Getting paid for erotica?

[YmaOHyd]

How about Patreon? Do they have anti-erotica terms of service?

EDIT: Looked into it and found the answer is "no"

I guess my real question is whether anyone has a satisfying degree of success (defined as income) on Patreon regarding erotic stories.

I think -- not 100% sure, but think -- @aimingtomisbehave33 is at the point where he's been able to support himself fully with his Patreon. @BreakTheBar is probably there or thereabouts too.

 

[CalBishForNow]

How about Patreon? Do they have anti-erotica terms of service?

EDIT: Looked into it and found the answer is "no"

I guess my real question is whether anyone has a satisfying degree of success (defined as income) on Patreon regarding erotic stories.

Yeah, I was going to mention Patreon until you beat me to it.

I know some writers here use it. Some even post their stories here after they've been on Patreon for a few months for paid subscribers. @antarctica77 comes to mind. Patreon displays a dollar figure per month a creator makes on their page, but I couldn't tell you if that's before or after they take their cut, how reliable it is, what the median/mean/mode is, or anything like that.

 

[CalBishForNow]

I think -- not 100% sure, but think -- @aimingtomisbehave33 is at the point where he's been able to support himself fully with his Patreon. @BreakTheBar is probably there or thereabouts too.

Based on their author page, it looks like aimingtomisbehave33 is doing it on Smashwords, not Patreon. And based on the link in BreakTheBar's Author page, I just learned that not all Patreon author pages display income, so that's news to me.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Based on their author page, it looks like aimingtomisbehave33 is doing it on Smashwords, not Patreon. And based on the link in BreakTheBar's Author page, I just learned that not all Patreon author pages display income, so that's news to me.

I guess he's closed it (hopefully because Smashwords is doing well). He used to do a lot of AI art of his characters for Patrons; you can still find spots where the content's been scraped if you google his username.

 

[aimingtomisbehave33]

I guess he's closed it (hopefully because Smashwords is doing well). He used to do a lot of AI art of his characters for Patrons; you can still find spots where the content's been scraped if you google his username.

I closed my Patreon page for a number of reasons; among them were burnout at having to create a constant stream of content at an unreasonable pace that I admittedly set for myself, Patreon's ever-changing rules toward erotica (some of which weren't publicly stated) that made publishing Senior Year Memories and related stories next to impossible, and piracy from people who scraped my page for its content and posted it for free being unbelievably demoralizing. Smashwords isn't nearly as profitable as Patreon was, but it does allow me to at least have more of a degree of control over a lot of things, particularly my own schedule.

 

[YmaOHyd]

I closed my Patreon page for a number of reasons; among them were burnout at having to create a constant stream of content at an unreasonable pace that I admittedly set for myself, Patreon's ever-changing rules toward erotica (some of which weren't publicly stated) that made publishing Senior Year Memories and related stories next to impossible, and piracy from people who scraped my page for its content and posted it for free being unbelievably demoralizing. Smashwords isn't nearly as profitable as Patreon was, but it does allow me to at least have more of a degree of control over a lot of things, particularly my own schedule.

I'm sorry to hear that. Burnout sucks, and piracy sucks worse.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I'm published through Boruma Publishing with most of my sales through Amazon and Smashwords.

 

[BreakTheBar]

Just seeing I got tagged in here.

I am a full-time Erotica author, making very good money, through Patreon and building an audience here on Lit. The very, very short version of how to stay within Patreon's ToS is the following: Anything that isn't appropriate here on Lit is out, plus no Incest (including roleplay), no Dub-con (must be clear consent for all parties). If you can manage those fairly simple rules, the next is no Nude/Naked Photography or realistic Renders (plenty of people fail this somehow). Soft and Hardcore NSFW art is OK, as long as they follow the same content rules as outlined earlier.

After that, it's about building an author brand and catalogue that people WANT to support monetarily. That has a lot to do with the Quality and Quantity that you are releasing, plus consistency and writing in a niche that is large enough that people want to read. Then it's about the type of content you're making - long-running series with situations and characters that readers buy into and want more of will ALWAYS do better with a Patreon monetisation path compared to shorts/one-offs. Those have their place too, but they can't be your bread and butter content.

