Site Overview
For The Artist: PatronQuo.com is a unique site that provides artists a forum to showcase their work, to potentially earn income from interested patrons, and to enable visitors to track how their favorite artists and works are performing against all others on the site.
For The Patron: PatronQuo.com provides visitors a compelling reason to learn more about you, the Patron, who chooses which works and artists move up the rankings, and who decides which artist deserves to profit from the work you deem worthy of further attention. Not only will you be doing your thing to support your favored artist, but you’ll also be directing fans of your patronized artist’s work to facts about you, a Patron of such work. Best of all, you can determine the scope of your presence throughout the site. The more you patronize an artist or their work with your patron payments, the more visibility you win for that artist and work - and the more visibility you win for yourself as a high-ranking patron on the site.
Following is a brief overview of the site:
- Browsing Stories On The Site
- Artist Submissions
- Being A Patron
- Rankings and Earning Stats - For Artists
- Ranking Stats - For Patrons
- Promotional Strategies - For Artists
- Promotional Strategies - For Patrons
- Contact Us
I. BROWSING STORIES ON THE SITE
Stories on the site are set to randomly revolve as excerpts on the home page. Each time you refresh the home page, you will see a different, randomized assortment of stories on the home page. Moreover, each visitor to the home page will see a different, randomized assortment of featured stories with each new visit. This ensures that each artist has an equal chance to have each of their stories showcased on this portion of the home page, regardless of their rank or earnings on the site.
For those stories that have attracted the most patronage payments, however - either for the month or cumulatively - such work will benefit through added coverage by means of the various ranking and earnings tables featured in the right hand portion of the home page and on the Stats Page.
As an artist, you may find your own submitted stories simply by logging in and clicking on My Account in the top right corner of the web page.
As a patron, you may find a list of the stories you’ve patronized by logging in and clicking on My Account in the top right corner of the web page.
II. ARTIST SUBMISSIONS
Step One - Registration
Before submitting your work, you must set up an account. The registration process is free, and will furnish you with a profile page that can be visited every time a visitor to this site clicks on your name wherever it appears on the site.
Though you are prohibited from patronizing your own submitted work, you may use your registered account to act as a patron for the submitted work of other artists on the site. Thus, your registered profile can serve as one profile for your actions as both an artist on the site and as a patron for other artists on the site.
* Please take care to provide an email address that you will also use to accept payments for any patron payments that we may forward to you via PayPal, an industry standard third party payment processor. In order to be set up properly to receive such payments through PayPal, it is your responsibility to set up your own PayPal account on PayPal.com, and to ensure that the email address you provide us is accurate and available to receive money through PayPal.
* Before creating your profile, please take care to review the Registration Agreement, as it contains the entire terms, rights, and obligations for all transactions conducted through this site.
Step Two - Uploading Your Work
To submit your work, click on the Submissions tab in the toolbar. You must then log in with the email and password you created when registering your account.
In the Title field, type in the title of your work. To upload the body of your work, click on the Browse button in order to search for the correct file to download to the site from your computer. Please ensure that the file is first saved as a Microsoft Word document.
Currently, your first story submission is free, and may be freely re-submitted, for editing and polishing purposes, as many times as you wish. Please refer below to our policy for additional story submissions. Please click here for an explanation of this policy.
Editing Your Submitted Work
Sometimes you may want to add to, delete, or “punch up” the quality of your submitted work. You may even want to alter the title. You may edit, at any time, any aspect of your work, free of charge, subsequent to submitting it. Once you have submitted your work, you may access it through the Submissions tab in the toolbar after you have logged in.
On the submission page, you will see a table listing all your submitted works. Under the column marked Action, you have the opportunity to Re-Submit any of your posted works. When you click Re-Submit for one of your posted stories listed in the table, it will be indicated as being On Edit. You can always cancel that action by clicking on Undo.
When a posted work is On Edit, you have the option of changing the title in the Title field and uploading your latest edited version of the story by uploading it from your computer through the Browse button. Remember, the actual editing of your work should be done on your computer beforehand, through your own Word program. When the newly edited version is ready to upload from your computer, you’re essentially repeating the submission step you took when initially uploading the work to the site.
Editing Your Profile
You may edit your profile at any time by logging in to your account, and clicking on My Account in the top right corner of the web page.
