Plan for the Future & Your Input (Patreon)

Looking into the future I've been thinking about making some changes, but I wanted to discuss them and lay out why I want to do these things. 

Only One Tier

This is the big one I'm worried about and I want to hear your thoughts on.

I'm considering slimming this down to a single $5 teir for everyone for all content. This will let everyone who is a patreon vote in polls, and have access to bonus content.

(NOTE: If you are currently paying less than $5, your payments will not change, you will just get more stuff.    If you are one of the 20 patrons currently paying more than $5 you will have to actively take a step to lower it when the time comes, and I'll send out a message to help and remind you)

Last year I ran a poll to see how everyone was feeling. There was a lot of desire to have more control over the $$ goal. Patreon's fee system was devouring whatever was being earned by some of the cheeper teirs. Also the amount of time I was putting into things

I knew it was going a little high on the new decider teir, but I thought it would be good to future proof things, so there wasn't a parade of slowly increasing the teirs. But as the year has gone on, I've been second guessing the $10 decider teir.

There are about 20 people on the $10 Decider teir. Many of our amazing deciders have been with us for a long time and are still on the legacy version of the teir. 

Yes, this does kind of feel like it's removing abit of the clubhouse feel of being a decider. I also think this will simply expand our clubhouse to include all of our Patrons who are with us here.

I've been looking around at patreons in our area and patreons outside our genre, and one teir and $5 feels right.

This also makes it easier for me to explain the Patreon to people. And it is not going to feel like I'm trying to upsell people. Everyone gets cool stuff. 

Change of Display

Let's about something more mundane. Last year a lot of people asked to see the Revenue earned so we could base goals off of them. Since then Patreon has shifted how they track funds. Because of that the Revenue Display is very inaccurate and the Number of Patreons Display is rather accurate. I'd rather use the Patreon Number Display only. 

New Goals

With the new M/W/F schedule, making the goals more pages doesn't really make sense. Currently most months will be getting 7 pages of Open Trade even if the goals say that updates only get 6 pages. So I've already kind of messed it up. 

New goals would be focused on making new comics. An example Goal Reward would be along the lines of a 10-15 page stand alone story that would be posted all at once. Maybe some guest artist doing those stories as well. I will want them to be special and a fun way to give you all more stuff, with out over stressing production as we grow. 

There will be fun goals, but moving away from making Open Trade faster and more about giving more stories. 

More Comics/More Content

With the M/W/F schedule, it creates an odd side effect. The Open Trade comics will get earlier and earlier in the month until there are an entire month ahead. 

That means that there will be more time to devote to the secondary comic. Whatever the secondary comic is (Aftermath. Something new that has been brewing). So continuing down this road long term, we will be able to have multiple (2-3) pages for this other comic while not overwhelming me and keep the momentum up for it. 

Final Thoughts

There are a bunch of reasons I've been thinking about this direction. I haven't said every single one of them, but hopefully this will give a view of what I'm thinking without devolving into a rambling mess. 

As always, I want to know your thoughts. Vote below, or share your comments. 

If things go well, I will start to make changes at the end of the month.