I never wanted to overload this site with ads. For that reason, it might be easy to miss that the advertisement sections on this site have actually vanished.

But they have, indeed, disappeared. Why?

They were removed because of the generosity of the folks who support my work as a “builder of things that are given to arts-humans for free.” My first funding goal on Patreon was to get to $5 per release, at which point I would remove the ads on Small Venue Survivalist. We reached that goal over the weekend – and it might not seem all that amazing, but it really is.

I’ve tried to fundraise for arts-support projects before, but it’s never worked out. To the best of my remembrance, each previous attempt went exactly nowhere. If I’ve ever met a funding goal for any other project of mine, I can’t remember having done so. As such, to even reach a “baby step” goal is tremendous. So…this is a pretty excellent Monday for me. 🙂

I set the $5 goal for “no more ads” because it would mean per-release revenue that, quite frankly, would beat the per-release revenue from the ad program by a HUGE margin. Now, I don’t want to rag on ad-revenue sharing programs unnecessarily. The simple fact, though, is that sharing revenue from Internet advertisements is a very “traditional” sort of ad-supported content model. That is, it’s just like ad-supported content on 20th century broadcast media: For it to work decently, the audience has to be massive. If you cater to a niche, and don’t yet have a mountain of enthused followers, your ad-based revenue is going to be miniscule…and you may never get to actually use any of it in a reasonable time, because hitting the threshold for an actual payout can take months or YEARS.

“Game changer” has become an overused buzz-phrase over the last little while, but it’s still plenty relevant in some situations. Situations like this.

The major share of credit properly goes to my current supporters on Patreon. Even so, if you’ve ever shared one of these articles on Facebook, or taken a gander at my “Please Support My Projects” page, or even just read something here (or enjoyed some of my bits and pieces on Deviantart), I think you can be counted as having contributed some small piece of momentum to what’s starting to happen right now.

The game. You have changed it.

Thank you.