ErosBlog has been rumbling along now for more than thirteen years. There’s no shame in admitting that sometimes, the blog — which is me — has gotten stuck in a rut. There are plenty of posts I’m proud of, sure. But too often, here we are: still in the rut.

On too many days, an Erosblog post is one line of text, one image, and perhaps an attribution. My loyal readers deserve better. What does a post like that have to offer, that would make ErosBlog more worth visiting than a randomly-selected porn Tumblr?

sample tumblr-style erosblog post

I believe my very best sex blogging work has more in common with the Bernard Montorgueil post I put up yesterday. I’m proudest of the posts that synthesize my fascination with obscure porn, my decades of “experience” as a porn enthusiast, my formidable search skills, and my willingness to pursue a research project down into the tiniest and most ridiculous electronic dead ends and internet rat-holes. Sometimes I may call this higher-quality work by different names, like “erotic art curation or forensic photoarcheology or deep-dive provenance research into viral photographs or reluctant internet-business journalism with cynical commentary.” But call them what you will, all these higher-quality posts share one thing in common: every last one of them took at least half a day to create. That’s minimum. Some take much longer. A search-heavy research project can consume dozens of hours, because there’s always a deeper rabbit warren to get lost in, or another broken link to pursue into the most gruesome depths of the Internet Archives.

On the other hand, I can find and select and crop and make a one-image post in five minutes or less. Is it any wonder that ErosBlog can sometimes go days or even weeks looking like just another slow-paced image blog?

The brutal truth is that, as a business, ErosBlog doesn’t generate enough revenue to justify spending half of my work day (or even longer) on a single post. Once upon a time, it did, back when a lot more people still bought porn-site subscriptions after following my affiliate links. These days? No. Most of the time I spend here now is time I have to steal from better-paying work that I enjoy rather less. Without boring you with my troubles (we all haz them) even the “better-paying work” I steal the ErosBlog time from doesn’t pay all that awesomely well. To meet my responsibilities properly, I “ought” to be doing more of that work, while further reducing the time I spend here.

I would find that outcome…unwelcome. Maybe you would, too.

This is all to explain why I’m looking at the crowdfunding model, and especially the recurring-patronage version that Patreon has pioneered. Perhaps ten thousand people still look at ErosBlog on an average day; that’s down considerably from our heyday, but it remains a lot of people. If I had an easy way to collect small sums on a regular basis from a slim percentage of my most appreciative readers, it could radically transform the economics of the venture. Set it up correctly (and this I consider to be the genius of the Patreon-style model) and it would actually create daily incentives to do more of the good work, and less of the lazy stuff.

Of course, I might instead make the humbling discovery that nobody values this project enough to contribute actual money to its maintenance and improvement. That, too, would be useful to know. Then maybe I could do a little more paying work and still find time to return to my computer gaming habit!

That wouldn’t completely suck.

computer-gaming-hobby

This post is here because you’re most likely going to be seeing “fund me” pitches in the near future. I think it’s only fair to let my loyal readers know why that will be happening. If you’re reading all of this, you definitely qualify as a loyal reader! Thanks for that.