Merch Test Cancelled (Patreon)

Hey all,

For the past 12 months I've tested adding patreon exclusive merch for memberships as an added perk. This came at no extra cost to you as an Alliance member, and was added on when I hit a Patreon goal for financing. Unfortunately, and likely due to the pandemic and changing trends in interests, adding this perk didn't increase the amount of Alliance members to offset the cost of adding this perk. In fact, in the 12 months of setting this up, I've lost about $1000 in income per month compared to previous years. This is attributed to the costs of merch shipped via Patreon but also the increased creator fee, which went up 3% (this is understandable as this covers Patreon's labor involved in servicing merch rewards).

Due to rising costs associated with running my business and the decline in memberships, unfortunately I have to cancel merch as a reward. I saw no increase in income in this time, and I've had to cut back on several personal goals in order to pay my own bills. As such, I need to cut costs here too. 

Trust me when I say I'm bummed about this. I LOVE creator merch, and have purchased a ton in my time as a creator to support my friends in the podcasting and youtube industry. I wanted to be able to offer freebies without changing the perk level pricing, but it didn't bring in the amount of new subscribers I'd need to offset the costs. 

I love that Patreon is offering this to creators since selling merch is a fulltime, labor intensive business (I know! I used to manage the HakShop fulltime!). It requires time developing artwork, finding a good merch manufacturer, calculating costs for the physical goods, packaging materials, shipping, and your own time, running to the post office to ship everything, paying for label printing paper, etc etc etc... But sadly, it didn't work out here. I'm hoping I'll be able to reintroduce merch as a reward in the future, but at this time it's not feasible. 

- In other words, I haven't gotten a raise through my job in at least two years, so I'm in the same boat as many folks who've also seen severe setbacks in their career growth during the pandemic - 

Here's an example of one month of costs alone (this does not include the patreon 3% merch fee):

Production and packaging

$1,052.20

2 Mug @ $14.50 - $29

77 Sticker @ $5.60 - $431.20

2 T-shirt @ $17 - $34

18 Hoodie @ $31 - $558

Total for May 2022 - $1,052.20

Cancelling merch rewards also means anyone who was earning towards a reward will no longer receive that reward either. Patreon doesn't give me a way as a creator to unpublish a loyalty program, I just have to delete it entirely. I know this is a sudden change (fwiw though, the tier pricing hasn't changed in over 4 years and I don't intend to change it anytime soon). 

As such, I wanted to offer a discount til the end of the month for anyone who won't get Patreon exclusive merch. The coupon code TWALLIANCE will give you 40% off anything in my dropship merch store at https://morsecode.creator-spring.com/ - that's the lowest I could mark merch at on CreatorSpring since that's the profit margin for merch - the remainder amount goes straight to CreatorSpring.

Thanks for understanding and for being an Alliance member. I love adding perks and bonuses as a thank you for contributing to ThreatWire, especially since I receive no ad revenue like a normal Youtube show would. And to the folks who got merch this year... consider it to be extremely limited edition and special. Y'all stuck with me through this tough year and I hope I can bring merch back to you in the near future with new products.

Don't worry though - I'll keep making ThreatWire no matter what!

Cheers,

Shannon