Oh hey, did you hear? My blog is ten years old today! It’s kind of the only thing I’ve been talking about all week!!

Happy Birthday new York Cliche!

To celebrate I did something I’m excited about and also scared. It’s something I’ve thought about doing many times in these ten years but always talked myself out of it…

WHAT HAVE I DONE!??

I, Mary Lane, blogger of 10 years, just launched my very first crowd funding campaign. EEP!

 

If you are in the arts scene in NYC in any way, this may come as a surprise. How the hell has it taken me this long to have launched a crowd funding campaign!? I couldn’t help but wonder… can you even call yourself an NYC creative if you never attempted some spectacular failure of a Patreon page? 

If you are not in the arts scene in NYC, you may hardly know what I’m talking about. Crowd funding? Patreon?

Well, you can think of Patreon as similar to how artists in the Renaissance had rich patrons to support their craft.

Or you can think of it like the people who walk down subway cars begging for money.

That’s a classic New York cliche and exactly how I start the video explaining what my Patreon campaign here is all about!

I know some of you are thinking, “Ugh, not another crowdfunding campaign!” and that’s okay! I totally get it. But you should still watch the first couple seconds of the video, because it’s me embarrassing myself in a subway car full of people and I think it’s pretty funny.

Here’s a teaser shot of this:

I’ve been thinking a lot about my worth as a blogger and content creator recently, putting this all together for http://patreon.com/newyorkcliche was a helpful experience and I feel like I learned a lot.

• I am terrible at asking for help. One of the things I love about blogging is that it’s all just me, I have ultimate control over everything muahaha! My boyfriend has taken to singing me the last line of of the theme song from the show Scrubs, I can’t do this all on my own, I’m no- I’m no superman. And damn it is he right.

I want to keep creating content. It’s smart to ask for help with that.

• It was torture to edit a video of myself. Why am I making a weird facial expression 60% of the time? Why is it so red under my nose? Ugh, my hair! Do I, like, always sound so hella California? I had to let all that go along with my self-sabotaging controlling and perfectionist tendencies and just get the video done. DONE is better than GOOD, a wise woman once told me. I repeat this to myself frequently. It’s the ONLY way daily blogging is remotely possible.

• I’m scared that no one will patron my blog. If I have zero backers, will I look like an idiot who no one likes? This is the main thing that has prevented me from launching a Patreon in the past. But the thing is, it doesn’t really matter. I know you all support my blog by reading it- the most important thing! In other ways too like email subscribing (just enter your email in the box on the sidebar!), liking the page on Facebook or following on Twitter and Instagram

I hope people support in whatever way feel most awesome to them. The Patreon thing is an experiment, we’ll see how it goes! I’d love to hear any opinions – good/bad/whatever. Please do not feel any pressure from it!

What are your thoughts on crowd funding campaigns? Have you ever launched one? What would you do if someone started preaching about their blog on the subway? Any advice for recovering perfectionists?