Before we begin, I’d like to offer a TL;DR. The purpose of this piece is to encourage you to support Pellicle via our Patreon. If you’ve been hovering on the fence and thinking about supporting our content for a while but just needed a gentle reminder, then consider this a friendly nudge. If, however, you’re interested in seeing a little more info, including details about our readership, how much we paid out to our contributors in 2021, and how we intend to increase our rates and better support these folks in the year ahead, then please do read on. Thanks to all of you for your support so far.

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Over the past couple of months I’ve been weighing up how Pellicle might better support both our readers and our contributors. As a freelance writer and photographer, I believe rates, generally speaking, are too low. But, after managing this publication’s budget for the past two and a half years I also understand innately why this is. Creating good content that people trust and read consistently requires a lot of time and money. But in today’s internet economy—where people expect that content for free, or very little outlay—sustaining the resources that enable it, let alone growing them, is challenging.

We run Pellicle on a cash basis. We have no debt, and our plan is, and always will be, to keep commissioning content until the money’s all gone. Thanks to our Patreon supporters, plus our sponsors Hop Burns & Black and Hand and Heart, we’re presently able to publish roughly one or two features per week, plus a podcast every three to four weeks, and both are pretty much self-sustaining as is.

While we’re incredibly thankful for the opportunity to do this, we want to do more, and we want to do better.

Since our inception in May 2019 we’ve worked with over 100 freelance writers, photographers and illustrators. It’s our belief we have a responsibility to our contributors, and by paying them fairly for their work we are also taking responsibility for our readers and listeners, and the time and attention they choose to give us.

It’s with a great sense of pride we’re able to tell you that in 2021 we paid out over £35,000 to our contributors. Every piece of work you read on Pellicle is indicative of at least two people being paid, which includes the small retainer we’re able to pay our editorial team for the hard work they do behind the scenes. That we’re able to do this as an independent publication, mostly supported by its readers, feels, quite frankly, ridiculous.

But like I said, we want to do better. With this in mind, from May 1st we will be increasing our rates to the following:

Regular Features — £0.23p/ word (rounded to the nearest 100 words)
Set Rate Features (Q&A’s, Recipes, etc) — £300
Photography — £200/commission
Illustration — £200/header and one spot (additional spots £25 each)

Full details on how this will be structured will be incorporated into our Pitching, Rates & Style Guide over the next few weeks. Existing commissions will be honoured at our current rate (this is a failsafe to stop us going under before we can increase them.) Due to a backlog of commissions we’ve currently put a pause on accepting pitches, but we’ll update the guide when we are both ready to accept new ones, and flick the switch on our rate increase.

What we have decided, however, is that we are going to implement this increase on May 1st, regardless of our present income, as we feel this is the right thing to do by our contributors. In order to achieve this sustainably we need more readers and listeners to sign up to our Patreon.

Over 82,000 people visited Pellicle in 2021, but drilling into those numbers we can see that on average our monthly audience of regular readers averages at about 9000. At the time of writing we have 241 Patreon supporters, which includes 38 beer and cider related businesses on what we call our “pro-tiers.” This nets us just shy of £2400 a month, once Patreon takes its cut.

On average, a single feature costs us about £570 to produce, once we consider the writing, the images, and the small monthly retainer we pay our editorial team. This means that our Patreon supporters are typically covering the costs for around four features a month, with the rest of the funds coming from our sponsors, and the occasional sale of some merch from our shop. (More of that coming soon, we promise.) When we increase our rates, we calculate that the average cost per feature will shoot up to around £700-750.

As a percentage, 2.7% of our regular readers are graciously supporting us via Patreon. Assuming that a small handful of new supporters choose some of the higher tiers (including a handful of businesses on the pro-tiers) we only need a further 1% of current readers to join our Patreon to ensure our new rates are sustainable. That’s about 90 new supporters. If that number of supporters was to grow by 1.5%, or around 135, then not only would we be able to increase our rates, but we would also be able increase what we pay ourselves. This in turn would free up our time to spend more time working on the site, and producing more content, including features that are more time-sensitive.

Just so we’re clear, we’re not expecting every single one of our readers to become supporters. We’re aware that everyone’s circumstance is different, which is why Pellicle’s model is, and will always be, to offer all our content free of charge. There will never be exclusives for paying subscribers (bar our occasional Patreon updates on what’s going on behind the scenes) and we will never, ever, put our content behind a paywall.

It is our belief that people will always choose to support good content if they can afford to. The price of a coffee, glass of wine, cider, or beer, once a month, is effectively the difference between ensuring that Pellicle not only remains free and it’s contributors are paid fairly for their hard work, and our publication not existing in the first place.

Something else that’s important is that this model also allows us to avoid sponsored content and remain 100% editorially independent. If you’re a business in beer, cider, wine, or food, please consider how important it is to your industry, and the people who spend money on your products, for platforms like Pellicle to exist. And don’t forget that supporting a publication relevant to your industry is also a tax-deductible expense.

As an added perk if you are thinking about subscribing then we are now offering 10% off annual subscriptions, permanently. You don’t need a code to activate this, it’s applied automatically after choosing an annual subscription when selecting the tier that’s right for you. If you’re convinced, click the button below to head to our Patreon page now. You can support us from just £1 a month.

Quite simply, the greater your support, the better we can do by our team and our contributors, which means the better we can do by our readers—that’s you! Huge thanks to everyone who has supported us so far, we see you and we appreciate you.

Here’s to the next steps.