"Charge Upfront" and Plans for 2020 (Patreon)

Hey there, Oxdarock here!

Hope everybody enjoyed New Years! I’ve been pretty busy the first week. I’d mostly been busy myself and will continue to be for the next week or so. Let’s get into what’s going on. It’s a bit lengthy, but hang in there. 

OxPatreon Switch to Monthly “Charge Upfront” Model.

I’ve made plenty of notices over the past several months and now the time has arrived. From here on, my Patreon will be a monthly, “charge upfront” model. This means that patrons will be charged a single amount every month, regardless of the number of posts that I make. It also means that new patrons can take part in rewards as soon as they join!

Unfortunately, the initial transition has been a bit rocky. Turns out that, due to a mistake on my part, my current patrons are being charged when they switch to a higher tier. Thankfully, I’m able to track this and send out an immediate refund, though people won’t get it for at least a week. Really sorry for the inconvenience everybody. I’m constantly looking through my notifications to see who switches when and will be doing so for the rest of the month until things are settled, so feel free to adjust your pledge to the appropriate tier and I’ll take care of the rest!

With that, now for changes! I’ll still be sending out Dropbox links for finished, exclusive content. However, now that they’ll be charged as soon as they join, I’ll have to make an active effort to send links to new patrons (if I don’t send any links within a day or so, please contact me). I’ll send all the archive links promised when a new patron joins, then afterwards I’ll send an archive link of the latest month to all patrons on the 4th of each month.

Voting polls are pretty much the same, however suggestions and more influential votes are tied to pledge tiers. A second round of voting has also been added for higher tiers and “High-End” patrons. The rewards and entry-point for “High-End” patrons has also been changed as well. Details on all of this can be found by reading the OxPatreon Guide page (which I’ve now updated).

Content Plans for 2020

Now that the important stuff is out of the way, time for some content news. First off, I intend to release an image pack containing the Patron Picks from the bulk of 2019 next Saturday, January 11th (currently need to work on the title page). Also gonna be spending some time updating my Deviant Art page as well as my website. And hopefully, I’ll be able to finish up this terrible obsession with FF14 theorycrafting I got into last summer. ^^;

As for the content I’ll be making for Patreon, I’ll pretty much be slowing down this year. As stated, I plan to at least make 3 pictures a month for Patreon, all of which will be requests (2 via voting poll, 1 via request list). What I make for the rest of the month is up in the air (still have some Patreon backlog to work on right now though). 

For the most part, my goal this year is to spend a lot more time studying Japanese. Not only is it a personal goal of mine, but I feel that it’s the most certain way forward in terms of improving my financial situation as I’ll be able to expand my audience. I’ve found the resources and a method of studying that works for me. All that’s needed is time put into it, which was one of the reasons behind the switch in my Patreon model (that and I just didn’t have enough time to plan new content). Of course, being a monthly Patreon, I am concerned that I won’t make nearly as much on a monthly basis now, so it’s very likely that I’ll start accepting commissions to fill the gap, though that won’t happen until I finish my Patreon backlog. I don’t plan to frantically do as many commissions as possible either, so in the end I’ll just have to budget my spending more. 

Anyway, that’s my general goal for the year 2020. I hope everyone will continue to support me despite the lack of content and wish me luck on my linguistic endeavors!

That’s all for now! For those interested, I’ll be opening the suggestion period for this month’s Patron Pick Poll soon, so stay tuned! And to everyone else, have a great 2020! \o/