October 2022 Monthly Update

Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to our October 2022 monthly update. I'm recording this live in the Discord server so hello to everybody that is joining me live and hello to everybody that is listening after the fact. Thank you for joining me one way or the other.

If you're new here, welcome. If this is your first monthly update, welcome. You're in for a treat.

If you are returning, welcome back and thank you for coming back. I appreciate that. Then you have an idea of what you're in for so I don't have to warn you.

You don't have to be scared. You already know. So there's a lot going on this month that I have to update on.

Honestly, things that I thought I had talked about already at some point somewhere and hadn't. So we've got a few things to cover so I'll get right into it. The first thing I'll just give you a personal update.

I had freaking COVID again, still do. It's nasty. It hit me hard out of nowhere and it's just kind of lingering.

I'm not fully sick-sick anymore. I just have absolutely no energy and I can only sort of kind of taste and smell still. So it's coming back and I'm having problems kind of breathing.

Kind of important, right? So I tend to sound like I've been running a marathon when I'm just sitting still, which is awesome when you're a voice actor and a singer and you need your lung capacity. Yeah, it's awesome.

So I'm slowly getting back from that. It's a lot better than it was and it will continue to move in the right direction. I just have to rest a little bit more.

So to that end, streams will be hit or miss for the next few weeks as I sort of get my workload back up to normal and get myself back up to normal because I honestly don't know one day to the next what I'm going to feel like. Some mornings I wake up and I'm ready to take on the world and some mornings I wake up and I go back to bed because I can't get my head off the pillow. So we'll see how this goes.

But thank you to everybody that sent me messages and said their well wishes and stuff. I really appreciate it, you guys. You make me smile when I feel crappy, so I really appreciate that.

And I hope anybody else who's dealing with this crap is getting better too because it's yucky, like honestly. And I've been vaccinated so like several times. So I don't know what it feels like when you're not, but yuck.

Anyway, so we'll move on from that because ew. All right, what else is going on? Oh my goodness, there's so many things to talk about here.

I'm looking at my list and I'm like, where do I start? Okay, I'll go there. So alongside the COVID update, I just wanted to kind of mention this and I didn't actually want to mention this, but I feel like I have to.

I always get uncomfortable with this kind of thing. Do you notice that? If you listen to the monthly updates, you notice I get uncomfortable.

I've received so many supportive messages and things like that. And unfortunately, there's also the other side. So I just want to put this out there and I just want to kind of mention this.

I've gotten some messages about things, you know, things like streams being canceled, not responding to inbox messages as quickly as people think I should, a couple of other things. I just want to remind everybody I'm human. Like I'm a person at the end of the day.

I am a content creator. It is what I do. And I do run a platform.

I do run a community here and I absolutely love doing it. But at the end of the day, I'm a human being. And to those people that felt that they needed to bombard my inbox with some not so nice stuff, please don't.

It doesn't help me get better faster. In fact, it makes me feel crappier. So please don't.

And that's all I'm going to say about that. And moving on. What else have I got here? What else is happier? Okay, so the writers event and the artists event are all wrapped up in terms of everything that has to be done.

I'm waiting on one concept for one of the winners for their custom audio. I have one script. One of the winners decided to write a script and have me fill it and I get to actually release it.

I believe I'm going to release it in December. So I have to record that I wanted to wait until I wasn't gross to do that. But the other three have been done and sent.

And this is a really special thing. And I can't even tell you how excited I am about this. One of the winners reached out to me and said that they wanted to donate their custom audio in such a way that would benefit the community.

And that is that's a beautiful thing. So that is something that I wasn't expecting. And they had originally told me, you know, pick somebody and give them the custom audio.

And I thought, how do you pick somebody? How do you how do you choose one person? That's, that's just like trying to pick your favorite star in the sky.

How do you do that? Right. So what I decided to do instead, and I sort of mentioned this to them, and it was good.

I've decided I'm going to make a safe for work sleep aid audio that is going to be released as a download on Reddit. And that's going to be done before the end of December because COVID got in the way. But it is going to be an extra audio.

It's just outside of my regular content schedule, because it's something that I had intended to do for this person anyway. And they've donated it back to the community. So whatever I would have done for them, I'm doing it as a free safe for work sleep aid for the community, and it'll be fully downloadable as an mp3.

