About the Current System (Format and Sketches) (Patreon)
Content
Today while I was making a quick pause from drawing to wash the dishes, I started wondering about the current state of my Patreon page and I felt that making a post about it here is the best thing I can do. Hearing from you who access the page and support me is the best opinion I can hear.
It's been a few months since I was informed raffles aren't recommended rewards in this site since it can be compared to gambling, which is against the rules. And since I want to avoid trouble and also renew my page (specially after the design change they did with the site, all my images were badly resized, etc), I have to think of the best solution, the best method to keep my work here going on and providing rewards to you who supports me (other than making the comics and art).
I had a chat with a friend of mine who is also making the grammar corrections for Weekend 2, about the challenges I would have with the different systems for free sketches, and I will try to make a short version of each one of them for you:
1 - Rewarding randomly
Giving sketches randomly to patrons could be seen as unfair, and would be a problem to deal with because of favoritism.
2 - Rewarding for Total lifetime money amount / Per total time supporting
This could solve the problem from the suggestion above, but the favoritism would only be replaced by "measuring" by how much money they can spend, or by how long he's supporting, which is not good in my opinion, it's a system that can exclude newer patrons
3 - Rewarding with Private Sketchstreams
They could be for only patron viewers, or for everyone, but only patrons can ask for sketches. But the issue is that I would still need to find a way for how am I choosing who gets the sketches, if it's by the reasons above, by who gets in the stream first, etc. Which I still think can lead to a negative experience for everyone.
4 - Rewarding per Total money pledged / Every 6 months of being a patron
It's like a slowed down version of suggestion 2. My only worries about this one is that I would need to keep an eye on every payment and check their total, that's over 100 patrons, could be easy to lose track, and also, if I used the per time option, every 6 months I would have 100+ sketches to make, that would not end well.
5 - Not rewarding with sketches anymore
Stop giving this kind of reward will solve the problem of changing the raffle method, and would also not keep me worried each month about sorting people, checking every payment and adding something extra to the art queue each month. But the cons are that I will lack patreon rewards, which means supporters will have less reasons to support. The only rewards left would be the comic cameos, the file updates I always post, and of course all the art content I keep making for you all.
I made a poll so you can vote, it would give me a better idea of what to do. Feel free to voice your opinions in the comments of this post! It was made for this purpose exactly ^^ I want Patreon to be something nice for both you my patrons, and myself, so I don't feel burned out and you feel like things are fair.
Link to the poll: http://www.strawpoll.me/10125777
Oh and one last thing, there will be a comic page update later today, I'm just making sure everything is ok and I'm already preparing for the next page, I must apologize for this page delay, I said I would stop apologizing so much but I can't avoid haha, I was dealing with a ton of stress the last 2 weeks, which made me focus on other forms of work until my mind was ok to dive back again into Weekend 2 madness :P There might also be a stream in a few hours, but I will be streaming artwork making like I use to!
See ya guys and thanks for your time reading, I'm looking foward to making this better and nicer. I'm excited to know your opinion!