Walkabout The World - A Disney Podcast - The One About Patreon - An Open Discussion With Host Jeremy

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

Hello Travelers. On this very brief bonus episode I (host Jeremy) would like to have an open convo with you about our very low-key announcement of a Patreon page - hint - I'm a very poor Patreon salesman, and I'm 100% cool with that. We talk about the why, the why not, and how this doesn't change our focus at all. After listening, if you want to jump in, head over here: https://www.patreon.com/WalkaboutWDW

Hello Travelers, host Jeremy here and I wanted to have a frank talk with you guys about the fact that we have launched a patron page. I'm not going to say campaign because we're not campaigning anything and that's kind of the point why I wanted to talk to you about it. Some time back, I said to all of you that the only thing we would ever ask of you is to listen. We don't have sponsors. We still don't. That still holds true. We're not asking anybody to give. And I want to talk to you about why we're doing this. And frankly, the hosts and I have wrestled with this for over a year. And so the main point is this. I'm the most cynical person in the world. And so I'm going to tell this story and you guys are probably going to roll your eyes. But I used to be very cynical about Patreon

because it seemed like every podcast, every creator of anything, as soon as they started creating, would put up a Patreon page. And I thought, why would you choose to do this on your own as a side project, as a passion project? Why should I work my job and give you my money to do that? And I heard this very question answered by a creator that I still support to this day, Bill Duran. Bill and Britt, wonderful people.

They own Punished Props Academy. And he said something along the lines of, in this day and age, a lot of the content that we consume, and it's true for me, is created by small, independent creators. And he said, if that creation brings you some joy, if it lifts your mood, if it makes your week a little bit better, you should consider helping them continue to create that thing that brings you that joy. And it really hit home for me. And I now support, and I say I, my wife and I, Heather, um, support several creators and have for years and I get a lot of

satisfaction. And that's kind of the point here. Um, we wanted to invite our listener family in to join us and contribute if you want to, if you can't, or if you think that's just not my jam, I don't really want to do that, please feel free to have no guilt whatsoever about not contributing. This is in no way, you know, I hear some creators say, you know, help us keep our podcast on the air. Our podcast is not going to go away. We are going to self-fund it as long as we, the hosts, are interested. And as long as you, the listeners, keep listening. But what this does is allows you to become involved. It allows you to come alongside of us and be a part of the team.

And that has been very meaningful for me. And maybe it will be for you too. And so some of the nitty gritty here, because some of you have a mind like mine, the rest of you probably can tune out at this point. But the nitty gritty here is first off, it was very important to me and the team to feel like we earned the right to start a patron page. Um, I, I don't know. There's no crime in anybody starting a patron page, but we wanted to feel like we earned the right to do it. And so for two and a half years now, we have released an episode. I would, I think in two years, two and a half years we've missed two weeks but a great many of those weeks

we've released not only one episode but two sometimes a bonus and so we have averaged over an episode a week for two and a half years and that feels really good and one of the first goals for Walk About the World was to be consistent. And that's what we've done.

And then secondly, I wanted to give you just like, again, full transparency. We don't hide anything from you. The hosting and the audio processing each month for Walk About is on the order of 50 or 60 bucks. I'd have to look up the amount to be exact. But it's in that range. We pay hosting for the podcast host, and then we also use a professional audio processing service, not an editor. Josh and I do the editing, but this is like a final pass. It's a post-production pass on the audio, and if we didn't do it, you would know because it levels, it clarifies, it declutters, it just beautifies the audio, makes the episode sound a lot better.

And so we pay for those two things. And then we are well over $2,000, not kidding, in audio equipment for the four hosts that we've bought over the years. And all of that is out of pocket. And that's okay because we chose to. Again, this is a guilt-free endeavor here, guys. But it would be lovely if the listener family chose to partner with us and the podcast became a little less out of pocket, let's say.

Just because, you know, things change with the hosts monetarily. And they have over the past couple of years for us. And so that's really what's going on here. That's why we're doing this. It's something that if you want to participate, we'll be grateful. If you don't want to participate, we absolutely understand and we will just be thrilled that you listen. And I'm going to leave you with that and just say thanks we appreciate every single one of you

for being along on this journey with us it's been a lot of fun continues to be a lot of fun and hopefully we will have many more episodes together in the future bye guys future. Bye guys.