June 2025 Patreon Update
During the last update in January I mentioned that my place of employment was in the process of being sold and my job situation was up in the air. Well February 1st my place of employment was sold in basically a merger-type deal and I was in a "train your own replacement" type of situation. Then a couple weeks later a bunch of original employees of my new employer quit throwing the place into a bit of chaos. This worked in my favor giving me a few extra months of employment I wouldn't have otherwise have. But last Friday, May 30th, was my last day of employment.
I had seen the writing on the wall so I've been planning but currently I haven't found new employment. I'm in a dying field that AI will kill off in the next couple years anyway so it is time for a change. Going forward I'm not exactly sure what I will do but I'm currently weighing my options.
Ideally I would love to work on the website fulltime but currently that isn't an option. Yesterday was my first day not employed in over 20 years and I spent the majority of the day making a reading order. This patreon is the only form of monetization I have for the site. I might be able to get by with putting ads on the site but I have always resisted doing that and I will continue to do so. The number of paid patreon members has hovered between 45-50 since the patreon opened and while I'm extremely grateful (especially since technically it is my only source of income at the moment) to all the members, I would need several times this amount of paid members to be able to work on the site full time.
Most likely my future includes either going back to school or at the very least extensive training to pursue a new career. Currently I'm not sure how this would affect the site but it would most likely result in having less time to work on it. Since I saw my employment situation running out a few months ago I've saved and planned a bit so I will be taking June to decide on my future and go over my options.
For the immediate future nothing will change and reading orders will continue to come out weekly. Through June I plan to spend a lot of my free time working on orders to hopefully build up a stockpile so that reading orders will continue no matter what the future holds. Normally around now I would start working on the next part of the Marvel Master Reading Order but I'm going to hold out on that for a bit until I work out what my longer term plans are.
If anyone has any character requests for reading orders please leave your suggestions in the comments.
Comments (4)
Hi boss, just wanted to reiterate that you have a small but dedicated community behind you and I'm sure that they would be open to helping in whatever way you need
Just revisiting this and hoping you’re doing okay. Just joined as a paid member to do my part. The Master Reading Order is my lifeblood and how I read all my comics. Love what you do, man. Keep it up.
Hey man this totally sucks to hear, super sorry about that. I think you would be well within your right to put ads on the website, you should absolutely be rewarded for all the hard work that you’ve put in, and closing out some ads is really a minor inconvenience for everything that you offer and have put into that site, and I’m sure while you have 45-50 dedicated people on here who are happy to pay I’m sure there are TONS more using that site daily, so I think any way that you can capitalize and monetize the work you’ve put in, you should absolutely do it. I’m someone who buys comics weekly but waits for your master guides to read everything at once because they are so thorough and so well done, and the books and stories make so much more sense when following your guides so it’s a bummer to hear they’re not on the horizon, but I get not wanting to start that undertaking. I don’t use the individual character guides as much because I love reading the whole story, but I understand how huge an undertaking it is because there really isn’t anything close to what you provide out there. I hope things turn around for you man, because you have an awesome product and I would hate to see things change, I’m sure a lot of us on here are happy to help in anyway we can!
Sorry to hear this man! Hoping everything works out for you. Do you currently have or are you considering a spot for one time donations to the Patreon? I’d be happy to pitch in