A Really Big State of Something, November 2022 (Patreon)

Well, here we are, close to the end of 2022, and this one…yeah, this is going to be a big one to absorb. There’s a lot I have to talk about, a lot of changes on the horizon across commissions, the support sites, and beyond all of that, so let’s start off by discussing the biggest change…the rate at which I work. But I have a story to tell to explain how I came to a lot of these necessary changes.

You might want to get a snack for this.

September Malfunction

For most of the month of September, my laptop was having troubles with a few keys on the keyboard. At first, they seemed to need a harder push, and I didn't think much about it since some of my other keys (enter and backspace) were having similar issues back in July but eventually fixed themselves up. This time, however, they just completely chose not to work, and sometime after I finished the queue for commissions, they outright never worked again.

So for a while I tried other methods to get the writing done, namely using the laptop's touch screen and my phone. But none of these work the same way for me as they would if I were to do it with a normal keyboard. Both methods require a touch screen, naturally, but both take up a bit of real estate as a result. Not to mention you’re not using the same setup, you end up only using one finger or thumb at a time so you don’t stumble over yourself like the old typewriters and holding a phone for so long surprisingly wears down on your arms.

After I took the laptop to get looked at by a local repair shop, they tried to reset the nonworking keys, to no avail. The best next option was for them to replace the keyboard entirely, but in order for them to get the parts it would cost possibly over $200, plus they weren’t having much luck finding anything in the US. The only thing available was in China, and would have taken a MONTH to get here.

So I just took the laptop back and purchased a wireless keyboard. It works well enough, but it’s not perfect since no matter what I can’t disable the laptop’s keyboard to just rest it on top of, so the screen isn’t directly in front of me. Right now I’m trying to figure out the best way to properly sort it out, like some kind of raised tray I can put on my lap, but we’ll see how that search goes.

So my output still isn’t that great, I’m not hitting 5k a day right now, but between this and everything amping up at my full-time job for the holidays, it’s to be expected around this time of year.

But in all of this, it finally hit me.

Epiphany

In the five years I’ve been doing regular commission work and took it more seriously, I’ve always taken to trying to turn this into a full-time job. It’s been difficult, mostly due to how COVID-19 and the pandemic has made it impossible to cut back enough hours to keep it a full-time job but focus on writing. Switching it to part-time hasn’t been easy because we haven’t had many new hires coming to our department, and the health insurance doesn’t cover dental, which I’d have to go for on a separate thing.

Back to my point: In the last few years I’ve been trying to reduce the number of commissions I take so that I can have more time to do my own stuff. I want to publish more short stories like Samantha Drift for e-books. I want to do more original stories that I can possibly re-write into their own novels, like that Dorothea/Edelgard AU I wrote back in 2021. I want to take the audio projects more seriously, actually practice and learn more so I can make them have better quality than they already do. I want to make an iceberg video that covers the company that made Sailor and the 7 Ballz and everything tied to them, yes I’m serious. Hell, you know those huge Re-Animated projects that fans tend to do? I want to do that for S7BZ!

And here’s what I’ve realized: NONE of this will happen if I keep to only writing commissions and don’t give myself the time to finally branch out from them.

That’s the sad truth I’ve come to five years later. It takes me a month just to get through ten requests, including if I take any days off to do other work, which is maybe one day a week.. I know I can give myself more time between commission cycles, but it honestly doesn’t work out for me, especially at times where I might need the money for something like a trip I had sprung on me. Or to make sure I can pay any kind of emergency bill.

So what does this mean? It means that as much as I enjoy doing commissioned work like this on my own, I can’t do it forever, and I’m going to have to make some massive changes in order to accomplish more on my own to-do list. Not just on commissioned content, but everything else I do as well.

Commissions

Normally, this is the time of year when I announce a raise in commission prices, and I imagine that’s been expected at this point. But this year is going to be the highest hike ever. But first off, I want to address perhaps my biggest issue over the years with writing that this section and the previous ones have been building up to: Time.

I’ve always managed to get these commissions worked on and sent out to the client within a month, so that I could take breaks between cycles. While I’ve always prided myself on being fast about the turnaround and getting so many words in a day, I think it’s time that I finally relax that. So commissions will only be worked on when I’m in the right space for it, or have the right motivation, which may mean more time between cycles being opened and closed. And hopefully, this time, I’ll stick to it.

Now for the pricing: Starting in 2023, regular commissions will go up from $17 per 1000 words to $26/1k. I know, that’s drastic compared to past increases, but I’m starting to realize a few things, like how long it can take me to get burnt out on some of these stories. And I honestly should consider that my worth is around that much for normal commission prices.

Sales commissions will likely go between $17/1k and $20/1k, depending on the theme or title being written. And compared to the past, I’m going to start pricing those franchises I worked for differently. The flat prices aren’t going to cover all of them, just the ones I really want to write for and the ones that I feel would take more effort. Which may also mean that some of the franchises I’ve had on sale previously won’t be on that table anymore except for certain circumstances, like a themed sale.

