstarter would work, but that might be an option. Like everyone else said, I appreciate the work you put on this site, Martin! I hope we don’t get shut down entirely. I’ve come to love this community so much and all the content that everyone has shared in here that it would be a shame if we lose it all…
Also, do we need to use a funding website in order to keep this thing going? I don’t know the full details that goes on behind the scenes so I’m most likely missing something, but I guess using a 3rd party website is just a lot safer, is that it?
Otherwise, can Paypal be an option as well to send funding?
Sorry to hear about this Martin. +1 for Subscribestar. I know of a couple of adult game devs that use it. I would use it if Patreon went after my channel.
This happened to me around a year ago, and I’m still recovering from the loss of income it took to set things up in a way that would let me keep using Patreon.
Honestly, I’m constantly terrified that they’ll do it again and I’ll lose my only source of income. I did set up on liberapay.com, which I heard good things about, but I’ve yet to get any support through that channel, so I don’t know how good it is.
Patreon can work, but it took jumping through hoops and I worry that they’ll go after those of us who complied in the future.
I’m also happy to pay through PayPal or Venmo (to avoid the anti-gay owner of PayPal), though I recognize many would want to pay through a vendor. I hope you can find such a venue!
What a hassle.
I wonder if you could create a new Patreon offering story editing services or something story related, and the tiers say that you give one on one time of a certain amount, and then you just never do any of that and the money goes to the site, would work?
Probably over complicated.
Whatever service you choose, I’ll switch over. I can make PayPal work too.
And to know that I can count on you, is very important for me. I just have to find a way that’s feasible and also protects privacy (yours as well as mine) as much as possible.
The good thing about Patreon is, that they’re big enough that they should care about protecting their customer’s privacy. They have much reputation to lose if there would be a data leak. Smaller start-ups are usually more risky in that regard.
Using PayPal directly is not really an option. I’d have to share my PayPal account and all the donators would have to reveal theirs, too. On Patreon you could always use some anon email address as the account handle, while the address on PayPal is usually one that’s clearly associated with a person, otherwise you wouldn’t do financial business with it.
KO-FI, as far as I’m aware, doesn’t allow any kind of sexual content:
You are prohibited from using the Ko-fi platform, service or page in connection with any of the following;
[…]
Content including but not limited to;
Adult or sexually explicit content including but not limited to:
• Pornography, nudity and any other obscene content;
• Literature, imagery (including illustrative), videos, links to external sites or content containing such material; and[…]
Kickstarter is not an option, as we need constant funding, not a one time project ‘startup’ funding.
Yes, mostly for privacy concerns. I understand everyone who doesn’t want to share his personal data with a site about gay mind control stories…
What do you mean “yet to get any support through that channel”? Do you mean that nobody is actually funding your work through liberapay yet? That doesn’t sound too promising…
I don’t want to cheat or deceive anyone, that could simply lead to real legal problems in the end. If a site is fine with funding GSS as it is, fine, if not, I just don’t want to use them.
Another option would be to use Sponsus.org. Has anyone have any previous experience with them?
Martin, I don’t know how Archive of Our Own maintains their site (and a lot of their sexual fiction is no less graphic than on GSS). Maybe you could talk to the administrators of that site and see how they support themselves (which I gather is through reader support).
What every you decide how to fund this site, Martin, I am with you. Hopefully you will find a way for us to continue funding you. You do a great service for such a diverse community and i want to thank you for that. Keep us posted and hopefully we can catch up on our funding when you have a route to receive our funding.
20% stays with OnlyFan, the rest goes to the content creator. But as far as I’ve seen, the subscriptions start at $5 per month, which is too high for my taste.
As with Patreon, we wouldn’t use their infrastructure at all. And just for collecting the money, 20% is a lot.
