On Monetization

Let's say I want to make a movie. I can do a lot of cool work with just the tools that I have on hand, actually. Certain phones have really impressive cameras these days, after all, and my computer does have a video editing program already installed, where I can string a bunch of video clips together and add background music easily enough. I can write a little script, maybe find a cool-looking nearby town to shoot in, invite some friends to act out all the parts and have a picnic in the middle of the day for everyone, and then go home and assemble my movie. It's going to be very apparent that it's low-budget: the lighting is going to be pretty flat, the audio is probably going to sound kinda distant and not always easy to hear. But hey, if the writing, acting, and scene composition lands with people anyways, then I might have a cool cult classic on my paws. Nothing at all is stopping me from making a movie pretty much for free, and having it turn out to be pretty cool, albeit not stunning on a production level.

But, imagine if I wasn't restrained to basically having to do the movie for free. Most movies have a budget in the millions, if not tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions. So let's ask, what if! What if I could hire actors? Rent pro cameras and sound equipment and lights? Hire a team to find locations and design sets? Props, costumes, cosmetics! Hire a crew to be on set who all together know how to make a scene pop! Hire post-production staff to digitally touch-up the little details of scenes, add their cool effects, and to use their talents to go over the sound with a fine-toothed comb and make it sound incredible.

With all of that, I might just be looking at making a movie that you would go see in a theater to fully experience how good it is. One that actually gets shared around and remembered and enjoyed outside of just niche arthouse movie fans. In some ways, having a budget might make it feel more like a "real" movie, as opposed to it just looking like someone's weird embarrassing old YouTube video.

DIY culture rules. we are doing a lot of cool stuff with DIY (Do It Yourself) right now. Zooey Dot Pub, Zooier Than Thou, Zoo & Me, Shiv, Zipwok, all of these are made on a very minimal, often out-of-pocket budget, and despite not having millions or even thousands of dollars to throw around, these projects are all still turning out content that drives the community, entertains people, even helps people with different struggles they might be having as a member of a queer minority. And if you could peel back the curtain, and see how that's all getting done with sheer talent and force of will, and not a lot of cash to help get things done, it makes you wonder... What could we get done if we did have big budgets to work with?

I've touched on this briefly in the magazine now and then in the past: to me, monetization is an interesting idea in relation to zoophilia. It's one of the ways in which the rubber hits the road: actual dollar amounts changing hands means that this isn't all just talk. Now there's something real enough that you can buy groceries with it, pay rent, cover vet visits; hire an asset artist and a video editor to turn your monologue about zoophilia into a video, for example; exact talents needed will of course depend on what you're trying to do, but, having ten thousand dollars to spend on help with a project puts you in a very different category than having 12 dollars. Even if you CAN do all the work yourself, having a budget to hire others can allow you to all work on different parts at the same time, and get more content out faster—or, let's be honest, even at all. It's much easier to burn yourself out trying to do every single thing on your own, even if you do have the skillset technically. Not to mention that a budget allows you to buy better tools for yourself, even if you do just want to keep making things by yourself. And, again, groceries: all kinds of talented zoos might be able to quit their day jobs and go all-in on this, dedicate more time to this and make more cool work for the community, if we proved it was possible. It would no longer have to be people with the time and resources to add a whole volunteer project to their schedule.

I personally think that monetization, even though it can feel like a yucky word sometimes, is one of the things that would ramp up zoo activism to a level that seems hard to even imagine as possible right now. It's not like people don't like to consume content: people support Patreons, buy merch, crowdfund things that they think seem exciting. And that's something that we don't see a ton of in the explicitly zooey world, yet, although I actually wouldn't be surprised if it's on the horizon. I think that as we become a more populous community, the chances go up steeply that someone's going to come along who knows how to monetize on zoo pride, in some way or another. And as long as it's done in a cool way that elevates the community rather than just being a weird grift, I will be glad to tip my hat to them.