Privacy fees will remain at 30% and will be the only way I do anything on my ‘will not do’ list, only under the circumstances that I’m comfortable with. But do remember that this means that percentage from this year will go up as well due to the sales and regular pricing going up so high.

This year, I had introduced an additional fee for stories that went over 10k, adding $3 to the price for every 1k after the initial 10k. That will still be in place, but starting next year that additional fee will be starting at 8k instead. While I can certainly go beyond 10k, it’s still quite a lot of work to do, and sometimes by the 8k point I still end up feeling like I’m stretching things out, depending on the content requested. So as an example, a 10k story at the new regular price would be $266.

I’m also going to be putting on a fee for content that needs a massive re-edit. If a story needs only some spelling errors I didn’t notice fixed, or maybe a small handful of sentences changed, those will cost nothing. But if the fix is major and requires more than 500 words to clean up or contains a LARGE chunk of rewriting a scene, then there will be a $100 charge.

I've never had to do quite a large fix on a commissioned story before, but as I've had to do so at least once or twice it's taken a day where I would have had free time to myself to do that work. It might not sound like a big effort, but from the writer's perspective there's a big weight in going back through something you wrote and having to re-stitch it.

And now possibly the more difficult endeavor.

Switching over from Paypal

I’ve been using Paypal since I started commissioning artists all the way back in 2006, so I’m more or less a longtime customer. But these last several years have left me pretty uneasy now, as their policies continue to change, their fees continue to increase, and the more that adult content creators get attacked by them or other services, the more concerned I am that they could one day shut down my account.

Originally, I was looking to jump over to CashApp until I heard that it’s US only. Since a surprising amount of my clientele are overseas that won’t help them, or possibly myself. For the next cycle, I’m going to test out using Commiss.io, and see how that works out by taking a limited amount of commissions for November. Hopefully this won’t inconvenience anyone that usually utilizes Paypal, but this is a jump that needs to happen sooner than later.

(I'm hearing now that commiss.io might be abandonware? Only one way to find out…)

Patreon, Fanbox, & Subscribestar

To be honest, this has been a mess since I tried to jump off Patreon back in 2020, and it’s gotten a bit worse in terms of growth.

Fanbox isn’t a bad alternative, but right now I’m dealing with the game called ‘International Currency’. Since FB only uses the Japanese Yen, it means I had to originally make the prices to match what it was at the time. Two years later, the Yen has apparently made a big dip, which is good for anyone buying goods from Japan, but not good for me.  The smaller Yen versus the US Dollar means that I make less through conversion, so I make less off of Fanbox right now.

And as often as I post to Subscribestar I’ve never had more than 8 supporters on that page. So it’s very likely I’ll be moving away from there starting next year. I apologize to anyone that used it, but unfortunately it isn’t worth it to try and build an audience there for the time being.

For Fanbox, there’s two options: Delete the current tiers and re-price them to match the current US-Yen conversion, which would take time and even if I notify everyone, the note might not get through to everyone in case their pledge gets deleted, or move back to Patreon and use that as my sole page of fan support.

And yet, even Patreon is on the questionable side. You might have noticed that I stopped tagging fetishes on both there and FB on my posts, and that’s because my Patreon account was flagged for content. All I did was remove the tags and everything seemed to be okay, but even after that I feel like I’m walking on eggshells.

I’ll keep FB and Patreon open for now going into 2023, but depending on how things go, it’s likely that I’ll rely more on Patreon until a much better and more adult-content-friendly website can rise up for us to use.

One thing I will guarantee, however, is that there’s going to be a shakeup regarding tiers and how I deal out content on those sites, and I'll be fixing that up over the next few months into 2023. Most notably…

The Word Bank

So with the raise in commission prices, that’s going to affect the word bank as well. And I’ve started to realize that, while it isn’t a bad idea per se, I think it only works if I were to make commissions an exclusive to the support sites instead and didn’t do them on such a regular basis. And even then I need to adjust the words given to reflect those commission price changes.

It was also growing a little difficult in keeping track of the word bank thanks to the Patreon jump-off, given it was three sites versus the singular one. So that's a big factor as well.

In deciding on what to do with that going forward, I’m going to end the Word Bank for all tiers under $10. For that level, every month you will only get 400 words per month. Those of you who still have words in the bank, including those at the $10 tier, will have until April of 2023 to use what’s there at the end of 2022. After April, the word bank from 2020-2022 will expire, and be of no good. Only words incremented after January 2023 will be used.

There will be changes at all of the other tiers to make up for the removal of the word bank, but like before I’ll be getting into that before the end of the year. But for other means of support…

Subless

Back over the summer, Hentai Foundry teamed up with a group called "Subless", which is another form of creator-support, only it works more like a tip jar that divides itself across the creators that you support.

From what I can tell, support is gained per click on content. Any time you click on a link to any of my stories (or the little bits of art I have shared there) I gain some level of support. It's still not clear how the funds you put in are split up, but in the time I've been using it I've only gained 50-60 cents per month.

So if Patreon isn't a way you want to go to, why not give it a shot? Not only would it help me, but anyone that you visit on HF. Joining is simple; there's a button near the top right that you just have to click, fill out for registration, and you're all set! If you normally read my public content on AO3, may I ask that you do so through HF with Subless support on?

