New Patron Benefit: No Ads!

Howdy, everyone!

As you know, I'm taking this month off to perform much needed maintenance on the site. And that included adding an additional benefit for y'all to thank you for your support. :)

First, a little news. I have a

New Ad Provider!

Over the last 10+ years, one of the big challenges of creating a comic that features gay heroes has been that all the mainstream ad providers refused to work with me.  "Gay" = "unacceptable content" for them, and that was the end of it. 

And as you know, I pay my artists a full rate—thousands of dollar each month—in order to post the quality of work that I do. And this is my full-time job. Since the pandemic started, I haven't been able to sell books at conventions, and while your support has made it possible for me to continue,  it's been a while since we hit the "break even" level of Patreon support ($7000) where my basic expenses are covered. 

That's why it was huge when an ad provider that specializes in small sites like mine reached out to me at the end of the summer, told me they believed in what I was doing, and offered to work with me directly to get approvals. The amount of effort they put into getting those approvals (it was literally weeks and weeks of emails and phone calls) actually reminded me a lot of how helpful Patreon was with creators like me when I first started with them back in 2015. And, as you also know, signing up with Patreon is what allowed me to continue making comics when I thought I'd have to stop.

While ads don't guarantee a lot of income for independent websites like mine, every little bit helps, especially in these pandemic times.  

So, when you check out the site, you'll notice some new ads! 

But...

Active Patrons who are logged into my site will not see the ads

Before I launched those ads, I needed to make sure that y'all were still going to have the best experience possible when reading my comics.

Of course, I've done my best to work with this provider to make the ads as non-invasive as I can, while still at least bringing in a few dollars a day.  I still might make some tweaks to the layout later, but overall I'm happy with how they've set things up.

But ads are still ads. Even if you can close them (and the close button actually works with their "sticky" ads, which is good), they still might bug you. Using Ad Blockers can affect the layout of a site, and don't work 100% of the time. And I wanted to make sure that you, as my Patron, wouldn't have to see ads if you didn't want to.

It took a bunch of coding and more back and forth, but I think I've finally got it! If you are logged into my webcomics site using your Patreon account, the ads for this new provider won't show. And, in fact, the design of site will look like they were never there at all—no weird gaps or anything. As one of my awesome Patrons, you now can binge-read all my pages, ad-free!

How to turn off the ads

First of all, just so we're clear, the ads have been added to my webcomic site, the best place for you to read my comics:

https://youngprotectors.com 

That's the site you need to be logged into as my Patron. (So, being logged in here at patreon.com isn't the same thing. Two completely different sites.)

And how do you log into my webcomics site as a Patron?

The same way you log in to read any of my Patreon-only pages, like the Preview Pages and the 18+ comic, Legendary. There's a "Log In With Patreon" button in the right sidebar under every comic page when you are on your desktop/notebook computer.

On mobile, it's located right under the Disqus Comments Section:

(I'm working on finding a better placement for that on mobile.)

Click that orange button. You'll then be asked to "Allow" Patreon to connect you to my site, and once you do that, you should be logged into my site, and the ads will be gone!

(You might need to refresh the page or click the Next button for it to really take. But that should be all you need to do.)

What if you run into a problem logging into my webcomics site with Patreon?

95% of the time, it just works. You'll be logged in and will see a black bar with your Patreon-created username on my site in the upper-right of your screen.

The other 4% of the time, clearing your browser's cache will fix the problem.

But if you do run into a problem, I have solutions in my Patreon Rewards FAQ:

https://youngprotectors.com/faq/patreon-rewards-faq/ 

Just look at the answers for the FAQ questions:

• How do I read the Patreon-exclusive pages on your webcomics site?
• How do I log into youngprotectors.com with my Patreon credentials?
• Help! I’m a $5+ Patron and I’ve followed the steps to read the Patreon-exclusive pages on your site, but it’s not working!

The solutions there seem to always fix things. But if they don't, let me know! I'm here to help! :D

Disqus ads

So, being logged in as my Patron will remove all the new ads from your reading experience. Yay!

Unfortunately, that doesn't apply to the ads the Disqus commenting system shoves into my site. And, let's face it, some of those can be particularly gross.

So, another project I'm working on this month is swapping out the Disqus commenting system for something better. Something that's not adware. 

As I've learned before, changing my commenting system is a big deal. Especially because our commenting community is so awesome. So, I'm not going to launch the new system until it's ready. 

But it will have a bunch of advantages over Disqus. Not only will it let me get rid of those Disqus ads, but it should also let me create a comment section only visible to Patrons that is actually located UNDER the Patreon-only webcomic pages themselves, which means you won't need to go to two different places to comment on the Sneak Preview pages anymore. I think that will be a very good thing.

There are also a bunch of other cool features that you'll have access to. (If you're curious, you can read about them here.)

But that's for another day. :)

If you can, please give it a try and let me know!

So, in my testing, everything is working great. Once a Patron is logged in, the ads disappear. But if you have a moment, please try logging into youngprotectors.com as a Patron and let me know if the ads go away for you, too. (At least after you refresh the page.)

If we run into any hiccups, I'll let the ad provider know, and we'll get it fixed!

I really couldn't do this without you

I'm certainly hoping these new ads will bring in an extra few hundred dollars each month, but it's your support that is what really makes it possible for me to continue.  I literally couldn't do this without you. I couldn't pay my artists, and I couldn't continue devoting the time I need to bring you what I hope are some of the best stories with gay heroes out there. I'd have to stop making comics.

You are the ones who make these stories possible. You are the real heroes of The Young Protectors.

And I am very, very grateful to all of you.

I hope you like this new benefit. Please let me know. :)

Happy holidays! More soon!