Policy For Additional Submitted Works
PatronQuo.com offers every writer the chance to participate, for free, in the opportunity to attract patrons through their short story submissions. For such purposes, all first-time story submissions will have an equal chance to revolve on the homepage. However, as the overriding purpose of this website is to attract the widest possible base of readers, and, hence, patrons, for the participating writers, only those participating writers who have achieved a certain threshold in patron earnings from their first short story submission are entitled to have their additional free short story submissions revolve on the homepage.
This policy has been put in place for reasons of quality control. In general, those writers whose submitted stories have already proven to attract a certain level of patronage should be encouraged to post more material on the site, increasing the overall appeal to a patron base that has already shown appreciation for such work - and raising, as a consequence, the value of the site, as a vehicle for patronage, for all the participating writers.
Those writers whose patron earnings from their first story submission have not yet achieved the threshold - currently set at $30 - may still apply to have their additional submissions revolve on the homepage, simply by emailing us at admin at PatronQuo.com, asking that we showcase their addition submission, on a revolving basis, on the homepage. Our decision will depend solely on our assessment of the quality of the submission.
In all cases, visitors to your author profile may see all the stories you have posted on PatronQuo, whether or not the additional stories revolve on the homepage. Those additional stories may also be read and patronized, contributing to your cumulative earnings on the site. For each cumulative $30 increment your stories earn, you will be entitled to have one additional story revolve on the homepage. So, for example, if your stories earn cumulative patron payments in the amount of $60, three of your submitted stories will be entitled to revolve on the homepage - and so on.
III. BEING A PATRON
Step One - Registration
Before making a patron payment toward an artist’s work, you must have an account set up on the site. The registration process is free, and will furnish you with a profile page that can be visited every time a visitor to this site clicks on your name wherever it appears on the site.
If, when browsing stories on the site, you find a story you wish to patronize, simply click on the story title, and you will be taken to the story page. There, just below the title of the story page you have visited, you will see a button with the blurb Patronize This Tale. After clicking this button, a window will appear, prompting you to either log in (if you’ve already registered) or to register your free patron account (if you’re new to the site).
Patronizing Artist Works
As a random assortment of various artist works appear on the home page every time it is refreshed, the patron has the opportunity to browse a number of artist works on the site. If already logged in, the prospective patron can opt to patronize a work of their choice by clicking on the Patronize This Tale button which, when clicked, presents a window where the prospective patron can enter their payment amount, starting from a minimum payment of $5.
After entering their amount, the Patron will be taken off-site to the PayPal site in order to complete the transaction. Afterward, in order to view the results of the transaction, the patron can check their list of patronized content by clicking on My Account.
If the patron of a work happens to have offered the highest cumulative payments for a particular work in a current month, that patron’s name will be featured on a scroll attached to that work, indicating the patron as the top patron for that work for the current month.
If the patron of a work happens to have offered the highest overall cumulative payments over all the months, that patron will be associated with the work as the top all-time patron for that work, though it should be pointed out that another patron can simultaneously qualify as the current month’s top patron for that work (and thus be featured as the patron on the scroll for that month) even where that patron places considerably lower in the ranking of all-time patrons (for example, in the early part of a current month where there are very few patrons for that work, and the payments are relatively low in comparison with prior months).
Patron Profile Page
This is the page that visitors will see after they click on the patron’s name as featured either in the scroll attached to a work, or in the column listing the all-time patrons for that work.
The profile page presents biographical details of the patron as an individual, or details about the patron’s business, along with a table of the works patronized by the patron. The purpose of this page is to focus the visitor’s attention on details about the patron, and in this respect, the patron’s profile page serves an importance for the site on a par with the artist’s profile. In fact, where the patron also happens to have submitted work as an artist on the site (though the patron is forbidden from patronizing their own work), the profile serves to introduce the visitor to an individual acting as both a patron and as an artist. This is the profile that is initially created upon registration.
If the patron desires, they can include various contact information in their profile, along with a link to their home page, Facebook page, or blog. In this manner, the patron’s profile page can serve as an effective advertisement for the patron, prompted primarily by the visitor’s interest in the patron’s association with a particular work of art.
The patron’s profile page may be edited at any time by clicking My Account in the upper right hand corner of the web page after logging in to their account.
The Patron’s Appearance On The Artistic Work
The site is designed to direct a reader’s attention to facts pertaining to an artistic work’s patronage performance. Thus, while the left hand column of a featured work provides the various performance stats pertaining to that work and its artist, the right hand column presents a list of that work’s all-time patrons, organized in descending order starting from the highest cumulative patron payments. Each patron name featured in this column provides a link to that patron’s profile page, where the visitor can learn more about the patron and their various patronized works.
