Okay, very difficult and extremely unsexy post to make, so p..

Okay, very difficult and extremely unsexy post to make, so please read through it carefully BEFORE voting in the poll.

I have to make a change to how I operate this account (don't worry, there will be no agency involvement because I fucking hate agencies and think they ruin everything).

I have had the same subscription price for over 5 years now, but the price of everything else has increased so much around it. My income has stayed the same while every bill has increased. For example: my share of rent when I started was £315pcm - my rent now is £450 and going up to £500 in July. And everyone knows how everything else has increased along with the dollar dropping in value. The $6.99 that you pay becomes fewer than £3 after OF's share, taxes, exchange rates, etc have their impacts on it and it is not sustainable to deliver what I am trying to deliver to you at that price. Seeing the number in my bank account gradually drop just makes me less and less motivated to create and leaves me in a state of constant stress.

To put this into perspective: if I had 400 subscribers at $6.99/mo and received no tips, that becomes £3 x 400 x 12, that becomes £14,400 per year. A minimum wage job in the UK would earn over £25,000 per year. And I've never had 400 subscribers: my PEAK was 200 and I hit that for approximately 3 days. I am very lucky that I have a small number of fans who tip regularly but it is unfortunately nowhere near enough of you who do so to make it sustainable or competitive with a minimum wage job (which I cannot seem to obtain despite an engineering degree and experience in many industries - the reason why rhymes with schtrans schwoman).

I wake up to 30+ messages every day and I'm faced with spending my day replying to them and people keep getting angry at me when I don't keep on top of it, but how can I be motivated to do that when I'd be doing it for around 25% of minimum wage?

The UK is becoming a scarier and scarier place for trans people, especially trans women, and if I have any hope of maybe moving abroad I can't keep having to dip in my savings to pay my rent.

I have 3 options in mind for how to fix this.

Option A: I increase the price of this page to £10.99 as a trial for a few months or so. I see how it impacts subscriber numbers, overall earnings, and my motivation to keep on top of messaging you all. If this ends up unsustainable as well, I will move to option B.

Option B: I make a 2nd account linked to this one. This account becomes a 'VIP page' with the price increased to $20.99 and becomes the page with everything on it where I focus my energy when it comes to messaging and interacting; and the other, newer account is a $6.99 page where I post my photos and short clips of longer videos and I focus a lot less on messaging on it because it stresses me out to do that for such a tiny amount of money. You can still see the same level of content from me at $6.99 (minus longer videos) with less expectation with messages by switching to the new account when I set that up and link it to this one, and if you want more you can opt to subscribe to the 'VIP' and see the longer videos and be able to more reliably chat with me because I won't be overwhelmed with the numbers of messages.

Option C: I change absolutely nothing and work myself into the ground before becoming homeless this winter (this option is not a real option and cannot be voted for)

I've put 7 days on the poll, and I will not be making the chosen change without prior warning. I will also make sure that the longer videos already on here are available on the new account if option B is chosen just so you don't lose your faves if you're unable to pay more than you do to keep it as fair as possible.

If you have any questions just let me know, if any of this makes no sense and you need some clarifications just comment - I wrote this while incredibly sleep deprived as I have been for the past ????? amount of time.

Steph xxx