Here's the real thing though - if you're dreaming of being a full-time writer and grinding out a new career path, you need to be ready for it to be a job. I have 75,000 words per month of scheduled releases, usually plus extras up to another 20k+. Not to mention all the editing, format-editing to submit to Lit and other places, and managing correspondence. I don't get to have writer's block. I write 5k words on a baseline decent work day, any less than that and it's not a good day.

If folks have more specific questions, I'm willing to field them, and I'll try to remember to check back here for if I get replied to/mentioned. Cheers.

 

[GemmaGemmaGemma]

Just seeing I got tagged in here.

I am a full-time Erotica author, making very good money, through Patreon and building an audience here on Lit. The very, very short version of how to stay within Patreon's ToS is the following: Anything that isn't appropriate here on Lit is out, plus no Incest (including roleplay), no Dub-con (must be clear consent for all parties). If you can manage those fairly simple rules, the next is no Nude/Naked Photography or realistic Renders (plenty of people fail this somehow). Soft and Hardcore NSFW art is OK, as long as they follow the same content rules as outlined earlier.

After that, it's about building an author brand and catalogue that people WANT to support monetarily. That has a lot to do with the Quality and Quantity that you are releasing, plus consistency and writing in a niche that is large enough that people want to read. Then it's about the type of content you're making - long-running series with situations and characters that readers buy into and want more of will ALWAYS do better with a Patreon monetisation path compared to shorts/one-offs. Those have their place too, but they can't be your bread and butter content.

Here's the real thing though - if you're dreaming of being a full-time writer and grinding out a new career path, you need to be ready for it to be a job. I have 75,000 words per month of scheduled releases, usually plus extras up to another 20k+. Not to mention all the editing, format-editing to submit to Lit and other places, and managing correspondence. I don't get to have writer's block. I write 5k words on a baseline decent work day, any less than that and it's not a good day.

If folks have more specific questions, I'm willing to field them, and I'll try to remember to check back here for if I get replied to/mentioned. Cheers.

I've been planning to transition my patreon to full time literotica for a little while, and read some of your comments here and on reddit, which were very helpful in understanding how to build a brand and focus primarily on series over one shots, etc, so thanks for that!

I'm currently developing my first major long term series which is definitely a lot of fun, but it is really challenging as well. This has always been a side hustle to me, so it's quite exciting to see if I can turn it into, like you say, a real job. Need to see if I can commit to the long writing days and word count targets for each month, and then this is just one series. Eventually there will need to be more. I've always been an ideas merchant, but most of them are short term. Coming up with full worlds of characters is a lot of fun though.

I started writing one longer series that had incest in it, but put that one on pause a while back. Do you happen to know how serious patreon is about an author who writes incest content, if they don't post it there specifically? Like could I put it in my linked discord, or is that a no no? Could I post it on literotica, far away from the patreon itself?

 

[RocketGrunt]

I started writing one longer series that had incest in it, but put that one on pause a while back. Do you happen to know how serious patreon is about an author who writes incest content, if they don't post it there specifically? Like could I put it in my linked discord, or is that a no no? Could I post it on literotica, far away from the patreon itself?

You are allowed to discuss off-site works that do not follow Patreon rules.
So if you write things on the Taboo/Incest section, the Mind Control section, the Reluctance/Nonconsent section, they can stay on Literotica, but you can't repost them on Patreon. You can discuss them, you can have posts announcing that they've come out, but you can't repost the text.

Also, be prepared to have your stuff put in Patreon jail from time to time even without you violating any rules. The naughty content finding is done by machine and the humans who double check its work are deeply disinterested and trigger happy with the censor hammer.

I've had a work frozen for "underage content" because it had an event take place 17 days after a birthday. That cleared up reasonably quickly. I've also had work frozen for "nonconsensual content" because someone used the word "rape." That one took over a month to fight and I lost my first appeal because the human reviewer didn't read far enough back to find the explicit consent that definitely existed. I ended up having to change a few words and resubmit.

