I'm confused as to exactly who "This man" refers to in this instance - is it whoever is Shirtaloon at patreon? Or is it the person who made the parent comment? Are they the same person? Sorry, I just wanted a little more context for the this man part, everything else seems reasonable.

Shirtaloon. Sorry, english is not my first language

thanks, I was just wondering, totally ok vagueness - English is a language notoriously easy to be vague in.

> He writes utter shit, sub-mediocre literature.

I'm someone who has read that story, at least the public parts of it, and I object slightly to your quality assessment... ;) I don't argue it's great literature or anything, more like the literary equivalent of popcorn - a fun and interesting story with not a lot of depth. So, entertainment, not life-changing prose...

And while I'm surprised he gets $13k a month, I'm not _very_ surprised. I'm one of his $1/month patrons, and I also give $1-$3 a month to a lot of other writers, YouTubers, and other creators. For another internet serial writer, see https://www.patreon.com/Wildbow

One of my criteria for supporting such creators is for them to make their creations public, even if some do it after a time delay. My rationale is that, this way, I both support the creators, and the creation of "culture", for a certain definition of that word, that other people would be able to enjoy for free. And while this might never replace traditional publishing and isn't suitable for everything, you've demonstrated that some people can certainly make a living this way.

How the frick did they build up such a paying audience so quickly? A quick google search of his/her username doesn't bring up much info...

Going to the "Royal Road" site they mention on their Patreon:

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/26294/he-who-fights-with-m...

It has a "Statistics" drop down. Expanding that out shows:

Total Views : 7,598,887 Average Views : 32,063

Guessing the average views is per chapter, which they seem to have 237 of at the moment.

Looks like they're fairly popular in their area, and have turned that into a good revenue stream.

---

Their "Scribble Hub" site is showing 760k views for the content there too:

https://www.scribblehub.com/series/41306/he-who-fights-with-...

there's a lot of these niche creators on patreon like this. I think the key here is that these people have small but really dedicated audiences.

A similar thing that surprised me is 'reaction channels' on youtube. It's often very small youtube channels with say, 10k subscribers, but they have a few hundred paying patreon followers and pull in 3-5k per month just doing tv show reactions.

money laundering route perhaps?

That’s my default answer for anything involving anonymous transfer of assets. Double so when you get a third party to act as the middle man.

I'm not a money laundering expert but I thought the point was to get a bunch of cash, from drug sales or whatever you don't want anybody asking questions about, turned into legitimate-looking income. Income from Patreon might look legit, but how would you funnel your cash into Patreon contributions without putting it in a bank account first (and setting off the very alarms you're trying to avoid)?

Imagine I am in a shady business and want to collect $13000 a month clean on my bank account, without attracting IRS etc. attention. I can have people (or myself) load prepaid MasterCard plastic with dirty cash and subscribe them to my Patreon.

Not implying anyone is doing that, just that it looks possible.

You can distribute it across multiple subscribers. $1k/month cash deposits for 1000 people will raise less questions than $1M/month for one person. That said, whole operation looks rather expensive, there should be much cheaper and easier ways than fake Patreon accounts.

Organizing 1000 people and trusting them with $1000 per month is not as easy as it seems...

I wonder what marketing/advertisement work was done to achieve this. It's not like you just need to open a Patreon account and start getting $10k+ immediately.

P.S.: BTW, all this money is "donations", aren't they? So under a lot of legislations you wouldn't even have to pay taxes on that.

Doubtful, I think for something to qualify as a tax-exempt donation the recipient has to qualify under 501(c) (aka charities/non-profits). These might be classified as "gifts" (which are exempt up to $15,000 per giver per year) but most likely it's considered a subscription (since the patrons get early access to content in return for their payments) and the author would have to pay income tax.

> So under a lot of legislations you wouldn't even have to pay taxes on that.

lol. try that in the USA. I dare you.

USA is not the only country in the world, you know.

Doesn't a "com" TLD generally imply USA / US audience?

Lol, absolutely not.

Just name it the bible v2 and the patreon being a religion.

sole proprietorships and llc's, which would be the main mode of organizing a small company for donations, are for the most part pass-through to individual income for tax purposes and so would have roughly the same tax overhead (aka 0%) as a non-profit religious entity

also: one could just as easily create a 'x rights activism' group as a tax-free non-profit so why single out religion specifically?

It's a good example and while being around the longest. I'm guessing some people find the comment offensive and so I won't add much more on why.

thanks for posting that. it initally seemed unfair but sheds an important light to this other side to the story (and to the comment).