I'm going to give you some context first, so hear me out.
I cross-post to Wattpad, RoyalRoad, ScribbleHub, Inkitt, Honeyfeed, Penana, WebNovel, and the reddit serials subreddit. I only started some of these places in the last month or so, but I post free chapters in bursts until I catch up to where I am elsewhere then only post 1x free chapter / week for each of my ongoing series. Also, I have short stories and shorter novella length stories I wrote a decade and a half ago that are far worse quality than my current work that I have posted in their entirety just so I can have a few completed works to give me more credibility. Few people trust new authors to complete what they started enough to pay them for content.
On my Patreon, I have 100+ early access chapters for 2x of my series and 40+ early access chapters for a third. I write and post 5x new chapters most weeks. I almost never completely take a week off, even between volumes, so, at worst, there might be a reduced number of new chapters that week.
My 5 volume completed reverse harem romance series is listed as a tier at $10 and people cancel after they download the 5 PDFs of main story and 1 PDF of side stories. My other 2 ongoing series and a companion diary series have 5 different tiers at different price points to mix and match what you want. $5 for just one series, $7.50 for one series and the diary entries, or $10 for all my dungeon work. I also have yearly subscription rates discounted 16% (max Patreon allows). Most of my subscribers are there for one series of the everything tier unless they are a temporary subscriber for the completed series. I've sold 2 year subscriptions for one series and 1 year for the everything dungeon tier. Most people subscribe, cancel, and come back later, even if they like your story. A few people decide they don't like the direction things take and cuss you out then cancel right away. That's less than 1% in my experience.
My work tends to very much so be a mixed bag for readers. Some absolutely love my work and feel the need to declare as much. Others like it well enough, show up every week, but don't think it's worth any real investment. Others clearly don't like my work, leave me bad reviews, mean comments, and yet don't stop reading until I block them. Some of those ones get angry they can't continue their verbal abuse and make new accounts to continue harassing me, sometimes even following me to other sites I cross-post to in order to do so. Others realize my work isn't for them and just quietly stop reading. Honestly, I prefer this type of rejection.
All of these readers then translate to the sorts of numbers you see with Patreon. Less than 10% of your dedicated readers will ever consider trying out Patreon to read your content. This is the individuals who follow, favorite, or whatever other form of subscribing to your story for free the site in question has. It is not of the people who simply glance at your story and then immediately drop it. Many individuals get even lower numbers for their Patreon and a few lucky few get more success, but it's rarely over 10%. Note than 10% of 100 is 10 whole 10% of 100,000 is 1,000 so authors with bigger followings just have more people in that 10% of readers.
I was nearly done with my 3rd book of my now completed romance series when I opened a Patreon. So most people had either dropped it or were hard core fans by the time I opened a Patreon. However, I was only using Wattpad back then and had ~1/4 million reads on the first volume. So, sales were slow the first few months with me being lucky to make $50 / month from subscriptions. A few months later I started my first dungeon series after joining RoyalRoad. I set up Patreon for that right away and readers slowly trickled in to read it for free, but rarely subscribed to the Patreon. Less than a month later, I joined Writathon where I had to post 55,555 words in 5 weeks, which is 23-56 chapters for me and required daily updates at minimum. I ended up nearly finishing my first volume in that time and my Patreon subscribers went from less than 5 to a few dozen just for the dungeon series.
By January of this year I hit peak numbers at nearly $300 / month, but the numbers quickly fell from there. I had gone back to my 1x free chapter / week and was still posting 5x chapters / series on Patreon, which allowed me to build up a backlog. People still liked my book, but most people don't want to pay for a subscription long term. Some returned every few months for a month at a time, some still haven't been seen again. A lot of my exit surveys say they still love my work, but their finances are too difficult right now. The economy kind of sucks right now, so I get it. Still, until recently I was lucky if I made $150 / month, half of my peak numbers. That's with starting a second new series and doubling the cost for my completed one (they're buying 5x completed volumes now vs an ongoing subscription essentially).
Recently I joined all the new sites and it's helped my numbers to some extent because I'm reaching more people. I just marked the first volume of my romance series complete on Inkitt, which saw it added to more than 100 libraries last night. I got 3x temporary subscriptions from that. That's about how it goes, though, as most people only want to read completed work. I will say I've had an uptick in negative *ssh*less to deal with alongside the uptick in positive feedback and subscriptions. It's difficult to deal with so much anger from people who are reading for free, but there isn't much I can do about that.
One last thing before I wrap this up. Patreon doesn't take out taxes. If you live in the U.S. it might not be worth it to even attempt using it. H&R block charges $350 just to use their software and have the proper paperwork to file your taxes. Someone local*might* be cheaper, but no guarantees. Even after that, you still have to pay taxes since they aren't paid when you receive the money. I made $1,000 (before Patreon's fees) last year, but lost most of that money. It doesn't really feel worth it to spend 40+ hours working on writing, editing, marketing, etc. every single week just to make less money than I would for minimum wage at a part time job. My husband insists I continue without worrying about taxes, so I guess I'll keep going until the money drops below $100 / month. However, I regularly think about how much better it would be to just write fewer chapters a week and do it entirely for free. I'd still have to deal with *ssh*less, but I wouldn't have the taxes hanging over my head as well as feel like I have to overwork myself to death just to not upset the people paying me.
