BIG ANNOUNCEMENTS+VOTING TIME (OPEN) (Patreon)

Hi fish fries, happy Thursday!!! I hope ya'll are doing fantastic today 🥺

I recently passed my patreon goal of 100 patrons (thank you!!!) and mentioned in my goal post that I would like to start offering more complex physical reward tiers when this goal has been achieved!

It's been barely a month since I opened up the crybaby sticker club and July isn't even here yet for me to fulfil the crybaby sticker club rewards, I'm planning to set up the next rewards tier in time for August. 

As I mentioned in my patreon introduction post, I eventually would love to gear towards making merchandise that's both fun and educational! I love the idea of using my platform to inform others about super cool animals that live in the ocean and why not combine it into one with fun rewards as well? 

Since passing the patreon goal, I've been going at it hard with brainstorming how exactly I'd like to do that--although my original intent was to make that happen through a pin club, while I was designing it I found that I was very limited in how much information I could put on one backing card and thus, decided to brainstorm a little further and came up with the idea for a DELUXE sticker club--one that would include sticker sheets (versus individual stickers in the normal sticker club) & a cool, matching, & informative postcard!

As much as I would love to release both at once, I plan on releasing them just one at a time to avoid overwhelming myself and taking on more than I can chew. And so, I'd love to ask for your opinion on which reward tier to open first!

EDIT: I do plan on releasing both tiers eventually!! Whichever tier is not released in August will be released at a later date so don't worry if you like both, just pick your favourite!

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Both tiers would be priced at $15/mo. with each tier including the following:

DELUXE CRYBABY STICKER CLUB INCLUDES:

‣ Informative Postcard ft. different groups of various marine animals every month (for the example, I chose to feature different ecotypes of the northern hemisphere orcas)!

 ‣ A matching kiss cut sticker sheet (it may be holographic, clear, glittery, etc.)!

‣ Embossed membership card (these cards are the exact same as the regular cry-baby sticker club membership cards)--you'll also receive a "stamp" sticker monthly to place over the stamp area. Fill out all 6 slots to level up and receive a brand newly designed card!! 

BIG CATCH PIN CLUB INCLUDES:

 ‣ x1 Patreon Exclusive Enamel Pin on a fun-fact backing card focusing on a specific species of marine animal each month (may be decided by patrons)!

 ‣ Embossed membership card (these cards are different in design than the sticker club designs but feature pretty much the "stamp card" idea. A small stamp sticker will be sent monthly as well for you to put in the empty stamps area--once all 6 are filled out, you'll level up and be sent a newly designed backing card!

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I decided to price both at 15$ for different reasons I would also like to explain--both tiers have pros & cons requiring the amount of work, expenses, and production time put into each one. I really wanted to bring these topics into light for clarification as to why I priced them the way they are! You are more than welcome to continue reading but if not, you may stop here and comment on which tier you would like to see brought to life in August! Thank you!

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PROS & CONS OF THE DELUXE STICKER CLUB:

+ Sticker sheets & postcards are significantly cheaper to produce than enamel pins. There's also very little chance of any manufacturing error--but if there is, the error can be easily fixed within a short timespan. 

+ No outsourcing required--there are plenty of sticker+postcard printers in the US that I can afford to locally source. Because they are located within the country, production times are shorter and shipping to me is nice and quick!

- More time spent drawing on multiple designs + design/text rendering.

- Because each deluxe sticker club theme centralizes around one group of animals versus one specific species, there is a significantly larger amount of research that is done (fact checking, reading articles, organizing facts, etc) versus a few fun facts on a small sized backing card. For example, the time I spent researching and drawing the orca sticker sheets+postcard design took about 6-10 hours versus a maximum of 1 hour to draw the pin club design and research fun facts.

PROS & CONS OF THE BIG CATCH PIN CLUB:

+Enamel pin rewards!! It's a physical reward that I know everyone loves (and I personally love as well).

+Significantly shorter time done in research for backing cards (5> fun facts versus a postcard-full of information).

-Outsourcing required--there are unfortunately no manufacturers that can produce enamel pins in the US at this time. This means a significantly longer production time (ideally, I would like to produce pins one month ahead of the scheduled reward month in order to make sure they can be shipped to patrons on time).

-Higher chance of delays if a manufacturing error occurs. Unfortunately because manufacturing is done overseas, any errors in design, the amount of pins sent/produced, etc, will result in significant delays if they need to be redone. It takes about a month for pins to be produced and then shipped to me--and so if another error occurs, it will take at least another month for those errors to be resolved due to overseas shipping & communication!

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And that's it!! It is a little bit of a long post today, I am terribly sorry for making you read through all of the information but it's something I really wanted to share and am excited to bring forward to life! If you read through everything, I wanted to take the chance to also genuinely thank each and every one of you for joining my little sticker club. I never would have thought that I would have so much interest in such a short amount of time and I cannot wait to show you guys all of the new ideas I have in store for ya'll!!! 

Stay safe as always, and all the best!

Kir