SDHQ Update - Patreon: Disabling Ads and Restructured Rewards

Hi everyone! I hope you have been having a fantastic holiday filled with lots of happiness. I know I have. I found out that my wife and I are having a baby girl, which is extremely exciting. I wanted to provide a little update on SteamDeckHQ and explain a restructure that has been long in the making: Patreon.

As some may have noticed, we now have ads on our website. This is something I wanted to avoid for the longest time, but unfortunately, for us to be able to work on the site full-time and do what we love, we need a solid source of income. Since we can't charge for reviews or articles, there are only two ways to make money as a press website: Advertisements and Patreon. Advertisements can come from an ad supplier, like the one we use (Mediavine), or directly from companies who would pay to hard-code their ads on the website.

Personally, I wanted to find a way to host our website and work full time while being funded in ways that don't cost the viewer anything or disrupt their experience, and that is still a goal I have, but for us to function and build up that reserve to be able to push us to that, we need to have enough money to fund us. Thankfully, Mediavine has been extremely generous with RPM, and we have made significantly more than we did before. But I'm not 100% sure how long it will take to get to where I want just yet. So, I wanted to offer a way you can support and get rid of the ads in the process.

With the Patreon restructure, this is possible. With the old rewards, I heavily underestimated how much work SteamDeckHQ would be, and now we are working on HandheldHQ. I had no idea how popular this would be, so with the number of games to cover and hardware to review, along with the news and social media (which I also handle), there was way more than I expected. Luckily, we do have an awesome new writer with us (Oliver), and we are going to be bringing more on, which will make everything significantly easier, but this will all take time.

So, this restructuring will be more streamlined and to the point, giving ways to support us that will benefit you RIGHT now. Our plan is this:

• $1 Tier - No Rewards, but a BIG THANK YOU for supporting us
• $3 Tier - Disabled Ads + Listed as Supporter on YouTube Videos
• $6.50 Tier - All the above + Behind the Scenes content on Patreon
• $10 Tier - All the above + Special Discord Role, extra giveaway entries, and early access to videos and other media we produce

If you are subscribed to any tier that disables ads, we now have a "Log In With Patreon" button at the top of the website. All you have to do is log in with the same Patreon account and bam, no more ads! If you are already a supporter, this carries over and all you have to do is log in! And yes, this will be disabling ads on both SteamDeckHQ and HandheldHQ!

To log out, all you have to do is scroll to the bottom of the website and hit the logout button above the "Cookie Settings" in the bottom right corner.

We want to hear your feedback and see what you think, and if necessary, we will make changes accordingly. The last thing I want to do is make it feel like you are wasting your money, so I want to make it as fair as possible.

Thank you all for your understanding and support. This journey has been nuts, to say the least, and has made my dreams come true. It is an honor and a pleasure to do this work and be regarded so highly among the community, and I will continue bringing trusted content and reporting to you! If you want to join and support us, just go ahead and click here or any of the hyperlinks above!

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