Beep boop, hi everyone! It’s a lilian here with a weather update for our little forum:
The forecast for this week is pleasant with a chance of new members.
I write about why in the Context header, but if that’s too many words for your brain, please feel free to skip to the Takeaway!
Context
We’re now a bit over two weeks into the site being live and from my end, things have been going really well! Seeing all the heart everyone has put into our garden already has been so moving. It really does feel like a place to call home.
Of course with success will soon come the inevitable server expenses (ack)! Don’t worry though, I wouldn’t have started this if that wasn’t something I thought I could handle.
I don’t currently run advertising in any form, so that means that I need to actually get my Patreon in front of more people. Then the Patreon goes hand-in-hand with the forum, so I think you can see where this is going…
I think at this point a lot of online creator types tend to just throw the throttle wide-open and start blasting Patreon links wherever they can, but that sounds… really stressful ^_^;
I’ve already started it out light with the Patreon credits at the end of my most recent video which I figured wouldn’t be YouTube algorithm hotcakes.
Now the next step is going to be one of those YouTube community posts. From what I’ve seen, those basically only go to the core audience (so people who already share our values!), don’t have a lot of longevity in the algorithm, and definitely don’t go viral, so I think that’s going to be a really good way to start trickling people in without it being overwhelming right off the bat. That way we can all get some practice bringing new people in without it being too much all at once!
Thinking about reaching out to new people can be really unnerving for me, but then I think about how many super cool people (and creatures!) I’ve gotten to meet, and I really can’t imagine the forum without you (and it) <3. At some point, everyone here was new, and we’d lose out on meeting so many other cool people & entities if I decided that this was the point where I walled up the garden.
Takeaway
Some time in the next couple of days, I’ll make a YouTube community post saying that I have a forum and a Patreon, so I think we’ll probably see some new people pop up!
This forum, you, and other entities that don’t go by “you” are all really important to me so I’ll keep doing my best to be a good steward of the garden, especially while we’re growing and haven’t reached a steady-state yet.
P.S.:
If you cannot or do not want to put money into the Patreon, please do not feel bad or guilty! You being here and you being you is what makes this place worth caring about in the first place! I can get dollars all sorts of ways, but there’s only one way to have a community with you in it.
