Thursday, August 10, 2017

Status Update: Backing Down from Patreon

Status update: I'm about to run out and see whether it's possible to sell $55 worth of small handknitted items in time to keep electricity connected at the Cat Sanctuary. (A sponsor pledged to keep my lights on for a year; this person is not known for fidelity to long-term commitments.)

You need to be sponsoring this blog:

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4923804

Obviously I can't afford to go on sponsoring e-friends on Patreon, although I'd like to. So I thought I'd post briefly about the experience of sponsoring someone on Patreon, for those who feel afraid to try it:

1. You do need a separate, very small, Paypal-specific bank account, because Paypal will eagerly deliver your bank account information along with your Patreon payment. I hadn't been aware of that. Somehow I'd expected Paypal to process payments to Patreon the way it processes deposits into the bank and/or payments to other individual Paypal users, with a nice straightforward "X has sent you money via Paypal." However, it's always been a good idea to have a Paypal-specific bank account. If you also have large savings or investment accounts, it's a good idea to set up your Paypal bank account at a separate bank.

2. Having linked your Paypal account to your Paypal bank account, then, click on the large rectangular button on the right side of the screen, the one that says "BECOME A PATRON." Follow the instructions that pop up. Don't all web sites that process payments make it very easy to send them money? Patreon certainly does. You'll become an online sponsor in five minutes or less.

3. If your income during the past year was over US$12,000, you should be sending this web site at least one and really more like five dollars a month, anyway. You'd pay that much for a magazine, and although it's impossible for one person to generate a whole magazine as distinct from a newsletter, the Link Logs were certainly delivering more information and entertainment than most magazines. (It was your choice, not mine, to discontinue the Link Logs; they can come back.)

4. If, however, your income was genuinely low, or you're in some sort of ghastly financial straits we don't need to describe in detail here, you may need to be a one-time sponsor. My income was genuinely low, so after sponsoring two e-friends just to show how easy it is, I needed to make sure I was a one-time sponsor. Right. As a sponsor you have a Patreon account of your own. Your account page will show a squarish button with three horizontal lines on it at the top right corner. (I think that's intended to be a widely used Internet symbol that suggests something in the real world, although when I look at it I can't see what.) Clicking on this button will open a menu button that includes "YOUR PLEDGES." Click on those words.

5. If you've sponsored a lot of people, you'll have to cancel each pledge individually. Click on the name of the Patreon account to which you want to stop sending a monthly pledge. The screen that opens will display a menu, on the right side, that will include "Delete Pledge." Click on those words. The system will ask you to confirm that you're deleting the pledge and to choose one from a list of reasons why you're doing that. The list of reasons will include a line like "I intended to pledge for a limited time." If you feel so moved, you can add a line about your income or your dire financial straits.

It should be as easy as that. Now go and support this web site...even if you hate it, the computer is making it clear that you love to hate it, so pay up.

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4923804

(Should this post include an Amazon book link? Why not?



The Amazon page indicates that this book was not written by a dog, even as it might easily have been nonverbally dictated to the human, and is more "common sense" than funny.)

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