So that's what's going to happen. That person has an incredibly generous heart. And I just want to say thank you to them.

They, they've touched me in ways that I can't even begin to describe. And this is such an incredible, generous thing to do. So I'm really excited to put this together for you and and to put it out there.

So yeah, so if everybody is excited about that, all I want to say is if you get a chance, just pay it forward, do something nice for somebody. Because this person is doing something incredibly nice for us for our community. And just another huge thank you to them.

Okay, before I get misty. The last thing I want to say about the writers event is the timing of the actual release. So I will be recording all of the scripts that were submitted, which is amazing.

I got some amazing scripts. They will all be recorded and released hopefully before the end of November. That is my plan.

Again, health being a factor, but I'll keep everybody updated on that. So keep an eye out. I'll probably release it, release the audios to Patreon first.

I haven't quite figured that out yet. But I'll make that make that work. But I'm tracking toward the end of November just to give me a chance to get caught up and get everything recorded and edited properly.

So that's the plan. All right, that is the events. What is next? We have some milestones, announcements, things like that, that we're going to talk about.

A few things that I thought I had talked about and didn't. I had recently put up a post in the boudoir talking about a new platform, which I'll get to in a minute. And I had just sort of mentioned that I had gone full time as a content creator in March.

And the response to that was, oh my god, what? I kind of thought I had said something here on Patreon. And I got thinking about it.

And I thought, no, the only place I said it was in my birthday stream in April, which I have not released yet. So you know, the people that were at the stream, they heard it. But nobody else did.

So I apologize for that. The stream will be released again, just time. So I'll make the official announcement here.

As of the beginning of March 2022, I left the corporate world and said, I'm going to be a full time content creator. And I have been doing so ever since. What that means is not just this content, but I've been doing some some voice work IRL.

And I've got a couple of other side projects that are going on as well, that also involve various versions of voice work. So I'm basically a full time content creator, full time creative person, which is amazing. This is this is a dream.

I'm an actor full time, like being a theater geek growing up and being a performer. This is this is what we dream about. And I get to do it.

And I've been doing it since March. And it's been just each month I pinch myself and I get to go Yes, I get to do this another month. This is amazing.

So that's where I'm at. I don't tend to announce things like this, like a full like, let's celebrate and let's, you know, make a big deal of it. Because it's just part of the journey.

But I did want to announce it here. And I did want to talk about it a little bit because one of the key components of being able to do that is you guys. And one of the things that I need to express just straight up is gratitude.

If it wasn't for you guys, I wouldn't be able to do this. If it wasn't for the support of my community, if it wasn't for people listening to my audios, joining the Patreon, doing everything that you do, I wouldn't get to live my dream. And I've said it, I say it every month in my announcement posts, and I say it in these things.

But now you understand exactly how important to me this is, and how much your support means. And I'm not just talking financial because that's money isn't the most important thing to me. Support of my content of what I do, the fact that you want to hear what I'm creating, is the biggest form of support to me.

So thank you, thank you, thank you. For the last two, almost three years of amazing support, no matter how long you've been here, that's how long I've been doing it. You've allowed me to live my dream, and I can't say thank you enough.

So the gratitude just keeps getting bigger daily. So that's why I wanted to kind of put that out there that I am full time now. And it's because of you guys.

So thank you for that. And again, moving on before I get misty. In the same vein, we had a couple of milestones happen.

I hit 10,000 followers a couple months ago now on Reddit. I again, don't talk about these things really a whole lot. I like to celebrate them privately because that's just how I do things.

But 10,000 followers on Reddit, 3,000 in the boudoir, the subreddit over there. Amazing, amazing, amazing. Again, thank you so, so much for that.

I haven't decided if I want to quote unquote, celebrate that. Like I've celebrated. But I don't know what I want to do publicly yet.

So I'll kind of keep thinking about that. And, and we'll see what see what I come up with. But thank you again, for that.

Those are huge numbers and numbers that I never thought when I started doing this that I would ever get to. So amazing, amazing, amazing. Okay, talking about, hold on, where are we at? I have to look at my list.

I did that one. I did that one. I did that one.