Moreover, the current top patron for a current month also obtains “top billing” as their name is featured prominently on a scroll that crowns the featured artistic work. In this manner, the visitor’s attention is particularly directed to the current month’s top patron - providing another excellent opportunity for the patron to garner attention by their association with a work that they deem to be of great artistic merit, and, hence, worthy of greater attention.
IV. RANKINGS AND EARNINGS STATS - FOR ARTISTS
Throughout the site, visitors are able to track the various performance stats of artists and their individual works.
On the Home Page:
The artist’s work may be featured as a randomized excerpt, accompanied by a performance “ticker” at the foot of the excerpt, revealing the artist’s cumulative earnings and rank for that work, along with the artist’s earnings for the current month for that work, along with the accompanying rank for that month.
On the Home Page Graphs:
On the right hand column of the home page are a set of graphs indicating the top cumulative and current month’s artist earnings, along with the top cumulative and current month’s story earnings. Only those artists or individual works with the highest earnings and rankings are featured on these graphs. All graphs feature links to the artist’s profile page (for graphs pertaining to the artist’s performance) or links to the individual artistic work (for graphs pertaining to a work’s performance). It goes without saying that a high earnings/ranking performance for an artist or their various works provides the artist or their work with greater visibility on the site, and hence, a greater opportunity to garner further income and rankings through such exposure.
On the Artist’s Profile Page:
Whenever a visitor clicks on an artist’s name wherever it is featured on the site (for example, as a by-line on an excerpted story in the home page), the visitor has an opportunity to learn more about the artist, as well as view a table listing of the artist’s various works on the site, and their accompanying earnings and rankings. On this page, the visitor can get an overall picture of the artist’s performance stats for all their works posted on the site.
The idea is that the profile page encourages a prospective patron/fan to track the artist’s overall performance and to have the opportunity to affect the artist’s standings for works that the fan/patron favors.
In sum, the artist’s profile page provides a comprehensive picture of the artist’s “box office” for all their posted works on the site.
On the Artistic Work Itself:
On the very page where the artistic work is featured in full, the visitor can have a full picture and analysis of an artistic work’s overall earnings performance and rankings. Additionally, this page provides stats on the number of cumulative patrons for that work (and accompanying rank) as well as the number of patrons for that work in the current month (and accompanying rank for that stat).
This page also provides the overall earnings performance and rankings of the artist, both cumulatively over time and for that current month. Additionally, the visitor can learn how many patrons the artist has obtained for all their works combined, both cumulatively over time and for that current month.
In effect, such a page functions as a “sports card” for the artist and their work, giving the prospective fan key insights as to the artist’s and their work’s overall performance and “box office”.
On The Stats Page:
This page can be found as a tab on the toolbar. It features a compendium of tables pertaining to artist performance, the earnings and rankings of artistic works, and patron performance. For high performing artists and high performing artistic works, such artists or their works have additional opportunity to be showcased - with an added opportunity to secure more income by means of their increased visibility on this page. The opportunity to secure a treasured “slot” on this page thereby increases the overall “sport” of the site, as artists vie for the chance to increase their performance rankings - ideally, with the posting of superior material that attracts a large number of patrons and accompanying earnings.
V. RANKING STATS - FOR PATRONS
Throughout the site, visitors are able to track the various performance stats of patrons and the individual works and artists that they support.
On the Home Page:
The artist’s work may be featured as a randomized excerpt, prominently “crowned” with a scroll that features the name of the current top patron for the current month. Here, there is no need for the patron to be ranked - their appearance on the scroll is a clear indicator that they are the month’s top-ranking patron for that work.
On the Home Page Graphs:
On the right hand column of the home page are a set of graphs, two of which respectively indicate the top ranking all-time patrons and the top-ranking current month’s patrons. It goes without saying that, on these graphs, only the most generous patrons on the site - for all-time and for the current month - are featured here. Visitors to the site will thereby know that the patrons featured on these graphs are essentially the site’s premier patrons - a fact alone that may provide extra prompting for a visitor to click on the patron’s name on these graphs, which will link to the patron’s profile page. At all times, the idea is to pique the visitor’s curiosity about such patrons, prompting them to learn more about the patron’s biography, their business, their web site, their Facebook page, their blog - and, most tellingly, about their artistic tastes through the artists and works that they support.
On the Patron’s Profile Page:
Whenever a visitor clicks on a patron’s name wherever it is featured on the site, the visitor has an opportunity to learn more about the patron, as well as view a table listing of the various works supported by that patron, along with the accompanying stats for such works. On this page, the visitor can get an overall picture of the patron’s artistic tastes, and derive some insight as to the performance of those works that the patron supports.
