Several times I've made my dissatisfaction with Patreon (as an outsider reading some [reasonably probably biased] reports of how they deal with pornography) yet I find that I must develop an income stream. I haven't the ability to take my writing to that next level. I want to write better quality writing than I do, and I can do so, but not without a team, and it is beginning, (with no disrespect to those who volunteer here) to look like I may well have to hire that team from scratch. So that brings me back to Patreon, or some other platform to fund further efforts on my part.
I'm a US army veteran with a service rated disability, and currently that disability stipend is the total of my income. If I wasn't able to live on family property I'd be camping under a bridge now. I have a number, it isn't too high, of subscribers I'd need, and should I open a Patreon account I shall set a very low, perhaps one dollar US per month access to all I currently have available. I may if the numbers say it is reasonable, stay with publishing here and at bookappy. My next story will definitely I believe be reasonable to also cross publish at Finestories.com
However there is a siren song in the air, and I'm not going to mention them here. But that is where I shall head if the numbers here don't work. I've released to the Swarm Cycle universe authors' guild 80,000 words in volume one and if I do move to open a patreon (unless someone can point me to a better place for people writing similar stories) I will probably make one chapter available at the one dollar amount every month, with the preceding chapters available to all members who do pay, so a growing story to be read there.
What I'm hoping for, is a faster response time that isn't an AI. I like NotebookLM. It is an excellent research assistant, and is responsible for my story growing in the last month by approximately forty thousand words. Simply having the feedback of the AI as I put up a couple hundred words at a time has been invaluable.
I like to say that I post version one point one here. That is that what I've posted has been through a spell checker and I've read through it roughly one month after I've originally produced the draft, but I haven't done much more than to double check spelling and try to break up my sentence structure, which is admittedly dense. So you see an almost first draft when you read the work I've posted here. I want to take the next steps, but I'm well aware they require a dedicated team. Which probably means money paid on my part.