Okay. In the interest of talking about me being full time, I'm looking at new platforms. So I mentioned this kind of in the segue there.

I launched a new platform. I launched it while I was sick. They launched it.

I was part of it. I've talked about it a little bit before, but I couldn't tell anybody what it was or anything like that. But now I can.

I am a founding creator on Ocleo, which is an app specifically designed for erotic audio creators. So it's basically like Patreon, but it's for us specifically. And they have like the explore page, kind of like YouTube, when you go on and you have a homepage and it picks up your recommendations based on what you've, you've liked, or you've listened to, or you've spent time with.

And it shows you creators that you might like or audios that you might like. And it's all designed for creators to be properly compensated when they want to be. So you can put free content on there.

And then you can have your subscription tiers like Patreon. Their compensation structure for creators is very, very fair, very, very generous. Amazing actually what they've come up with.

So they're treating us quite well and allowing us to steer the ship, which is amazing. And I have committed to putting pretty much my entire catalog there that's not scripted. Obviously scripted content stays on Reddit because that's how I roll.

But all of my improv stuff will end up over there. Anything that's Patreon will stay behind the same paywalls over there that it is here. Because obviously that's not fair if I do it any other way.

It's not going to be the type of thing where you have to have Patreon and Ocleo to get all the audios. I don't want to do that. There may be, actually I do have something I'm working on that's a little different, but it's not going to be, you have to have a monthly subscription to both to benefit.

So some of the other perks are they're working on allowing us to do commissions through there. So they'll have an actual section to do commissions. As we know, I do my commissions through Patreon.

It's kind of a pain in the bum. But this will allow us to do it specifically set up for commissions for international creators, especially where we don't have another payment option outside of PayPal, which doesn't like us, or Patreon, something like this. This is going to be, it's going to be game changing and it's going to be amazing.

So they're setting that up. They've also set up pay per use audios. Is that a thing? Rental audios, I guess, is more like it.

Like when you go on like Google Play and you rent a movie for 48 hours and then after 48 hours, you no longer have access, but it's much, much cheaper than buying it. You get that option as well. We have the option as creators of setting up audios that way too.

So they've really gone out of their way to set up creator-friendly ideas, a creator-friendly platform that allows us to give you guys more and allows us to have more control over what we give you, which is amazing. So I'm really, really excited. When they reached out to me, they were just moving away from being an app just for women.

So there are a lot of male content creators on there because originally it was a platform just for female listeners, but they've since opened up to, this is a relaunch and they've opened up to being a platform for everybody and they're bringing in all kinds of content. So my F for M is over there. My F for F is over there.

My F for A is over there. Basically everything will be over there. It just takes some time to get it there.

Right? So very, very excited about this. So if you haven't checked out Ocleo, please do.

Follow me over there if you want to. The apps are available in the Play Store and the Apple Store. Yeah, the Apple Store and the Google Play Store.

So you can put them right on your phone, have stuff on the go. It's really cool. And you can follow.

So to see a creator's content, you have to follow. Follows don't cost anything. The accounts to sign up don't cost anything.

If you want to join their subscriptions, kind of like your Patreon tiers. I do have a frequently asked questions document coming out like a post coming out this coming week because I've been getting a lot of questions since I launched the platform last week. So I will have more information, but I just wanted to tell you how excited I am about this because this is a company that was thinking of you guys.

They were thinking of us and they were trying to make everything ethical and fair and it's amazing. So I'm really excited. So I hope you check them out.

I hope you love them. You can comment, you can like, you can do all that. Oh, they also included, this is kind of cool too, a tip option.

So if you like an audio and you want to show extra support for the creator for whatever reason, you can tip them and you can like send like an amount that you choose. I've had a few people message me here and say, you know, I really like this and it was great. And can I send you something? And I'm like, there's not really a way to do that.

Ocleo allows for that and it's specifically set up. There's actually an option on every audio that you can do that if you want to. Now I'm saying that because it's a function.

I'm not saying that because I'm telling people to do that. That's totally not the thing. It's just a really cool function that they thought of because it's not something we've had the capability to do before.

So really cool. Again, international creators especially will benefit from this because we literally have no options. I'm in Canada and we get nothing up here.

