2024 - A Year Of Changes (Patreon)

Happy 2024, everyone. As this new year gets rolling, I wanted to talk about a number of adjustments that will be happening on the horizon for Ctrl+Alt+Del. Mostly things I've been talking about for a while now, but are finally approaching their arrival point.

For 21 years now I've drawn this comic and given it away for free every Monday Wednesday and Friday. I've been able to do this because of an advertising model that rewarded websites like mine for bringing in pageviews. That advertising model has been struggling for a long time now, but the last couple of years post-pandemic have seen the most drastic shift in the shortest amount of time.

We've reached the point where I feel like it's time to give up on the idea of advertising as a sustainable support system, and invest my energy wholly into the subscription model (ie, Patreon).

I do love giving my comic to people though, and the last thing I want to do is have to take that away. So my first step will be launching a new series, Analog and D-Pad: Year One, on Patreon next month. This series will chronicle Ethan and Lucas' first year as super heroes, and figuring all that out; costumes, names, opening their game store and balancing that with heroing, etc.

It's my hope that this series will entice enough people to sign up for Patreon, or upgrade their pledge, that I can keep the website running as-is, with no change. If that doesn't work, my next step will be to reduce the public website update days, but retain the regular update schedule for Patrons, meaning I would still be putting out comics for free, but that Patrons would, as time went on, have the benefit of being drastically far ahead in content.

I'm also exploring additional ways to add value to Patreon membership, and I've created a multiple choice poll so that I can get an idea of what's important/interesting to you, the people supporting my work.  Please select as many as appeal to you. I am, as always, happy to hear suggestions in the comments as well.

I hope you're all happy and healthy in the new year, and I'm looking forward to creating lots of fun stories for you this year!