Patreon to the Rescue (Hopefully 🤞)

Finding stability in hosting and payment processing for my work has not been easy.

TL;DR - I’m moving the paid side of this publication to Patreon. (Still staying on Substack for free content, though, so please stick around!)

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I knew that when I started this whole operation there would be challenges. I had hoped that I could just start my little Substack, build up a subscriber base, convert some of them into paying customers, and live happily ever after. That was Plan-A. I think I’m now somewhere around Plan-F.

I had originally chosen SmugMug to host my full resolution images so that I could easily offer paying subscribers access to those files (plus prints if they wanted to order them) and so that I could sell the same images as one-time purchases to people who don’t want to pay monthly. I had read their terms of service and thought that my content would be perfectly within bounds. I even paid for a live Zoom call with one of their reps who helped me to think through the best implementation for my purposes and got me started with organization on the platform. He saw all of my content and didn’t have a word to say about it being potentially out of bounds.

Then, just a couple months later, I got a rather pointed email from SmugMug’s content police, saying that several of my images violated their terms of service and that I had 72 hours (!) to take down the offending images or risk deactivation of my account. The email did not point out the problematic files, but simply repeated the verbiage of the content policy with the pertinent parts in bold. (As if the change in font somehow made the policy clearer.) I proactively went through dozens of folders of images and deleted anything that I thought might be in violation, only to be told a few days later that my portfolio still contained disallowed content. After a few more exasperated emails, their rep eventually pointed out several files that were not allowed, one of which was this one:

I dunno, man. These things are subjective, but I wouldn’t put this kind of image on the provocative end of the spectrum. At this point I realized that there was no sense in fighting any longer - SmugMug was not going to be the best place for me to host my images. I gave up on offering prints and hastily cobbled together a solution so that I could at least keep offering what I had promised my paying subscribers (and still offer one-time downloads to non-subscribers): sidestack.io. Created specifically to help Substack writers offer digital downloads, it was a decent enough solution to keep providing my images to you, the readers. (It isn’t perfect, mind you - it requires that I charge 50 cents for downloads even to my paying customers, because it doesn’t have a way to offer things for zero dollars.)

And then, the nail in the coffin.

A few weeks ago I got another pointily-worded email, this time from Stripe, the integrated payment processing service for Substack. My business, according to the message, falls into the category of “restricted and prohibited”, which means that Stripe will not process payments for my publication if it involves “adult content”. I tried to appeal and plead my case, but a rejection came back almost immediately.

Substack does not offer any other integrated payment processors to handle subscription fees, so this means that I am unable to monetize my newsletter directly through this platform. (It will mean the same, surely, for any other authors who produce content similar to mine.) I don’t really have time to wait around for Substack to fix this (if they even intend to), so I’ve decided to handle all of my paid content on Patreon instead.

A quick clarification on what this does not mean.

I’m not shutting down Naked Prose or even drastically changing how I run things. I will still post model shoots twice a month and offer an abbreviated look at each one for free to everyone. Subscribers will still get these in their email inboxes as always. This also means that everyone will be able to comment on all of my articles again, something that I lamented the loss of when I enabled paid subscriptions.

I’m cautiously optimistic about the upside of moving paid content to Patreon. It’s a well-established platform that is better in many ways for what I want to offer anyway, and I will be taking advantage of those new opportunities. You might be asking why I didn’t just use Patreon from the beginning. Fair question! In hindsight I probably should have, but I wanted to keep things as simple as possible, and being able to do everything here on Substack with one platform was very appealing to me. It is more work to have to manage content in two places instead of one, but the simple solution has now been taken away.

So, what happens now?

First of all, paid subscriptions for this Substack have been paused. If you’re a paying subscriber, you will not be billed for any future months. People who paid for a full year up-front will get prorated refunds. There won’t be any future paywalled content here on the Substack site.

I have posted my latest photoshoot writeup (with Ana, if you haven’t read it yet) in the new format here on Substack as usual and the complete version as my first post on Patreon. If you’re a paying subscriber (thank you!) and want to keep seeing all of my work, you’ll have to sign up over there. You can use this button if you missed the link at the top:

Patreon allows me to offer quite a bit more to my subscribers, so I have already thought about what to do differently. At the moment, there is just one base tier, called Patron of the Arts, which entitles you to the following:

• Access to complete writeups for my professional model shoots, still posted twice per month

• High resolution downloads of the full image set (at no additional cost)

• The ability to comment on posts and chat with other subscribers

• Input into future posts and shoots

I have also started shooting additional content that I will make available in the future in a higher tier, called Behind the Lens. Subscribers at this level will have access to the following content, in addition to the basic tier:

• Behind-the-scenes photos and videos of the shoot

• Gear talk explaining what I used for the shoot and why

• Image editing tutorial videos with RAW images to edit yourself

• My evaluation of what went well in the shoot and what could have gone better

I wasn’t grabbing BTS content in all of my previous shoots, so I can only offer these things in the future. Once I have enough shoots documented in this new way, I will start offering this higher tier for those who are interested. Looking at my current shooting schedule, I’d say this is probably a few months down the road.

It’s going to take some time to repost all of my shoots at Patreon, but I’m already working on it. Eventually everything that is already on this site will be posted in full over there, and the posts here will be converted to the free format.

Thank you, as always, for reading, liking, commenting, sharing, following, and subscribing. I hope this is the start of a new and prosperous chapter for Naked Prose. I’ve learned too much to quit now, so I’ll continue to roll with the punches and come out stronger on the other side. Hopefully I’ll see many of you there.

Sincerely,

The Naked Prose guy