It’s not easy for me to admit that I need help, but sometimes one has to swallow his pride a bit and do that in order to move forward. Now is one of those moments for me. As I noted last year, it’s been a bit of a tough time for my family lately, and my ability to work on Etherkit and to give to the community in ways such as blogging and contributing code has suffered quite a bit.

I’m ready and excited to move ahead but frankly, resources for continuing these endeavors are quite tight, as I am not able to divert them from the family income and I don’t really make anything from Etherkit at this point. I realized that it would be extremely helpful to have a monthly income for use in advancing the work that I do in electronics and radio, even if it is relatively small.

Therefore, I’ve setup a Patreon account in order to attempt to give me that bit of regular income so that I can focus more on content creation. If you are not familiar with it, Patreon is a way for creators to ask for pledges from those who value their work. You can ask for either monthly or per-creation pledges. I’ve decided to ask for a monthly pledge since I intend to increase my output by a fair amount (and my discrete creations usually aren’t as intensive as something like making a professional video).

I do realize that it’s a bit cheeky to ask for pledges at this point, when my output over the last year has been quite sparse. I would say that if you have received some value from my previously released work, then please consider how becoming my patron would help me to produce more content for free public release in the future. If you don’t wish to fund me at this time, I only ask that as I ramp up my output over the coming months that you consider becoming a patron when you are satisfied that I’m producing enough quality content to make it worth your while.

Also, one nice side benefit of Patreon is that it also functions as a microblogging platform, which is something that I’ve been thinking about for a while. It’s a bit easier for me to post more often when I can catch a few quiet minutes during the middle of my busy day.

So I would greatly appreciate it if you head over to my Patreon page to read my pitch and consider becoming my patron. There will be some exclusive perks to becoming a patron, including access to me on a private chat room, exclusive patron posts where I discuss and show off what I’m working on, and information on upcoming Etherkit releases. Thank you!