For zoo revenue that you can see going on in the world right now, I mean, some people are making money off of bestiality porn, which, you certainly could say is relevant to zoophilia; whether or not that's actually the kind of zoo-positive community-engagement kind of thing I'm talking about here though, I mean, in 99% of cases I would say it's absolutely not that at all, and even in rare cases where monetization of bestiality porn seems totally on the up-and-up, I still don't think we've seen anyone explode as a porn person and as an influencer in the zoo-pride social spaces.

Some people are making money taking art commissions, basically being furry artists but openly zoo. Some feral artists certainly seem to be making very good money off of feral art, I don't know if I've seen any "yes I am literally a zoophile here are the zetas in my bio" artists who seem to be making a living off of feral art, but hey it is a space where we actually see money changing hands.

Do the zoo forums make money off donations? I think one of them is fully out of pocket, one of them does rely on donations, and the other one I can't remember.

Steeeeve's zooey sticker campaign is funded by donations, and that's actually kind of at a cool intersection between DIY and commercial: he does DIY a lot of this process, but at the end of the day, he also has to get large numbers of high quality stickers printed by a manufacturer, which they won't do for free, obviously. Using donations that people give him voluntarily, Steeeeve orders a huge batch of stickers, and then once they're done and he has them, he sends them out at no cost to anyone who asks. People aren't "buying" the stickers, but the stickers are funded by the community and then given back to the community. In this case Steeeve isn't taking a cut for himself, all of the donations do go to getting stickers made and covering postage costs.

Here at ZDP, we've been saying for forever that we'd love to do a print version of the magazine. But that kind of like, almost becomes a whole business all on its own pretty quickly, especially if we were going to start doing it regularly, rather than just as a special limited time run. We'd need someone to organize it and make each installment of the magazine look cool, we'd need to pay for paper and ink and everything and have it printed, we would need to get shipping handled, and so on and so on. We already have the content created, the writing is already up on the website and available to everyone, but it would take many hands and a few figures to start getting quarterly ZDP magazines sent out for people to keep beside their living room couches and archive on their bookshelves. This isn't a plug for anything by the way, there is no crowdfunding campaign that we're announcing or anything, it's just an example of what we can do with no monetization (publish two new articles a week, build an enormous thriving community, tackle community issues and foster discussion, enrage bigots, the list goes on) and what we cannot do because of not having monetized this project (no cool paper zooey magazine, sadly)

What other ways could we see monetization enter the zoo world? I don't have a zooey "get rich quick" scheme here. I think it's going to take someone with an entrepreneurial spirit, and, womp-womp for me and a lot of the other zoos I know, we are all so punk and in love with DIY and seem like we're allergic to making money from helping the zoo community, let alone asking to make a livable income. I think we might actually be more likely to see a non-zoo who's already an influencer in some other sphere be the one who breaks the zoo monetization bubble first: someone who streams video games and rakes in chat donations and their audience skews kinda furry, really progressive, really pro-love anti-judgment, and then at some point that streamer explicitly starts making zoos one of the groups they cater to, selling zooey merch with some of their own brand integrated into it, among other things in their store; making their streams a safe place for zoos to be (and to fork over money in). And hey, I wouldn't hate that at all, call it a hustle if you want, but if it's a genuine act of acceptance then I would be happy to see it.

I think we should empower ourselves to imagine a world where we shoot bigger. Shoot for "the next phase." There are plenty of communities out there that people can make a living in: right-wing politics YouTubers, left-wing politics podcasters, gamers, we live in a world where making a living by catering to the community that you belong to is super possible. Not everyone can be the influencer, obviously, but even the audience benefits from having more people like them to be entertained by, validated by.

When the first YouTubers started running ads, selling merch, etc, they got super shit on and were constantly accused of "selling out." But nowadays it's that monetization that allows creators to scale up businesses to the point where they can have teams and companies and do really awesome things. I think if we really got running on this kind of stuff, it would accelerate the movement in ways that would be very cool and fun.

Article written by Alissa Dogchurch (January 2025)

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