Becoming a Patron

Adventuring Farther Afield

We have discussed many adventures we have accomplished in a day or three from our home in Klamath Falls, Oregon.  It is fortunate that we have so may outstanding outdoor opportunities with all the public lands immediately available to us.  We would, however, like to take our adventures farther afield and bring you a broader range of explorations.

Financing Travel

In an attempt to finance these journeys, we added a wide variety of ads to the eMagazine, the Blog and our weekly Outdoor News email.  We learned that very few people actually click on the ads and go on to buy something from one of the great merchants we have selected to offer.  The income from those ads is barely enough to cover the annual cost of keeping EXPLORE! available to you, much less the cost of developing any content.

No one pays us to explore, write articles, create videos, shoot photos and put it all together for you.  It all comes out of our pocket and the earnings from our other activities.  Unfortunately these “other activities” take a lot of time and keep us from exploring as much as we would like.  We don’t need to be paid a salary as we have enough income to produce local stories and an occasional sojourn farther away, like our story about Skagway, Alaska.  What we need is funding to cover travel expenses for more of these distant explorations.  Clearly advertisements are not going to help with that.

Patreon

We just signed up for Patreon.  Patreon is a web-based system designed to let people like you, that love the work of creators like us, contribute safely and easily to our work.  Patreon hosts creators of all kinds, for example:

• Photographers
• Video Producers
• Bloggers
• Musicians
• Comedians
• Writers
• Poets
• Game Makers
• and many more

This is NOT like Kickstarter or other systems where people try to raise money for a specific project.  Instead it offers a way to pledge a monthly amount to support work that you already enjoy.  You can choose the amount you want to pledge, adjust that amount at any time or discontinue your pledge at any time.  Patreon then takes your pledge from you, based upon the payment information you provide to them, every month until you tell them to stop.  Patreon takes only 5% of your pledge to keep their system going for us.  We get the balance to expand the content in EXPLORE!

Goals

Patreon lets creators define goals.  Our first goal, after accumulating $1500, is to spend a few days at Lassen Volcanic National Park.  Our explorations there should produce several articles for the eMagazine as well as a blog post or two.  While not too far distant,  it is a place we have never been and is certainly worthy of several adventures.

We would also like to eliminate advertisements from our creations.  It probably won’t take long for that to happen – but we do need a few more patrons first.

For the longer term our vision includes translating everything you see at explore.globalcreations.com into various languages.  Parallel websites could be erforschen.globalcreations.com (German), explorar.globalcreations.com (Spanish), utforske.globalcreations.com (Norwegian) and so on.  Each page would have links to the different language versions.  Hiring translators and linking all of the sites together will be an expensive proposition, but something we would like to do someday if people like you support that work.

We would also like to purchase articles (with photos and videos) from other explorers.  While many community websites are set up to get their content for free from people that report on their adventures, we think creators should be paid for their work.  Not only does this help them continue that work it also insures high quality articles for you.

Your Patronage

If you enjoy EXPLORE!, we would appreciate your patronage.  Here’s how it works:

1. Go to our Patreon Page at www.patreon.com/ExploreEmag
2. Look at the right side column to decide upon the level of your support.  We have categories for $1, $3 and $20 per month, but you can adjust upward from any of those amounts.
3. Click the button for “Choose $1 Reward,” ” Choose $3 Reward” or “Choose $20 Reward” – your choice.  If you contribute $20 per month or more,  we will list your name at the bottom of any article published during the months you contribute.
4. After you click the level of your choice, adjust the amount to whatever you would like to pledge.
5. Click “Continue”
6. Create your Patreon profile.  You can either use your Facebook credentials or your email address and whatever password you like.
7. Click “Sign Up”
8. Amazingly,  nothing happens.  However,  if you click “Login” from the menu at the top, you will enter your patron page so you can further adjust your pledge if you wish and click “Continue”
9. Click “Confirm and Pledge” to save your credit card information or click “Pay with PayPal” if you prefer.

Patreon will withdraw your pledged amount each month until you tell them to stop.  Note that you will also get an email from Patreon to verify your email address.  Be sure to click the provided button to assure Patreon that you are really you.

Thank You

Whether you choose to become a patron or not,  thank you very much for your support.  Money helps, but EXPLORE! wouldn’t be worth doing if you didn’t read what we have to offer.