But I still have my Pocket Monster University series and Stop Enslaving My Friends series here, and Patreon gives me no problems about that. I even put supplementary materials for those series on Patreon and get zero harassment over it. Character lists and Q&As don't have any mind control sex scenes, nonconsent sex scenes, or incest sex scenes literally in them, so they aren't against the terms of service.

 

[WaxPhilosophic]

Indie publishers are worth a look. You'll split the royalties, but they do the grunt work of editing, cover art, and distributing. JMS Books has been a great experience for me (I publish there as Davina Lee.) Not going to quit my day job, but it does alright. If your goal is reaching a wider audience, they're great for LGBTQ+ stories.

 

[HeyAll]

I use Substack and they allow incest btw

I find that most of my paid subscribers just want to support for my past services of free stories. I get that message a lot. In terms of exclusives, I dont have much yet, still expanding that. But I often get messages like 'long time reader, wanting to support' something like that.

 

[GemmaGemmaGemma]

You are allowed to discuss off-site works that do not follow Patreon rules.
So if you write things on the Taboo/Incest section, the Mind Control section, the Reluctance/Nonconsent section, they can stay on Literotica, but you can't repost them on Patreon. You can discuss them, you can have posts announcing that they've come out, but you can't repost the text.

Also, be prepared to have your stuff put in Patreon jail from time to time even without you violating any rules. The naughty content finding is done by machine and the humans who double check its work are deeply disinterested and trigger happy with the censor hammer.

I've had a work frozen for "underage content" because it had an event take place 17 days after a birthday. That cleared up reasonably quickly. I've also had work frozen for "nonconsensual content" because someone used the word "rape." That one took over a month to fight and I lost my first appeal because the human reviewer didn't read far enough back to find the explicit consent that definitely existed. I ended up having to change a few words and resubmit.

But I still have my Pocket Monster University series and Stop Enslaving My Friends series here, and Patreon gives me no problems about that. I even put supplementary materials for those series on Patreon and get zero harassment over it. Character lists and Q&As don't have any mind control sex scenes, nonconsent sex scenes, or incest sex scenes literally in them, so they aren't against the terms of service.

Thank you! It's nice that there's a middle ground at least, even if you have to be 5% more mysterious about it on patreon so they don't send you to incest jail. How do you tend to post stories when they're uploaded in advance of going on free sites like literotica? Do you post them as a PDF or something like that? I've seen it done that way before, but not sure what the alternatives are.

I use Substack and they allow incest btw

I find that most of my paid subscribers just want to support for my past services of free stories. I get that message a lot. In terms of exclusives, I dont have much yet, still expanding that. But I often get messages like 'long time reader, wanting to support' something like that.

Despite the sub in its name, I never realised substack was a paid subscriber site so never even contemplated it in the past. Will have to take a look at some point

 

[HeyAll]

Thank you! It's nice that there's a middle ground at least, even if you have to be 5% more mysterious about it on patreon so they don't send you to incest jail. How do you tend to post stories when they're uploaded in advance of going on free sites like literotica? Do you post them as a PDF or something like that? I've seen it done that way before, but not sure what the alternatives are.


Despite the sub in its name, I never realised substack was a paid subscriber site so never even contemplated it in the past. Will have to take a look at some point

You can make everything on Substack free, but you could also collect subscribition paid tiers and select which posts are behind paywalls.

 

[RocketGrunt]

Thank you! It's nice that there's a middle ground at least, even if you have to be 5% more mysterious about it on patreon so they don't send you to incest jail. How do you tend to post stories when they're uploaded in advance of going on free sites like literotica? Do you post them as a PDF or something like that? I've seen it done that way before, but not sure what the alternatives are.

Personally I put essays up just as text posts people can read, and the stories go up as both on-page text and as downloadable .doc files.

I put the chapters that can go on Patreon there a few days before I submit them to Literotica. Often this means that they come out on Literotica just 3 or 4 days later, but sometimes it's a lot later than that. publishing times on Literotica are subject to gremlins. Posting (and editing!) on Patreon is instant.

There are workarounds for banned content. I know some people have private discords or googledocs with the Patreon subscriptions linking to the off-site hosted materials. I haven't been brave enough to try that, but it should work because the content sniffer algorithms wouldn't see the banned content on the off-site hosted files.

