Oh dear me. If you told me this blog was going to have stretched through nine years and now four relationships, being one of the most lasting achievements of my life (for good or for ill). It’s had numerous hiatus, only to pop back up again, when I least expect it and get sucked back into writing.
I’ve made no secret that a chief barrier to participation has been my love life. Dead bedrooms do not birth good text. When the core of your withered inspiration is the decline of your connection to another human, that marks a pull away from trying to talk about sex, because I try to avoid using the candidness of my personal life to potentially humiliate people.
(I mean outside the sexual sense!)
Primary projects for O Miss Pearl
- Improve site finances
- Increase content
- Give the site a facelift & do back architecture work
- Replace back art
Site finances – And support!
Hosting costs are a few hundred a year, more if people are visiting. That, of course, doesn’t cover hours of making the content itself.
I could aggressively try to chase sponsored links, but that generally means filling the place up with “Buy V1gra!” style SEO guest posts, which rarely come from brand that would remotely interest either me or you. Occasionally I don’t necessarily have a problem with it, but sex work directories/ads are the next level of content sponsors, and with the laws in my country still trying to get their shit together re: if we can ditch our bastardized nordic model, I don’t feel confident trusting that as a revenue stream.
There’s always affiliate links, but that’s generally only a few dollars here and there, and the main meat and drink of the thriving sex toy reviewer circuit are vibrators (which don’t work for me) and dildoes, which I am a rare enough user on myself to not make it worth it. And, being very candid, just like my hiatuses tend to follow dry patches, the idea of masturbating on a deadline kind of squicks me.
That meant looking into donations
I first tried Kofi, and although I had some luck, the fact that is reveals user’s private paypals make it a poor choice for femdom stuff. So I did what I have been considering for a while.
I started a Patreon
(And of course the link to my Patreon is here.)
Patreon is probably the most neutral option for funding, designed to be a means for fans to provide small payments. I had delayed on this largely because of concern that I wasn’t going to provide the right kind of rewards, or keep my content up, but this year I decided that I would let my readers by the judge of that.
I’ve also tried to come up with some exclusive content. You can see one of the example on the side- decent length femdom fiction, with a goal of a monthly output.
So far it’s going ok. My favourite part is mailing off personalized rewards to my $25 patrons, since there’s something particularly fun about putting together an old timey letter.
Increasing the Content
Inspo, both writing and drawing, has been surprisingly high for a year of plague. Because I manage volunteering, a chronic illness, etc… as well as a cash money job, I am extremely skeptical about expecting I can produce in a consistent fashion. It made me hold off on the Patreon
The Aesthetic & Infrastructure Updates
A 2011 internet website is gonna have some issues. As I promised, my Kofi fundraising paid for templates and increased graphical capacity (I have a subscription to Spark Posts). The site also got shifted to a new database, as the old was was seriously effecting load time, and i’ve otherwise generally tried to give it a facelift of sorts.
I am not completely sold on the current formatting for reading the posts, but it’s a work in progress.
Replacing Back Art
This site was also a learn as you go, and younger me had a waaay more casual attitude to crediting random images I popped into posts. As such, part of my strategy has been the work of going through my back catalogue and shuffling out stuff that definitely doesn’t qualify as fair use.
Where are we going for 2021?
I dunno? I am just as shocked as you to be back from hiatus, tbh.