So if you're not in the US, things are very limited. So I think this is a really good move in the right direction. So you'll see more about them as time goes on.

So that leads me to my next thing and I'm very excited about this. I'm so incredibly blessed with what I do, with what I get to do every day, with the community that I have. And one of my biggest things that I miss about my former life before becoming a content creator is giving back.

I used to do a lot of charity type work in what I used to do. And I miss that side of it. So what I want to do with the Ocleo platform, because they're set up in such a unique way, is I want to take advantage of one of their features and that's the monthly rental or the rental audio.

So where you can go in and you can pay whatever the set price is and listen to the audio for 24 hours and you don't have to subscribe. What I want to do is I want to create a special audio every month in that structure. So it'll be a rental and all of the proceeds, 100% of the proceeds from that audio will go to a specific charity every month.

I will also match whatever that audio makes and I will donate that amount to the charity. So if I put up the audio for $1.99, let's say, I will match that $1.99 for every person that does that does that purchase. So that's something I'm going to start in December.

Every month it'll be a different charity and we'll see how we go. I just want to be able to give back and this is a really good way to do that. It allows us to have, you know, a little bit of extra content, something new, something different, and to do a little bit of good in the world as well.

So there will be a monthly charity audio going up on Ocleo. That's the only place you can find it and it'll only be a rental. It'll be very reasonable, $1.00 or $2.00, and the entire It'll be very reasonable, $1.00 or $2.00, and the entire proceeds will go to the charity and I will match them.

So I'm super excited about that. So keep an eye out for more information on that as it gets closer. I will be launching that in December, just in time for Christmas because, as I said, I celebrate Christmas.

Not everybody does, but I do. So that's a big thing for me and I'm really excited about it. I hope you guys are too.

It just feels right to give back when I've been given so much. There's just so much that I can do with this platform and that seems like a really good place to start. So keep an eye out for it.

Okay, what's next? Also talking about going full-time, as people may have noticed, there is a YouTube link and a Twitch link on my Reddit profile now. YouTube we know because I stream there twice a week, typically, and then I make the videos public.

Twitch will be launching. It was supposed to launch in October. I got sick.

We know. We've heard the story before. So I'm still planning on launching on Twitch as a public thing.

Now, I had something interesting happen recently with the audio I released this past week on Reddit because it had a video game tie-in. It was tied into Bayonetta. And before anybody asks, don't ask me about Bayonetta 3.

I don't want to talk about it. There's a lot going on with that and I don't want to talk about it. I've had messages about that.

I just don't want to go there. But I've had people ask if I'm going to stream that kind of content because, typically, I do chill streams, which is, you know, the lighter games, Animal Crossing, the Grow game, Dreamlight Valley. But with Twitch being a bigger platform, I have been thinking about integrating something like Bayonetta.

I would love to go back and restart Bayonetta. Oh my god. Stuff like that on Twitch.

So there may be something a little different on Twitch than we do on YouTube. I may keep the chill streams to YouTube and do something different on Twitch. I'm kind of sort of rejigging everything going into the new year.

So Twitch will probably be a really soft launch before the end of the year and then I'll actually hit with a completely different plan, something that looks more like what it's going to be starting in the new year. So just keep an eye out for that. The best way to know is to subscribe over on Twitch.

You'll know when I start streaming. I'll tell everybody here, but it's a good way to know what's going on because I'll start putting content over there as well. So keep an eye out.

I'm saying that a lot. I want you to watch for a lot of audio things. Does that make sense? Keep an ear out, I suppose.

Although, no, you see the notifications on your phone. I don't know. Anyway, pay attention.

It's coming. Does that work? Is that better? All right.

Okay, where's my list here? I got away from myself. Okay, last thing that I want to talk about and this is kind of, this one involves the entire community and I haven't quite decided how to handle it yet.

As we know and as we have often been frustrated by, Patreon charges you guys on the first of the month. So no matter when you join, you get charged on that day and then you get charged again on the first of the month. So anybody that's been around for a while, this doesn't really affect you.

But if you're leaving and coming back, it can. It can affect the timing. They have recently brought in the ability to do a cyclical billing schedule.

Meaning, if you join on the 15th of the month, then you will constantly be billed on the 15th of the month. Now, creators have the option of implementing.