FEEDBACK WANTED! (Patreon)

Hello gang. Thanks for all the kind words about dad. No real update to share, though they think he's got a blood infection and clots on his lungs, neither of which are ideal things to have... but apparently, he's bored, so that's a good sign.

Anyhow, I'm not here to talk about him.

We're living in a bit of a weird reality right now, obviously, and like many of you... I've taken something of a Covid-related hit in terms of earnings with my day job. Consequently, I'm going to be relying upon what I can potentially bring in through Patron, or merch, or whatever, more than I ever have done. 

However, many of you have clearly taken a hit as well, as we lost a lot of Patrons in August. This could be a consequence of, I dunno, not liking our content, it isn't like we've radically changed anything. Indeed, August brought Gannon back with a run of rather lovely videos, I felt, and last week's Cabbage Patch vid was great, I felt. And the next bunch are all shaping up nicely too. Besides, exits surveys suggest people's financial situations have changed.

I kind of feel we offer good value for money in that we only have two tiers - $1 and $5 (though some absolute diamonds choose to pay more). The $1 tier covers everything I might do - regular Digi Minis (four a month, minimum), Lost Footage-y stuff, the occasional article on the website (expect an Avengers review soon; yes, I'm still going to be covering the games I actually play), plus you can throw into that any daft Photoshop nonsense, such as Memory Assistant on Twitter. 

AND you get videos early, AND exclusive videos that nobody else sees - at least a couple a month going forwards - AND exclusive blog posts that nobody else sees.

It may not seem it, but all of that costs money; I pay a fee to Adobe every month for Photoshop, I use a lot of stock music and footage which usually costs money, and atop that... there's my time, which I hope is worth something. Any time I make something that comes under the "Mr Biffo" or Digitiser umbrella, that's time I'm not doing a paid job elsewhere. 

Then... the $5 gang get the really juicy blog posts - normally at least one a week, normally quite long, and normally quite personal. I don't hold back. Plus I've shared music with them, and other bits and bobs (in fact, there's something going up today that's otherwise very top secret)

I'm hugely grateful for all of it. However little you can give, it all helps, and it all adds up. And these days... it's really helping out both Sanja and I. And by extension, our family.

However, looking around, other creators do offer higher tiers, with even more exclusive stuff. Typically, they don't give away exclusive videos at the lowest level, like I've been doing; the $1-ish stuff tends to just be a show of support for the thing that is offered publicly to everyone. 

Frankly, because I've always done so, I'm probably devaluing myself, but... I wanted to throw it open to the floor to you lot - what, if anything, would encourage you to pay a little bit more?

I appreciate that there's a ton of content out there vying for your attention already, so I guess that some of you may not want more things to watch. Therefore, I'm open to out-there ideas.

A few things to consider:

• I don't want to send out merch.
• I don't want to do regular gaming content (it'll remain on an as-and-when basis).
• I don't really want to know what you already don't like about what I do (had my fill of that over the past year, frankly).
• I don't really want to know why you WOULDN'T support us at a higher tier; this is for those who potentially would. Ideas only, please.
• And I am still kind of planning a podcast, which will be available for everyone. 

Therefore, I'm open to things like once-a-month live stream things, or deleted footage (there's an entire episode of Digitiser Deluxe that I couldn't edit together for technical reasons, but I could share that, for example). I dunno! I just thought we could brainstorm. 

I was also wondering about - and this might sound weird - monthly 'collectible' virtual/digital trading cards or badges. They could even be subtly personalised, so that everyone has their own unique one. It needs to be ongoing, so it couldn't be something like a one-off teletext portrait (plus, those are stupidly time-consuming). But I'm open to suggestions!

Comments are... live!

Paul