PATREON : https://www.patreon.com/visualnovelreviews
If you have been following my website for a while, then you will have noticed that I often add new additions, upgrades, and aesthetic improvements over time. For example: my biggest change was when I did a complete website overhaul and the server was down for the entire day.
This was due to more funding from my own pocket in order to access more tools to improve the site and increased server capacity for my website to stay up and running. If you regularly visit my website, you will also notice that I did add a patreon section to my side panel a while back—however, I have never formally announced it until today.
The reason is because I personally had reservations about starting one, and I didn’t want people to feel obligated to donate to the website. However, after much deliberation I finally decided to officially make a post about it and why I have decided to use patreon.
WHO AM I?
Hello, I’m Cherry and I’m the writer behind the website Visual Novel Reviews. I initially began this website out of passion to write down my thoughts, opinions, rants or raves on the Visual Novels that I played. I thought it would be a great way to interact with, inform and expand the Visual Novel/Otome Game community. I never would have expected that in less than a year, my website would have grown so much and developed such an amazing following from it.
I cannot thank you enough for the support and it’s the wonderful feedback that I read from my readers that inspires me to keep writing. I read every single comment, and they never fail to make me smile or make my day. It makes me feel like all my hard work is recognised, and I’ve had amazing opportunities to work with companies such as Aksys Games, Idea Factory International, MangaGamer and NISA America with reviewing their new game releases. These companies continually localise games that I have been a fan of since the very beginnings of my endeavors into the genre of Visual Novels.
WHY DO I NEED YOUR HELP?
Unfortunately as much as I would like to devote more time to writing, it really isn’t feasible with the amount of funding and schedule that I currently have. I am currently a fourth-year university student, aspiring to be a clinical psychologist specialising in child psychology. As my masters program has a high GPA requisite and my course is very demanding; I spend four days a week at university and the bulk of my time at home is spent studying. Whatever time I have left over, I am working at university as a tutor.
Currently how I fund my website is through advertisements on my side panels and affiliate links, however this pays for only 30% of my monthly website cost. The other 70% is completely out of my own pocket to keep the website up and running, and to purchase games to review.
WHAT KIND OF WORK DO I DO?
Despite how it looks, behind the scenes a review takes me hours to write. I only want to post quality content for my readers, and I continue to work on them until it is to a standard that I believe people will enjoy reading. My average review count is 5000-8000 words, although some of my reviews such as ‘Black Wolves Saga: Bloody Nightmare‘ totaled 13000 words.
As you can imagine, this takes me anywhere between 10-20hrs to write. This does not include the time spent afterwards proofreading, formatting and editing. My website itself I have spent well over 30 hours coding and learning how to design and format. Prior to this, I had absolutely no idea how to use CSS or HTML.
WHAT IS MY GOAL WITH PATREON?
I am currently making no profit whatsoever from my website, despite the time, effort, money and work that I place into it. The hours I spend on it does not translate into profit, and as a result it will only be a hobby at best in my current predicament. It is something I am personally funding out of genuine enjoyment as part of the Visual Novel & Otome community. My aim with Patreon is not to make it a full-time job, but to be able to self-fund the website without having to constantly dig into my own expenses every month.
In the worst case scenario (which I would want to avoid) is for the website to shut down, if in the situation that I am unable to personally fund the website anymore.
Every single bit helps, and I am forever thankful to each and everyone of you that continue to support me and help me in continuing to do what I love.
If you have read up until this point, thank you so much for taking the time to read it until the end! I want to stress that there is no obligation whatsoever to donate, and just your understanding as to why I have decided to open up a patreon is more than enough for me.
Your continual support in visiting my website, reading my content, and expressing how much you enjoy my work in the comment section always inspires me to keep going with the website. Just things like sharing my patreon/website on social media or turning off ad-block when browsing the website helps immensely as well. You can do this via entering visualnovelreviews.com → clicking ad block → select ‘don’t run on this page’ and ‘don’t run on pages on this site’.
And finally, thank you so much to Milkteababy for being my first patron!