 

[ChuckWolf]

This is a very useful and helpful thread.

 

[GemmaGemmaGemma]

Personally I put essays up just as text posts people can read, and the stories go up as both on-page text and as downloadable .doc files.

I put the chapters that can go on Patreon there a few days before I submit them to Literotica. Often this means that they come out on Literotica just 3 or 4 days later, but sometimes it's a lot later than that. publishing times on Literotica are subject to gremlins. Posting (and editing!) on Patreon is instant.

There are workarounds for banned content. I know some people have private discords or googledocs with the Patreon subscriptions linking to the off-site hosted materials. I haven't been brave enough to try that, but it should work because the content sniffer algorithms wouldn't see the banned content on the off-site hosted files.

I do have a discord that I am slowly starting to renovate. I think that could be a good place to grow a community long term and also to store the works that aren't allowed on some websites

 

[BreakTheBar]

Do you happen to know how serious patreon is about an author who writes incest content, if they don't post it there specifically? Like could I put it in my linked discord, or is that a no no? Could I post it on literotica, far away from the patreon itself?

So, the key here is that you cannot in any way make it seem like the Incest content you write is being funded by your Patreon subscriptions. That means that you would need to have more content releasing legitimately there than Incest content you put out. More on this below...

You can discuss them, you can have posts announcing that they've come out, but you can't repost the text.

There are workarounds for banned content. I know some people have private discords or googledocs with the Patreon subscriptions linking to the off-site hosted materials. I haven't been brave enough to try that, but it should work because the content sniffer algorithms wouldn't see the banned content on the off-site hosted files.

Do not do this, or use any other methods that folks have come up with to try and skirt Patreons rules. The simple fact of the matter is that Patreon has content rules and guidelines for two reasons; 1) because payment processors require it, and 2) because people try to use Patreon to do legitimately criminal acts, including but not limited to sex trafficking and child porn. Patreon has a duty to look into suspicious behaviour, and hiding your content through hoops that need to be jumped through can 'help' you dodge the moderation for a while, but I've seen multiple creators across several mediums lose their entire platform because of doing stuff like this. Just keep in mind that the people who are 'succeeding' at monetizing their non-ToS content aren't representative of how the rules work, they are representative of successfully skirting the rules for now.

If you want to use Patreon, just write within the guidelines. If you don't agree with the guidelines, find another way to monetize. It's a LOT of work down the drain, and you have no shot at arguing your case, if you are flagrantly breaking their rules and they take your platform away because of it.

Also, be prepared to have your stuff put in Patreon jail from time to time even without you violating any rules. The naughty content finding is done by machine and the humans who double check its work are deeply disinterested and trigger happy with the censor hammer.

This is true. I had my primary 'Here's a catalogued list of all my content on Patreon for ease of reference' pinned post flagged by moderation for innapropriate images of someone underage. There were, in fact, no images whatsoever in the post. I have a feeling someone just reported the post and their auto-mod flagged it. It took over a month for the 'appeal process' to work properly and put the post back up. I also had to stop using 'Daddy' as a joke name in my OFG series because I used it too much in a post and their automoderation flagged it as incest roleplay. I'm told that in a recent content guidelines Q&A livestream they said 'Daddy,' 'Papi,' etc. as long as it's isn't 'real' or roleplay is fine, but I presume that requires their hands-on moderators to dig for context, which takes time.

Character lists and Q&As don't have any mind control sex scenes, nonconsent sex scenes, or incest sex scenes literally in them, so they aren't against the terms of service.

This is technically true, which in most settings is my favourite kind of true. However, if you're seriously attempting to build a career path using Patreon as your primary monetization platform, why risk it?

I put the chapters that can go on Patreon there a few days before I submit them to Literotica. Often this means that they come out on Literotica just 3 or 4 days later, but sometimes it's a lot later than that. publishing times on Literotica are subject to gremlins. Posting (and editing!) on Patreon is instant.

