Analyzing Survey Results - Part 3 (Patreon)

Finally some extra free time. Man do I hate night shifts, and back to morning shift on Friday. Hate that even more! I'll be going over my plans until then, and if nothing changes and I don't find any issues or unaccounted for expenses, I intend to resign from my job on Friday. Fingers crossed!

Before that, let's look into some more survey results. This time I'll go over the larger question about your priorities regarding rewards and benefits.

Analyzing Survey Results - Part 3 - Rewards and Benefits

So far 63 people have participated, and no new entries since yesterday, so I think that's roughly how far we'll get. Good enough for me. Thanks to everyone who participated! :)

I'll start off with the last question from the survey. Which of the following most impacts how much you are willing to pledge per month:

Number of published artworks - 33.33% - 15 votes
Quality of published artworks - 31.11% - 14 votes
Rewards and benefits - 4.44% - 2 votes
Financial Situation - 31.11% - 14 votes

From this we can extrapolate that rewards and benefits matter the least, while everything else matters pretty equally. The number of works published is just barely in the lead. My guess is that the ones who voted for rewards and benefits are peoply who are especially looking for things like larger resolution exclusives and the like. Expectedly, many people base their level of support on their current financial situation, which makes sense. 18 people skipped this question.

Based on this, I'll be focusing more on getting lots of good works out, rather than stacking up too many benefits, which often end up somewhat artificial after a point anyways.

Regardless, let's look into the results regarding your priorities in rewards and benefits. These results are hard to break down though. I'll go through the 13 different rewards and benefits I listed in the survey, in order of importance to you and comment each a little. The order of importance in based on averages, but if there are significant deviances I'll mention those too.

1. Higher resolution versions of artworks

A lot of people placed this in top three of their importance list. Personally I prefer to work in smaller resolutions as it's less work and less stressful on the software. However I will recognize this survey result and definitely post more high resolution works than I normally do...which has basically been just a few works a year. Please do note that this means the artworks take slightly longer to create, and I'll be placing these in mid-range pledge tier to reflect that. Tentatively $10/month or so to account for the extra time needed, with a promise of at least one or two higher res works a month. Note: this is just tentative planning. If there are lots of pledges at this level, I can increase the ratio of high res works too!

2. Artworks always come in two versions, with dialog, and without dialog

This was the second most voted option for most important reward, and I expected it to place highly, knowing that roughly half of you favor dialog while the other half not. Adding dialog is always extra work. You'd think it'd only take a few minutes, but deciding dialog, no matter how cheesy, can take up to half an hour even (English ain't my native language as you likely know), add to that placement planning, font effects to make the text legible against the image and so on. It's usually an hour extra, at least. Now, the big question is, do you think dialog will be necessary in ALL pictures, knowing that I might do other kinds images than non-con stuff? Pin-up type things, what about them? Regardless, I plan to increase the availability of both versions, at least for my usual kind of stuff. Still, it's also a bit of extra work, so these will likely be available from pledge tier $3/month onward.

3. Patron-exclusive artworks

Now this thing may be interpreted in two ways. You either want to see all exclusive works, or you want there to be exclusive works for patrons. Either way, I plan to do full-color exclusive works more often. These will be available starting from $3 or $5 tier (/month). Something like that. This reward was THE most voted option for the most important reward, with 12 votes.

4. Voting in polls to determine future content

This option was the third most voted benefit for most important. For a long while it dominated the charts even. Polls will be available in pretty low tiers, and I hope to do them monthly, maybe even allowing higher tier patrons to influence the available choices. The polls will be about themes I should focus on for a month or two, what sketches and previews to finish in color, which anime shows you might want me to draw characters from, etc. By all means, suggest additional poll topics!

5. Access to all the exclusive content released to date (Exclusive Content Archive)

There's also an option for 'latest exclusive sketches and previews' which kind of overlaps with this one and in hindsight not very intuitive. If you're given the option to see the latest OR everything to date, well... which one would you choose? ;p Regardless, I'll be doing things somewhat similar to what I've done before, except upping the pledge tier needed for the exclusive content archive a bit, while sharing latest sketches and previews starting from the lowest tiers. Even if you can't afford the higher tiers for the archive, if you've been my patron up to now, you already have links to all the content released at the time I switch to the new reward tiers. You won't miss on much, if anything. The links aren't changing for the foreseeable future either, as long as imgur works.

6. Latest exclusive sketches, previews and WIP's

Already covered this one above. It was barely below the Exclusive Content Archive in average importance.

7. Alternative editions of artworks (like nude and clothed version)

I was expecting this to place slightly higher, but hey, statistics! I think this will be a reward starting from some tier, but how regularly I'll be doing these, who knows. Also what kind of editions? Not sure yet. Nude/clothed is the obvious. Maybe things like extra gags and ropes in bondage pics, also I suppose consensual/non-con variants fall under this category too. Those too.

8. Artworks exploring subject matter other than my usual

Weirdly this placed pretty low here, considering how many were ok with having a lot of this kind of stuff included. Anyways, I covered this topic in earlier survey analysis already.

9. Ability to participate in group projects

I'm not sure where group projects fit in my plans to begin with. They take extra time to both do and organize. I think there will be some at least, but I'll be restricting these to mid-to-high tiers. Why? Apparently lotteries and raffles aren't a thing Patreon approves of as a reward, according to some creator's post, so I'll need to give everyone eligible equal dibs. Alternatively this could be a bonus kind of thing that doesn't depend on pledge tier, or simply first-come-first-served basis... but is that fair either, I dunno. Feel free to discuss!

10. NEW: Early Access to artworks (2-7 days)

All the new rewards and benefits I thought of ended the least important. This one is easy to implement though, and will likely be available from the lowest tier up. For the first day of the survey it was pretty high on the list, but I guess that was because the biggest lurkers and stalkers of my updates were all over the survey first. xD Sure enough they'd want to see new stuff ASAP!

11. NEW: Patron-only discord channel

I was expecting this to place higher, but again, statistics! I think I will create a Discord channel regardless, as a backup communication method, like someone suggested. It's indeed a good idea to have a place where you can find me in case Patreon goes down or my  content is no longer accepted or stuff like that. Remember that I have a Twitter account too though! https://twitter.com/Harmonist11 

12. NEW: Livestream of me doing art (just screencap, no speech or webcam)

Only one person ranked this the most important, the rest went below mid-range importance. Based on this, I will likely not be doing livestreams, at least initially. Besides, my internet connection isn't good enough to do high-res streaming anyways and I'd need to switch to another provider, which would cost extra too. If my Patreon support grows a lot though, then definitely!

13: NEW: Chance to spend an hour or two with me, chatting privately, playing games, etc.

I hope no one didn't think I meant an IRL meet-up, because I forgot the word 'online' from the title. Basically I was thinking a meet-up on Discord maybe, playing a team-based or versus online game or the like. Anyways, this was at the bottom of the importance chart, with the highest vote being 4th most important thing, so there wasn't much demand. The only reason I added this option was because a lot of other creators on Patreon have something similar. Maybe a special session as a bonus for high-tier or long-time patrons at some point? :)

...

And that's it for the rewards and benefits. Overall, much won't change, except hopefully more high-res works and alternative editions, with a few rewards shifting pledge tier.

Feel free to suggest more rewards or discuss the plans. Everything is still in planning stage!

Phew, that was a long one. Enough for one day! More tomorrow, if I'm not too sleep deprived, shiting back to morning shift... >_<*