Content Creation & Monetization - ABDL Research Presentation!

[PeculiarChangeling]

I recently gave a panel at capcon about AB/DL content creation and monetization, with Pudding (Of Sophie & Pudding) as my co-presenter!

As part of this, I did a bunch of research and data gathering, looking into what works, what doesn't, and how to make money with ABDL writing and art. Here's what I learned!

 

(I intended to release this as more of an essay, but I'm sick and impatient so imma do it like this instead.)

#1: Whether we're talking Writing or Art, I found two factors that correlated strongly with high levels of income. Everything else had very weak or no correlation.

 

Factor #1:
How often are you posting content?

Creators who posted a couple times a week consistently saw far more success. Those who posted 3-4 times a month made a modest side income. Those who posted monthly or less were not making significant amounts of money.

 

Factor #2:
How many places do you post to?

Creators who consistently posted to many sites had reliably more income than those who posted to only a few sites. 80% of creators with an income over 1000$/month posted to 6+ platforms.

 

The vast, vast majority of ABDL creators who monetize their work don't make enough money from that single income source to meet their living expenses. I don't think anyone should try and monetize their art with the expectation of doing it full time. However...

It's very reasonable (not guaranteed, but reasonable) to build a income stream of a few hundred dollars a month, if you're able to post consistently. And while that won't let you quit your job, it could be enough to cover bills or help save up for big expenses, which is great!

 

As for the other big thing I learned: comissions.

Writers, y'all *need to hecking charge more*.

I found *zero correlation whatsoever* between pricing for fiction c0mms and difficulty in finding clients to write for. (I found similar results for visual artists.)

 

The vast majority of writers who responded to the survey are undercharging for commissions. Over half charged less than 2/c word, often stating a belief that higher prices would lead to difficulties finding customers.

However, this assumption wasn't help up by the data.

 

While there is probably a price point that makes it impossible to find customers, I was unable to find one in the data. The highest prices listed, 10c/word, were mine - and I have not had trouble finding clients.

For creators struggling to find clients, it's not about prices.

 

It's 100% about visibility and clarity.

Creators who post often and have clear, precise commission terms that are easy to find and understand were able to get commissions easily.

Creators who post in unclear or sparse ways have trouble finding commission clients.

That's it.

 

I even have a case study to prove it, featuring colleague and friend, Clairanette!

Her price had previously been 1/c word, or .6c/word on projects over 5,000 words. Despite these rock-bottom prices, she was unable to find new clients or get many people to take her commissions...

 

and when she did get commissions, she made no money off them. She’d been had a loyal following, and I can vouch for the fact that writing quality was not the issue.

Her rate of writing averages 1000 words/day - in other words, she was charging 10$ for a day of her effort.

 

She didn’t have a price sheet, and when doing commissions, would just announce them on her Discord with simple messages like, “I’m taking commissions”.

Prices were not given per word, but instead were ‘Per story’. (IE, “20$ for a custom story.”)

 

She was thinking of increasing to 2c/word, but worried that it would mean she wouldn’t get any clients.

After we talked, however, I convinced her to try a few things.

 

She increased her prices to 7.5c per word, with a discount of 6c/word for paid subscribers, and, instead of just announcing on Discord and asking people to message her for further info, created a detailed commission guideline and announced it on all of her socials as well as posting an announcement in the description of her next story post, everywhere she posted.

Within a day, she had a commission lined up. She quickly had her queue full and was unable to take more clients until she got some of them finished.

 

(As an aside: Claira is super cool and I'm still raising money to help her move! If you'd be willing to donate just a few bucks, as a thank you for helping this presentation, I'd appreciate it! Also her comms are open! Go to @submitzvah and hire her!)

 

If you want an example of what a commission form can look like, here's mine. You are 100% invited to shamelessly copy every element of it if you want to!

 

https://forms.gle/RoLnyfweQp4uCjnp6

 

That's pretty much it!

I do have some other loose data you might find useful, though, mainly factors that I checked against income.

So, to close this out, here's a brief list of factors that I ruled out:

 

How long you've been creating content: Creators who'd been making content for less than six months had trouble monetizing, but otherwise there was no correlation

How long you've been monetized: Very little correlation to income

 

Ratio of exclusive, early access, and public content: This one surprised me!

Creators who had *no* early access or exclusive content had far smaller incomes. (Expected.)

Creators with just had early access content hit the same average income as creators with exclusive content.

 

Giving paid subscribers a discount or bonus towards commissions was partially correlated with more income, though it was a weaker correlation than I expected.

 

I've gone through the data and scrubbed out identifying details. If someone who's better at data analysis wants to go through this and check my work, feel free!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hipw776DXl4XtZYyfbmlW2QAulT2qVgfDbACXdlKlS4/edit#gid=855171745

 

And, finally, I want to thank a bunch of people who filled out the survey!

paddedlittleparadise, Red, Personalias, omopurrr, Pizzabagel, Artsy, Padawanacookie, Little Theodora, JuiceBox, FlashyFlesh, CrissieBaby & CodiBaby, Daymare, Elfy, HofBondage, PinkTheDinosaur, BabySofia, Newguy20, BigRed, horsemotif, Wannatripbaby, Pelo Dee, BabyIzzy, tammie2, dlboy781

 

Thank you all!

[Elfy]

Interesting. It lines up with my own experiences.