DMs

This is no doubt going to be the tough one for some of you, but like everything else on this list, it needs to be addressed.

For some years I’ve never really had a DM policy, because I’ve never really needed one. And I’ve had some regular conversations with clients. Depending on the content being discussed, they can be fine, but in the last few years I’ve started realizing that maybe these conversations end up getting too personal. And maybe that’s on my end for being the fault of that. Maybe I’m guilty of that myself, but I also try to recognize when someone may not be in the mood for a conversation.

The thing is, I get that some people might want to have a conversation or just talk, but I can't be in the mood to have those talks, since I'm usually in a busy mindset. Plus, I realize slowly but surely that I can't always be there as a friend to everyone or have anything to talk about because its clear i think a lot differently from most others. So yeah. Moving forward, DMs will be BUSINESS ONLY.

“But what if I want to talk or address something in your posts,” you no doubt ask. Well, I have a Discord server that could use a bit more life to it. The comments of any given post on Patreon et al are also there, and not just for those posting their prompts for the month. Please, use those and we’ll see what happens. If I do feel like talking to someone not business related, I’ll be the one sending a message.

But yes, DMs are ONLY FOR BUSINESS. This means just for commissions, to discuss the stuff at hand, and not for the convos to delve into any other discussion. I know this might upset those of you, but I need to do this for myself.

And please, if you have to discuss something, BE UP FRONT. Don’t just go “Hi” because I won’t answer that sort of one word DM anymore.

Sorry if this one’s coming off a lot more aggressive than the rest, but it’s been a long, long time coming and I should have done something about it sooner.

Audio and Gumroad

In spite of all these changes, and how I’m certain it will affect those currently supporting me, I do still want to do more audio projects. We might not be able to do them for a while if the support isn’t there, and I imagine some will drop off following these announcements, but I do plan to finally do something that’s been long overdue.

As it’s been suggested by one of the VAs that I have regularly voicing my audios, I have made a Gumroad page, but have yet to put anything up. That's because I haven’t given myself enough time to relax and breathe and not have an anxiety attack over what I’m doing because hahahaha I’ve never done a Gumroad before and I’m very very worried I’m going to screw it up somehow, so I’m hoping after a while I’ll finally manage to have some time to do so.

Pray for me.

But yes, hopefully everything from Your Dress-Up Fantasy onwards will be available on Gumroad by early 2023. If the sales there do well enough, I might just be able to afford doing them more, and not only would I keep posting them to Gumroad, but you guys would get access to them as well. BUT, the tier at which they’d be available is going to change a bit, unfortunately, so that they can match or be close to the pricing on Gumroad.

The Current Twitter Situation

This part I’m writing after the entirety of the ethics team ended up being fired from the Elon Musk regime, so who knows what can change between here and there.

Right now, Twitter is growing more and more into a dumpster fire. Some might say ‘no duh’, but if I’m being honest, and I said this before on Discord, whatever the new hellscape of Twitter ends up being is going to make the old one look like heaven in comparison.

Right now, everyone is trying to find a new place that they can go to in case Twitter does end up collapsing on itself, although we’ll see how well it goes. The problem that these moves end up having is that, while they might be good spaces for the creators like me and other writers, artists, etc., there’s almost no chance that the people who view said content will follow after them. I’ve tried Pillowfort in the past, did Itaku briefly before forgetting about it, even use Nushara for my commission page, but otherwise nothing seems to really stick.

So yeah, that’s going to be a big concern moving forward, what kind of space the creative world will become when Elon inevitably nukes the site. Twitter was the best space to use after Tumblr exiled porn, and even while that’s slowly changing, we’ll see how well that goes, but that’s going to slowly and rapidly evolve now that there may not be a centralized place to call ‘home’.

I don’t quite know what I’m trying to say with this part, just that if you suddenly see Twitter in a dumpster bin, make sure you bookmark every link you can that your favorite content creators share, because God only knows where things will end up even a week from now.

Okay, is that all?

We’ll see, this is what I have to cover for now.

But listen, guys. I know that everything is rough all over the place right now, between the wars on adult content, inflation, price gouging, pandemics, and all of that. But I hope you guys also remember that what I do is for your luxury. Something like commissions can take a backseat if your bills need it more, and I won’t be upset if I don’t hear from you. I’m also not going to be mad if you can’t afford a 10k commission and have to go for a 5k instead, regardless of price change. I get it. And I’m hoping that putting my rates up will help to cut things in half a little for myself, because I could use that bit of a break as well.

I have a good feeling that maybe, just maybe, I can recover from any fall that my commissions or support sites suffer from these major announcements. It would take a lot of time and rebuilding, but as I’ve said many times throughout this, it has to be done. The support page restructuring is long overdue, and I’m starting to realize my own value as a content creator, and what I might be able to accomplish if I don’t hold myself back.

And who knows. Maybe in 2023 I’ll finally be able to do what I want and accomplish it. The only way to know for sure is to keep moving forward and find out.

That’s all for now, everyone. Take care!