On the Artistic Work Itself:
On this page, the patron’s rankings are less about numbers and more about their visible placement on the page. A patron’s prominent placement on the scroll that crowns this page signals to the reader that this patron is the current top-ranking patron for the current month.
For those patrons that have garnered an impressive past history of support for the work in question, their generosity will be reflected by their placement in the column of all-time patrons that will serve as the right hand framing column for the artistic work. Though figures and rankings are not provided here, patron placement in this column is determined by descending order of cumulative patron payments. In sum, the top-ranking all-time patron appears at the head of this column, followed by the second-highest ranking all-time patron for that work, and so on. Thus, an impressive cumulative history of patronage generosity will work to ensure that the patron’s name lingers on in prominent association with a favored artistic work.
On The Stats Page:
This page can be found as a tab on the toolbar. It features a compendium of tables pertaining to artist performance, the earnings and rankings of artistic works, and patron performance. Visitors to this page will likely be interested in getting an overall picture of top-performing artists, top-performing artistic works, and top-performing patrons. It’s the overall “box office” page that presents a list of the best “performers” on the site. If you want to be known as a generous supporter of the site’s starving artists, here is the page that essentially acknowledges your efforts - as it shows stats for the highest ranking all-time patron (i.e. stats for cumulative payments over time) and stats for the current month’s most generous patrons.
VI. PROMOTIONAL STRATEGIES - FOR ARTISTS
As an artist, not only do you want your work to be seen by as many people as possible, but ideally, you’d also like to derive some income for your efforts. After posting your work on this site, you need not sit idle and hope for the best. Thanks to the unique features offered here, you have various options open to you in promoting the work you’ve posted to the site:
Link To Our Home Page
Here is the most elementary way to work toward increasing the visibility of your work: by working to increase the overall visibility of the site. If you have your own home page, Facebook page, or blog, it’s as simple as placing a link to our home page. If all participating artists on this site do likewise, then everybody benefits. As the old maxim goes: A rising tide raises all ships.
Link Directly To Your Posted Artistic Work
Let your Facebook friends know where they can find your work here. Twitter about it. Post it on the forums you visit. Blog about it. Dash off emails to your social network. With your work now posted on this site, you’re not simply asking people to read your work and perhaps leave with nothing more than a positive comment. Heck, you’re not even asking for hand-outs. You’re telling everyone far and wide, “If you appreciate the work I’ve posted here, and you think that it stacks up better than everyone else’s stuff, here’s your chance to help me up my rankings and visibility…and get known for doing it.” In the end, however, this strategy will only be as effective as the quality of the work you’ve chosen to post here. If your artistic work is as good as you sincerely believe it is, that fact alone should spur your supporters to make the decision to back their artistic judgment with concrete action.
If they think your work is compelling enough to deserve further notice, then they, too, now have an incentive to “hitch” their proverbial patron wagons to a work that they think, in turn, will also garner them visibility as high profile supporters of such work.
As you should frame it, it’s not about simply providing you a meal for your efforts. It’s about the sport of demonstrating that your work deserves to beat the competition in artistic combat, that enough people think likewise to come forth with their wallets and make their statement as your supporting patrons - and that, as documented by our comprehensive stats, the readers of your work may now track the record of that support through your performance as an artist in “combat” with the work of everyone else.
Spreading Your Artistic Seed
Remember that while there are stats for the performance of each of your artistic pieces, there are also performance stats for you as an artist - which track your cumulative earnings for all the work you’ve posted to the site. Rather than stake your hopes on just one submission, you might want to consider submitting additional work, not only to increase your overall artistic presence on the site, but to also pool the earnings of all your additional works, which might raise your rankings as an artist on the site.
But do take care not to spam the site with a large number of works of doubtful quality. First of all, there is the consideration of the fee for each additional submission. If too many additional submissions are of poor quality, it is doubtful that you will attract enough patron payments to make your investment worthwhile. Secondly, you might risk diluting the positive impression of your stronger works that have been posted to the site - as readers judge you by your weaker work, not your best efforts.
In the end, your best strategy is to post only additional work that you judge to be of the highest quality - that gives your readers a fuller, rounder picture of your merit as an artist worth patronizing.