I post twice a week and I do think that is the most important part. If people can see you are consistent and posting often they'll see you as more likely to give them bang for their buck. It also helps to give the impression that this is a "job" You are posting so much that clearly you are working hard at it and "deserve" support. Posting that often also means you are often seen at the top of the websites you post to givnig you more eyes on your product, more chance for engagement, etc.

I guess I'm in the minority in terms of posting to different platforms, though only just. I post to five public platforms (one of which doesn't let me link my subscription info) but consistently earn well over $1000 a month, to be honest, I can't even think of another place to start posting to. I haven't reached the heights my Patreon did before it was deleted but before all that went down I was pushing towards $1900. It's a full time job for me... but I'm also aware that if my wife wasn't working or I was on my own it wouldn't be nearly enough to live on.

It's interesting what you said about commissions. I have been told I don't charge enough before (heck, I have a person currently commissioning me that demanded I charge them more!) but I'm really not sure about it. On the one hand I'm happy to charge less because it provides content for my subscription platforms but on the other it does mean I'm cheap. I've struggled a lot with the idea of raising prices beyond my standard $10 per 1000 words.

The exclusive content part is up and down. The benefit is that it can increase subscriber numbers, the negative is that you're posting a lot of work all at once and still need to keep up with your regular schedule. I have posted exclusive stories before that have done little or nothing to boost numbers, however, I hve also posted exclusive stories that have DEFINITELY caused an increase in subscribers which is then sustained. I do believe there is a correlation but it doesn't always work, you essentially have to post the right thing at the right time. I also believe hving a library of exclusive stories can attract people more. I'm able to advertise a large library of exclusive stories and I do think it attracts people at a higher tier because sometimes I won't post a exclusive story for a couple of months but I'll still have people csubbing at that higher tier to read them.

Thank you for the survey. It was very interesting

[BabySofia]

14 hours ago, PeculiarChangeling said:

I recently gave a panel

Thanks for sharing your findings here, it was very interesting to read! 🙂

[PeculiarChangeling]

On 3/9/2024 at 5:03 AM, Elfy said:

Interesting. It lines up with my own experiences.

I post twice a week and I do think that is the most important part. If people can see you are consistent and posting often they'll see you as more likely to give them bang for their buck. It also helps to give the impression that this is a "job" You are posting so much that clearly you are working hard at it and "deserve" support. Posting that often also means you are often seen at the top of the websites you post to givnig you more eyes on your product, more chance for engagement, etc.

I guess I'm in the minority in terms of posting to different platforms, though only just. I post to five public platforms (one of which doesn't let me link my subscription info) but consistently earn well over $1000 a month, to be honest, I can't even think of another place to start posting to. I haven't reached the heights my Patreon did before it was deleted but before all that went down I was pushing towards $1900. It's a full time job for me... but I'm also aware that if my wife wasn't working or I was on my own it wouldn't be nearly enough to live on.

It's interesting what you said about commissions. I have been told I don't charge enough before (heck, I have a person currently commissioning me that demanded I charge them more!) but I'm really not sure about it. On the one hand I'm happy to charge less because it provides content for my subscription platforms but on the other it does mean I'm cheap. I've struggled a lot with the idea of raising prices beyond my standard $10 per 1000 words.

The exclusive content part is up and down. The benefit is that it can increase subscriber numbers, the negative is that you're posting a lot of work all at once and still need to keep up with your regular schedule. I have posted exclusive stories before that have done little or nothing to boost numbers, however, I hve also posted exclusive stories that have DEFINITELY caused an increase in subscribers which is then sustained. I do believe there is a correlation but it doesn't always work, you essentially have to post the right thing at the right time. I also believe hving a library of exclusive stories can attract people more. I'm able to advertise a large library of exclusive stories and I do think it attracts people at a higher tier because sometimes I won't post a exclusive story for a couple of months but I'll still have people csubbing at that higher tier to read them.

Thank you for the survey. It was very interesting

Technically speaking, the data I posted counted all platforms, not just public platforms, so you are baaarely in the 6+ category.

If you're looking for other places to post to that you aren't already using:

Furaffinity is accepting of human stories

I've heard Pixiv can be good for fiction, I just started recently and haven't seen many results yet but I'll stick it out for a while longer

Tumblr is good for shorter stories and OK for mid-to-long stories

(And I'm always keeping my eye out for new platforms)

 

As for the exclusive content thing, I find that it doesn't necessarily increase subscriber count, but it can increase the price of subscription - By having a cheaper tier for just early access and a more expensive tier for those who want all access. The downside seems to be that you have less content to post publicly, reducing posts-per-month and the number of total subscribers.

I'm going to toy around with how I do things, I've been doing exclusive-plus-early-access for years on the assumption that it increased income, but if it doesn't, I might need to reconfigure things. I might adopt something like the Cushypen model where 'Exclusive' content stays that way for a year or two then gets released publicly waaaaay after it's written.

 

[Cute_Kitten]

Very good advice and a well thought out presentation! Thank you for sharing! I found it very informative and useful and I picked up a few tips. 🙂

[WBDaddy]

As someone who is trying like hell to break the rust off and get back in the game, this is super-useful information.  I have a rep for high-quality material, but that rep is mostly from material I produced a decade ago or longer, and it competes with a rep I've gained lately of being unable to finish what I started, which is primarily because I hold myself to such a high standard that I can't just relax and have a chapter where I advance the plot without a bunch of fireworks.

Either way, it's good that someone went through the trouble of figuring out how best to monetize, because back when I was churning out 5K or more per day (especially if my muse caught fire), it was all for free.  I made zilch off any of it.  And the gods know damn well I could have used it at that point in my life.