Fila Can't Figure This Out (Patreon)

TLDR: Changes will be coming to the patreon in the future to try to incentivize more people to join it.

So those of you who follow me more closely have probably noticed I’ve been off the last few days. You might also remember I’ve done write ups before on how I don’t interact well with my family. This is another case of me messing things up with them.

I’ve been going to therapy for the past 2 months, and the therapist suggested a family meeting to try and establish a more clear path forward. It devolved into an abusive shouting match pretty quickly. My parents are extremely unwilling to budge on what they believe is the ONLY way for me to be a ‘normal healthy adult’. If you’re wondering what that entails, it means living fully independent ASAP regardless of how much it costs.

So yes, this is about money.

Now, I’ve talked before how I hate the business aspect of art and everything involved with it. Despite this, I’ve been trying to figure out ways to make a fair approach to monetizing my work. As such I’ve been trying very hard to make my patreon enticing while also not gutting my content from my non-paying audience. I want to create art that is fun for me, and enjoyable for you guys. I want it to be WORTH supporting. But over the past few months, very little has worked and it's all been terribly inconsistent. I cannot figure out what people actually want to see and will pay to support. I can’t figure out how to advertise any of this in a way that is effective but not obnoxious. It's extremely stressful and killing the joy of art for me, but I don’t have any choice in the matter because I NEED to make more money than I currently do.

But I have to conclude that it's not working with my current approach.

So what does that mean? Well right now, not much. Before I make any major changes I wanna clear all my patreon and comm obligations. I also am not going to change anything about how the patreon currently operates in terms of content and price; I still feel that is all very fair. The changes I may make are going to further incentivize people to sub more aggressively. Things I am considering;

-Doing a lot more comms; this one is just going to be a given, it's my most reliable way to make money. 

-Comms possibly being exclusive to patreon members, with priority given to discord users (it's easier that way anyways)

-Raising comm prices (ugh)

-Big projects like comics possibly being exclusive longer than 1-2 months

-More content that is exclusive to the ‘Big Slime’ and higher tiers

-Using the discord server as a place where people trying to learn to draw can get guaranteed access to critique from me and advice on what to do. This is something I just personally really wanna do because I like seeing people draw and know how hard learning is.

That’s all I have off the top of my head… I may come up with more in the future. Either way, this is stuff that will probably start to be pushed through more in August and future comm batches. If anyone has feedback or ideas about how to improve my work and incentivize more people, I am very much open to it.

I’m sorry to talk about money so much, but I’m sure we all know how expensive things can be these days. We also know how difficult it is to move out and get our own space. However, I can’t live with my parents much longer, the constant abuse is just draining my soul so much. I just don’t want to deal with them anymore. I’m sorry I can’t be doing better for you guys.

EDIT: I forgot, another thing here is I'm prob gonna be talking to people less outside discord servers if they aren't a member of the patreon discord. I have A LOT of people who try to talk to me, and while its nice that you guys appreciate my work so much, it gets very distracting and overwhelming for me as a mostly introverted person. I would much rather someone join the discord patreon if they want to talk to me because there we can interact without everything having to be a one on one dm constantly.

I'm active in the discord! Really! Its not a ghost town, and you can see lots of WIPs, sketched, and status updates there. Plus make requests!