Y'all Come for the X, But What's the Y to Make You Stay?

Or in short, how do I *ahem* "maintain user retention". I was going to use that as the title as it's right phrase to use, but it sounds way too corporatese right? Feel like I gotta blink twice to reassure y'all that Paul Marketing isn't standing behind me with a gun making me say this.

But I digress, the issue I want to discuss about is that some folks don't stick around. I mean I can assume a number of things if they delete their subscription,  but what I don't have the answer for when people do subscribe...and then just don't pay up. 

As it's clearly stated in the preamble that you don't lose or gain anything by being my patron. So people not being overly concerned over maintaining their sub makes sense.  Then again, I assume that y'all are subbing because you want to support me which is great! But, it's not the only way either as there are plenty of ways of showing support. (e.g: Leaving a comment, giving the post a like, etc.) These are all viable options so like y'know, if you can't financially support me you don't have to! Which is why I'm wondering why people do so only to back out. 

Thankfully things are not so dire that I'm relying on Patreon to provide my daily bread, so why am I making such a stink over it? Well, it's because I use how much I'm earning as bit of a gauge to determine whether or not I'm doing a good job. Y'know like "Hey, I earned X more this month! Guess folks really approve of what I'm doing so I'm a keep doing it." or "Huh I guess I people aren't satisfied with my output as I'm earning less than before. Hm, I should adjust course." 

I use it to keep track of my progress and as a way of setting goals. So you can imagine my confusion when over the month I've been getting a whole lot of patrons, but then the next month rolls around and all of a sudden they just go "poof!". This honestly wouldn't be much of an issue if I knew why, but because I don't, it is one. 

It makes me question the progress I make and leaves me wondering what I've done wrong. I would attempt to fix whatever the issue, but I don't have the foggiest clue as to what it is. This leaves me with a lot of doubts over my work and I don't like that. 

The best I could come up with is providing some kind of incentive that would make people want to stick around. Like a lot of creators do they run polls exclusively for their patrons where they get to decide who gets made that month. Which I think works, but then it runs into the issue of trying to balance out what I want versus what y'all want. Paywalls n' time gates, now that stuff would certainly work to keep folks around but iunno bout y'all, but that's most certainly something that I don't want.  

What I do want is pretty simple I think. Like there's these exit surveys you can do to explain why you're deleting your sub and I would really appreciate it if y'all filled 'em out.  Or if you want to sub, but you're not sure if you can pay for it, then don't. It's totally a-okay not to if you can't for some reason.

In short, all I'm asking for is consistent  feedback really.  I hope laying it all out like this will be enough to fix the issue as I want to keep things lax n' loose. But enough about what I want, what do you want?