EDIT: Over 50% of my monthly website hosting cost has been reached! Every dollar would help so much in order for me to self-sustain the website and keep it up and running!
EDIT 2: 90% of my monthly website hosting cost has been reached! Thank you so much for the support, I wouldn’t be anywhere near as passionate about writing if it wasn’t for all my readers!
EDIT 3: 100% of my monthly website hosting cost has been reached! I cannot believe I was able to finally achieve this goal, and it makes me so immensely happy as it helps me out so much every month. It means ‘visualnovelreviews.com‘ is here to stay for good.
I’m not planning on stopping anytime soon, as writing is something I truly enjoy and has always been a passionate hobby of mine. Especially with the feedback/comments I receive on social media and the website itself. I would feel like I’m letting you guys down, when so many people look forward to reviews/updates on the website.
I wouldn’t be here without you, my readers. I cannot thank you enough for supporting me. I do have other stretch goals implemented, and ANY contribution thereafter (whether big or small!) will assist me in improving the website as a whole. Even something like $1 from many people makes a huge difference. For the stretch goals, it will enable me to: produce more regular content, try out more games, potentially have future giveaways, QOL/technical/design improvements to the website etc.
Love Always,
Cherry
Visual Novel Reviews 
I think your experience is the same as most Bloggers out there. I began my web novel ‘The Red Lands’ last year in wordpress and got nice feedback, the traffic was growing very well. So like the baby learning to walk I left the free wordpress and joined an affiliated server to host my site. I got Ad sense and began to make money. All I can say is the plan went up in smoke. That was not enough to even buy a coffee. I just joined Patreon to try and wean out my loyal readers from the ones who love reading my story for free. Hope your experience out there works out.
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I feel you on the costs, it’s why I’m still on the free plan. It also doesn’t help that WordPress doesn’t let us use any kind of ads so we could get any kind of earnings to actually justify jumping from the free to the paid. Even blogspot allows it, but WP take advantage since a free blog gets ads for being in the free plan
I wish you all the best with Patreon and that you can actually earn enough to at least pay the expenses. Good luck!
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Yeah, it really sucks how wordpress handles the plan upgrades and doesn’t offer adsense to free users who attract a decent amount of traffic every month. The earning rates from WordAds is also abysmal/fluctuates all the time every month as there’s really no consistent ‘threshold’ or set rate per amount of impressions viewed. But I decided to stay with WordPress anyways since I find the interface so much easier to use and customise in comparison to blogspot 😦
Thank you so much for the support!
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Plus WordPress takes advantage of us free users because they put ads in our blog anyway, which doesn’t make sense to not allow us to get profits from it but they can ugh
Oh yeah blogspot is yikes but I was looking at Weebly and Wix, but I already have a following here and it’s easier to do stuff here, but tbh I’m not pleased we can’t capitalize while wp gets to 😤
Of course, good luck and hope you succeed!
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Sorry to hear this, cherry. I’m having the same problem, so I don’t think it’s feasible to upgrade my blog. However, I’ve been a reader of yours and love the quality content you put out!! If I can, I will happily donate what I can. Unfortunately, my education is also greatly eating into my finances. I’m glad you brought up this topic because a lot of readers who are not bloggers don’t know how time conauming and expensive it is to run a site for otome game reviews. Don’t get me wrong, I’m so happy to have readers and I love what I do. But as you said, it can only be a hobby at this point-an expensive one. I simply had no idea just how expensive blogging could be. If I can donate, I most certainly will!! I wish you the best!!!
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Thank you so much for the kind words Leafy!! I don’t think anyone fully realises how much running a website costs and how much work that goes into it until you finally start one of your own. But I do find it rewarding and very enjoyable, so I fortunately will be able to continue funding it for now 🙂 I could never accept donations if you’re personally struggling with education eating into your finances as well, as I definitely relate to that far too much.
However, I do greatly appreciate the sentiment and just the fact that you continually read my blog and content is more than enough support for me 🙂 Thank you again!
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