VII. PROMOTIONAL STRATEGIES - FOR PATRONS
If you’re reading this, we’re presuming that you’re not simply motivated by mere altruism in feeding a starving artist. We’re assuming that you, too, want to increase your online visibility for various reasons, both personal and financial. Well, what better way to go about it than to be identified with artistic work that you sincerely believe a great many people would potentially be interested in seeing? - if only they had a guide to assist them in separating the scarce wheat from all that chaff.
Here’s where you come in:
Pick Wisely
Ok, so you may not be an artist, but you have the confidence of your artistic taste. Even if you’re not the most aggressive patron on the site, you want visitors who view your profile - and the list of the works you patronize - to know that you’re the best guide to show them what’s worth reading on this site. If time is money, your aim with this strategy is to demonstrate that you’re the go-to person for saving readers the time spent in sifting through a massive archive of work of perhaps doubtful or varying quality.
People not only love stats, but they also love lists. In that sense, the record of your patronage support - shown on your profile page - also functions as your recommended reading list for the site.
With this strategy, you want visitors to your profile page to know that you know how to pick ‘em better than anyone else - so why not also learn more about you as a person or perhaps about the unique web page or business services you have to offer? It’s all about taste - and you want your visitors to know that you have it in spades.
Spread the Love Far and Wide
Again, if your ultimate aim is to increase your visibility throughout the site, one effective strategy is to patronize as many deserving artists on the site as you can find. Remember, your name will appear in association with the works and artists you support. Not all your choices will be vindicated by the readers, but many perhaps will be. And, with this strategy, your name may be on enough artists’ works so that it increases the chances that fans of these artists may take the next step to learn more about those artists’ associated patrons - such as yourself. This is also an excellent strategy for those patrons who perhaps don’t have the means to provide extensive support to one artist. Instead, they can make all sorts of comparably smaller payments to all sorts of different artists. With this strategy, if you can’t be the top gun in the stats, you can be the stealthy, cunning, little person who is showing up on all sorts of artists’ pages - gaining greater visibility on a small-budget strategy.
Focus the Love
This is the strategy recommended for the comparatively well-heeled patron who strongly believes in the artistic merit of a particular work or artist. Here, you’re betting that you’ve found the proverbial diamond in the rough - the one artist or work you’re sure that the masses would gravitate to in droves - if only you could turbo-charge their visibility.
This is the strategy reserved for those patrons with the means and the passionately held artistic tastes to garner themselves a high placement on the patron stats - and, by extension, through the high placements of the artists and works they heavily support. If you’re hankering for a top spot on those high profile graphs, this might very well be the strategy for you.
Love the Unloved
This is more of an under-the-radar guerilla strategy for those patrons that just simply want to secure prominent placements on as many scrolls as possible during the month - without busting their budget. Here’s how it works: Some people get all the love, while others don’t. It’s just a fact of life that many deserving needles do get lost in that haystack. With this strategy, your job is to find the relatively decent artistic works that nobody has bothered to patronize as yet. With just a minimal outlay, you’ve then secured your high-visibility spot on the scroll of that artistic work - and now you’re just waiting for all those art pieces to randomly revolve on the home page, where your name will show up on all those high-visibility scrolls. You’re playing it as a numbers game, and you’re trusting that enough people will randomly come across all those affordably patronized unloved works as they revolve on the home page - and they’ll click on your name when it comes up.
But remember: that strategy only works for the month in question. Still, even when the month passes, you’ll have secured your high-visibility spot on the right hand column of the artist’s work as the one, sole all-time patron - and perhaps that might work to pique a reader’s interest to check out who is the one person who “bit the bullet” and threw this lonely artist some love.
Spreading Your Artistic Recommendations Off-Site
As they say: advertising works best when it doesn’t look like advertising. Yes, you’d like to use the site to get more people to learn about you and perhaps your services or your web page. So we’ve made it easy for you. Once you’ve firmly established your name and profile in association with an artist and their work, all you need do is to spread the word about the great short story you’re recommending. Twitter it, blog it, pop onto a forum, post it to your Facebook page, or just dash off your email recommendations to your network of friends: “Hey, guys, check out this fantastic short story I found at the following link. And pass this on to others. Simply amazing!”
In effect, you’re using the compelling quality of your patronized artist’s work to go viral. If thousands then pop in to check out all the fuss, you’ll be right in there with your patron placements for them to check out as well. Basically, you’re using the artist’s work to sell you.
VIII. CONTACT US
If you’re still kind of confused, unclear, or not exactly sure about what you need to do next in submitting your work or in making your patron payments, we invite you to contact us and let us know how we can help to clear out some of the fog. We can be reached at info@PatronQuo.com.