If you're looking to grow your Patreon, I suggest building a larger lead-time between Patreon and Literotica. People like getting early access to content as a reward for their support, and a month/several chapters is a much stronger selling point than a few days or a week.

 

[RocketGrunt]

This is true. I had my primary 'Here's a catalogued list of all my content on Patreon for ease of reference' pinned post flagged by moderation for innapropriate images of someone underage. There were, in fact, no images whatsoever in the post. I have a feeling someone just reported the post and their auto-mod flagged it. It took over a month for the 'appeal process' to work properly and put the post back up. I also had to stop using 'Daddy' as a joke name in my OFG series because I used it too much in a post and their automoderation flagged it as incest roleplay. I'm told that in a recent content guidelines Q&A livestream they said 'Daddy,' 'Papi,' etc. as long as it's isn't 'real' or roleplay is fine, but I presume that requires their hands-on moderators to dig for context, which takes time.

One of my pieces that I had an argument about with the moderators, they finally gave me a list of offending passages and justifications for why they were breaching the TOS. It included a statement that one thing happened "during" a sex act when it factually happened before, and another statement that a thing happened "before" a conversation that it actually happened after. Both in regards to whether consent had been given.

The human moderators are using a content checking algorithm similar to TurnItIn or other plagiarism checking software. Various passages are popping up in yellow, orange, or red and the moderators are not reading even a paragraph before or after for context before deciding whether the passage is bad or not.

So while the rules are supposedly on your side when writing CNC & power play, I strongly suggest self-censoring language. Dangerous words like "rape," "daddy," etc. should not be used in sex scenes at all. Not because the rules say you can't, but because an out-of-context snippet generated by the algorithm will make it look like you're breaking the rules and the fight to get your content back can be as long as writing a whole new piece from scratch.

Those words can still be used in non-sex contexts. A character can talk about being a rape survivor or borrow car keys from their daddy. The algorithm will still flag those lines with some level of danger, but they will get passed by a human because they obviously aren't sex scenes.

 

[GemmaGemmaGemma]

Do not do this, or use any other methods that folks have come up with to try and skirt Patreons rules. The simple fact of the matter is that Patreon has content rules and guidelines for two reasons; 1) because payment processors require it, and 2) because people try to use Patreon to do legitimately criminal acts, including but not limited to sex trafficking and child porn. Patreon has a duty to look into suspicious behaviour, and hiding your content through hoops that need to be jumped through can 'help' you dodge the moderation for a while, but I've seen multiple creators across several mediums lose their entire platform because of doing stuff like this. Just keep in mind that the people who are 'succeeding' at monetizing their non-ToS content aren't representative of how the rules work, they are representative of successfully skirting the rules for now.

If you want to use Patreon, just write within the guidelines. If you don't agree with the guidelines, find another way to monetize. It's a LOT of work down the drain, and you have no shot at arguing your case, if you are flagrantly breaking their rules and they take your platform away because of it.

Thank you! I feel like Vin Diesel in that Fast & Furious movie when the two cars go down seperate roads, and Paul Walker is incest content. Goodbye old friend

 

[al55]

Hi, I've published some of my books on smashwords and draft2digital.

I had a question, for Smashwords I can get them to keep withholding payment till I hit a certain limit.

Is that the case if I get verified for Amazon as well through Draft2digital or do Amazon pay directly?

 

[MillieDynamite]

Don't use Smashwords or D2D to publish on Amazon; publish there yourself. You'll lose too much going through others.

Hi, I've published some of my books on smashwords and draft2digital.

I had a question, for Smashwords I can get them to keep withholding payment till I hit a certain limit.

Is that the case if I get verified for Amazon as well through Draft2digital or do Amazon pay directly?

 

[al55]

Thanks Millie! Can I ask is there a way of withholding payment from Amazon till I reach a certain threshold?

Don't use Smashwords or D2D to publish on Amazon; publish there yourself. You'll lose too much going through others.

 

[MillieDynamite]

It's a direct deposit into a bank account, and no, you get what you earn every month, but a month or two behind. Mine is a little longer as I have a publisher.

Thanks Millie! Can I ask is there a way of withholding payment from Amazon till I reach a certain threshold?