Patreon Reward Updates (Patreon)

Hey guys! So this might be a LOOONG post, but we wanted to let you all know ahead of time that we plan on making some Patreon reward changes this May (we want to leave things as-is for a couple months for anyone who recently joined specifically for the current rewards). A couple things are going away, but we're considering adding new things too (we'll go into details on those at the end of this post!) 

This is something we've been thinking about for about 6 months now, and it's because our Patreon has outgrown some of the rewards we put into place back when we first started it in 2017. Which is a good problem to have! It's so crazy that there are almost 1000 of you guys here with us and we appreciate y'all so much!

Just to get a small glimpse of how things have changed: this was our first video after starting our Patreon in 2017. Look at that little list of names! My mom, Brooke, David (Make Something), Johnny (Crafted Workshop), Thomas, Brian, and Evan's dad are still around from  back in the day! (Also the video this was 1 minute and 10 seconds long... what the heck haha)

So most rewards will stay the same. It's mainly 2 tiers that have become so big that the previous rewards can't keep growing to accommodate them. So firstly, for the $5 patrons: we need to remove the names from the video. It's gotten to the point where they are scrolling so fast you can barely read them, and they cover so much of the screen that they often obscure what's behind it.

So first I tried doing some mockups of alternative layouts for the screen overlays. 1) I made the video smaller with the names to the right and underneath, but we still have the issue of it making it harder to see finished shots/whatever we're working on (because the inset is pretty small) and they'd still have to scroll by pretty fast. 

Attempt 1)

I also tried a vertical scroller, where the video could still me larger, but with a single column scrolling it takes soooo long. Attempt 2)

With both of these we worry about it looking like were rolling the credits and the video is over. That's another piece of feedback we've gotten in the comments several times (that they thought the patrons rolling were the end of the video)

Some people scroll patron names with the "end screen" (when you see suggested videos and such pop up) but since we do bloopers during that time, we face the same issue.

So we're going to keep the $20's and $10's on screen, but we have to remove the $5's. Again, it's technically a good problem to have that there are so many names, but when you reach the max amount of columns InDesign will let you have in a layout (40, btw) it makes you start to rethink things.

The only other thing we have to take away is the monthly group video chat with the $20 patrons. This is very sad for us because we have really gotten to know you guys, especially those of you that have been around since the beginning, and even gotten to spend time with some of you in person.

The video chat software we use caps us at 10 people, and on multiple occasions we've maxed it out and people who wanted to join in weren't able to fit. There are other options that let you go up to 25 or higher, but our worry is that with that many people, it no longer becomes a conversation. It becomes more of a livestream, where people feel awkward talking to us because they're talking in front of such a big group (it already happens sometimes with newcomers being nervous to talk in our smaller group). Our $20 tier has been maxed out for a while because we didn't want any more people joining for the ability to do the group hangouts, only to realize the chat was already full.

For anyone in the $5 or $20 groups, if y'all decide to change your support because of the change in rewards, we 100% understand. Now, onto the new additions we're considering! We'd love to get y'alls thoughts on these.

IDEA 1) We're considering some patreon-exclusive merch. Maybe one design that's available to all patrons, and a bonus design available only to the $20 patrons. I've been working on a couple designs (and they'd be available on various shirt styles, a mug, a notebook, a sticker, a magnet... there's a huge variety of stuff we can offer). We tried to work something out with our new merch provider so that we could give you guys free one-time coupon codes, but their system doesn't allow for custom coupon codes which is the only way we'd be able to do it. We can however offer items "at-cost" from the printer, meaning we make no money from it and you just pay the base cost of the item. And there would be no limits on how many things you can get. Hopefully the no-limits makes up for our inability to make them free! 

If this is something your interested in, let me know what kind of design you might want! Maybe a "Supurrvisor Approved" or "E&K Support" design, or something with a bunch of sketches from things that have happened in our videos over the years. Here's some of my current mockups.

IDEA 2) We could try patreon-exclusive live streams for occasional brainstorming sessions, Q&A's (maybe that we turn into podcasts?), and things like that. They may not be on a regular basis, but they'd also be open ended. We'd probably do them via YouTube (not Twitch) since not everyone has a Twitch account, and so that we can keep them private. 

We also wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all again for the support! We're really excited for what the future holds for us and can't wait to share it with y'all.

 ❤️  E&K