Patreon Paused (Patreon)

EDIT: Patreon is now paused, and patrons will not be billed for August 1st.

Hey there everyone- just a heads up for all patrons, Friday on the 24th, I will be pausing my Patreon page and all Patron Tiers for an indefinite time while I work on commissions. Until such time has passed, I will not be taking any more new patrons, and monthly Patreon rewards will be put on pause. For current patrons, you will not be charged for August.

The reason I'm doing this is because ever since the beginning of this year, I've been managing my Patreon rather haphazardly. I've made many changes here and there throughout my Patreon's history, but this year I feel as if I don't know what I'm doing, constantly biting off more than I can chew, and feeling completely disorganized and overwhelmed. So I'm going to be putting my Patreon on pause in order for me to step back and re-evaluate things, get myself more organized and bring some much-needed order to my Patreon.

The biggest issue with my Patreon and how it's set up thus far is in regards to monthly Patreon rewards. As I've stated before, as the number of patrons for various tiers increase, so to does my workload. Currently I have thirteen $20 patrons with two character sketches per person- that's twenty-six sketches I have to do each month. Clearly I underestimated my own abilities. On top of that, looking at my tiers as of this writing, I've got lots of people in the top and bottom tiers, while half the tiers have one or none. This seems like a major imbalance, and tells me that there's not much incentive to be in the middle categories. 

With both of those in mind, one of my bigger plans is to reduce the number of tiers to maybe three at most. Trimming the fat, so to speak. 

I also plan on changing patron rewards to something more manageable- instead of giving every single person in a tier a sketch drawing (besides the one you'd get for your first year), I'll hold a monthly Sketch Pool, where 5 people will receive a sketch with 1-2 characters. All they have to do is leave a comment with what character they'd want me to draw (Fanart or OC), and I'd select based on what I think would be the most fun/interesting to draw, so it's not random (this is so I don't violate Patreon's rules on "gambling" type posts). To spice things up I might have monthly themes- different genres (horror, fantasy, sci-fi), different types of media (video games, books, movies), or just telling me your favorite animal.

I have a few other ideas, but I'm still working out the kinks on paper.

If you have any ideas of your own, or questions/comments on the Sketch Pool, leave a comment below!