How I Became A Paid Protester

I know, I know; I couldn’t resist going for the dramatic click-bait title, but.. By the most technical definition, I am - in a way - a paid protester.

Not by George Soros, or the Clintons, or the Harris Underground War Machine (Ok, that last one I made up, but given we’re talking about resisting the Trump administration, most of their accusations are lies too), but by the independent awesomeness of the collective of individuals who - like me - are doing their part to stand against a fascist administration.

I am finally going to talk a bit about my side hustle making morale patches (and more, but mostly morale patches), how that’s gone for me, and some general thoughts on building a side hustle as a hardcore neurodivergent leftist who cares about ethics.

If you’re new here.. What the fuck are morale patches, and why are yours so special?

Morale patches are these little patches that - in this context - have some sort of meaning to the person wearing them. They can have a logo for an organization (such as the military), something funny, or anything you can imagine.

In my case, most of my morale patches are political in nature. I design for the 2”x3” format because that’s extremely common, and.. Well, I started making these because I wanted some new morale patches that didn’t exist that I could wear on my hat, EDC bag, etc.

Leftist-themes in morale patches aren’t unheard of, but there are way more makers of morale patches in the right-wing space than on the left. This is partially because the niche is, well.. Rather niche. In the space of folks who collect morale patches, the political demographics absolutely tilt further to the right than to the left.

So, after frustrated searching for some new patches to help me express my mood, ideals and more, I began exploring making my own.

My initial attempts were actually much different; I did leather stamping after making stamps using my 3d printer, and actually stayed away from political themes for the most part. That process, however, was physically challenging, costly, and the quality just wasn’t quite there for me.

As time progressed, I’d periodically look at things like embroidery machines, or google some random ideas I had for crafting patches.

One random idea yielded fruit: Decoupage.

After some experimentation, I nailed down my process, and began working on designs. My first - a resistance fist patch design - looked great to me, so I started thinking.. You know what, I could sell these things.

I came up with a number of new designs - some not even themed around politics - and built up a small stockpile, and opened my Etsy shop.

How long did it take for your Etsy shop to take off?

In my case, I launched my shop in mid-December 2024, and got my first orders in January. This is without ads or any extra promotion, FYI: I did share my designs on social, but my following is pretty limited there, and I’m mostly only active on BlueSky.

No, all I really did was use basic SEO strategy for Etsy and hoped.

Speaking of hope: Did you know my birthday is about a month away, and I'd like for it to not suck like it usually does? I've got 2 specialist visits next month too, so I'd like to spend some extra money on something NOT healthcare related; feel free to drop a tip in the tip jar.

Thankfully, with the insanity that is the Trump administration (Foxtrot Delta Tango, my friends) those first sales were easy. My “Pet Dogs, Punch Nazis” patch just went insane after Elon Musk did his little salute (Foxtrot Echo Mike, too). It seems folks really, really don’t like nazis, which is a good thing.

After that, the second most popular patch was my “Remember Stonewall” patch, which.. Oh, that makes me so joyous: I never even learned about Stonewall until I was in my fucking 30s - thanks public education & private Baptist university - so the fact that folks were passionate about our rights as queer folk AND were interested in sharing the story of Stonewall in some way made me feel a little better about humanity.

Of course, all this success was down to a handful of factors beyond having a product (CONSUME MUST BUY CONSUME GIVE ME YOUR MONEY) that folks liked, chief among them were..

• Etsy’s product promotion algorithm, and
• Current events making my products particularly relevant

From what I understand, Etsy tries to rotate out products in the search results to help provide visibility to creators.. And that’s pretty cool.

It also kinda sucks because it means my sales still wax and wane while I’m relatively young in the business.

Right now I’m coming back up in visibility in the rotation; I’m seeing more favorites on the shop and products, and folks are saving items in their carts.

During that slump, though? It really, really sucks.

I went from selling a patch a day nearly to.. Nothing. I went about 10 days without a single sale.

Of course, that’s also partially because the relevance of my patches to current events have been somewhat minimal; I’ve tried to “predict” a bit of what will happen with some designs, and also create some more evergreen patch designs, but it’s all a gamble as to whether they’ll take off.

Maybe we can get Elon and Kanye doing a live stream together to talk nazi shit or something, I don’t know. Seems like something they might get along about (although - aside from his salute - Elon tends to be somewhat more subtle than Ye about his fascism).

Which leads me into talking about being a leftist and profiting off of activism.

Staying ethical while building a business off of fighting fascism

Ethics are important to me. I may be a bit of a pragmatist, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to break my own personal standards in order to make money.

That’s actually kinda.. Hard to do, honestly. I get my materials through Amazon so I can keep costs down, and because.. Well, finding what I need with a business that isn’t a prime example of a capitalist shitstain on society is impossible in America today.

So, for now, I’m doing what I can. As much as I hate businesses like Amazon, they have pretty much monopolized a huge market, much like Walmart has.. And when you live in a smaller community, patronizing anybody else is damned-near impossible.

Now, if I could grow the business enough to source directly from manufacturers? Fuck yeah, I’d do that in a heartbeat! But given I have only sold.. 54 patches as of writing this? Yeah, I can’t justify it.

Hell, I don’t know that I could even successfully run this business with a volume large enough to bypass the 3rd party markets for my materials. I can only craft 2 patches a day, and I do this by hand. It fucking hurts some days to make these patches, but I love doing it, so I keep it up.

So, I focus my ethics on things I can do.

First off, as I noted: These are hand-made patches, crafted with love (or hate for whatever the patch is designed to fight). I create the designs, do the printing, and perform the crafting process entirely by myself.

I also do this much cheaper than I probably should: I’ve gotten the crafting time for a single patch down to a total of 45 minutes, with 36-48 hours of drying/curing time.. And I typically turn around a profit of $7 per patch (depending on the highly variable material costs).

That’s not even minimum wage here, and doesn’t account for the time spent doing designs, and the cost of things like my printer, software, etc.

Why do I do it, then?

Because, like most of the things I’ve created and later sold, it’s because I wanted it personally. Almost every patch I’ve created I’ve personally wanted to wear, and have worn (the one I’m wearing on my hat in the hero image on this is a design that took way too fucking long to conceive of - I’ll be releasing it in the shop soon, FYI).

All except one.

I’ll give you a sec to look at my morale patch shop.

Figure that one out yet?

Give up?

It’s my unpaid protester patch.

Despite making a pittance on these things (hell, I make even less on my print-on-demand items, but I’m actually exploring alternative options there), my personal ethics make me feel uncomfortable saying I’m “unpaid”.. And I’m OK with that.

I became a part of the resistance before I started making money with it, and even if I didn’t make any money, I’d still make these fucking patches, because they express who I am.

The unpaid protester patch is for all my friends who are out there fucking carrying this resistance in the physical world, where I am much more limited in my abilities thanks to being.. Well, pretty broken.

So, I do what I can.

At least I’m not trying to profit off of cheap-ass MAGA merch, memecoins, or anything else that is Making America Gross Again.