HUGE SOLELY SINGLETON PATREON UPGRADES INCOMING (Patreon)

Alright! That title should make you pay attention. How's it going lovely patrons (or others)? Brad here.

The News: 

For those who don't pay attention to the patron discord, as you're about to hear in the season finale, we're making massive changes to the Patreon to attempt to stimulate some growth.  This is being accompanied by a pile of other upgrades we're making, including launching the Warhammer stuff as a new podcast rather than just bonus episodes under the Solely Singleton banner.  We want to provide you guys with more regular content of all types, but as you can guess that takes money to pay the editors and will also increase our hosting costs to post more content in a month.

The following is a long-winded, but in-depth explanation of what exactly lead us to doing this, what changes are planned, and what's in it for you.  Please take the time to read everything, I really do believe in complete transparency when it comes to running this show, as you're all as much of it's production as we are.  I'll bold key information anyway, because I know you don't listen.

Sappy Pitiful Background Stuff: 

We've been looking into what we could do with that Youtube channel we've been sitting on for 2 years and we're currently debating delving into the cesspit of Twitch to see if there is an audience for streaming content.  As it stands we're a long way off from most of that, as we simply don't have the time to edit it ourselves on top of our current content or the money to pay others to help.  Hell, we want to contract someone to fix up the website and expand it for our multiple shows. We don't even have the spare funds to do that.  As it stands right now, every month with a Hot Takes/First Impressions episode is a net negative income due to the extra editor requirements.

What We Refuse To Do: 

We're not going to take on sponsorships or paid advertisements to make up the income.  We spoke to all of our patrons on this topic multiple times and we all agreed this podcast(s?!) is simply more enjoyable if we don't do any paid promotion or have to play along with the wishes of some larger entity.  We like our independence and the freedom offered to us by being patron supported.  If we can't make it with this indie style of revenue stream then we'd rather not make it at all.  Eric and I don't like shilling for products we don't actually like, and we definitely don't like the idea of being beholden to a larger entity.  

We're also not going to quit making content even if it's costing us money to do so.  This started as a hobby because Eric and I wanted to try something new and make the content we wanted to consume, we'll keep doing whatever we're able to as long as we enjoy making it.  Our topics may shift with time, our amount of episodes per month may vary, but we have talked about it and neither of us are interested in stopping the podcast for the foreseeable future.

What We're Actually Doing: 

So then, what ARE we going to do? First, we looked into it and we've decided to switch billing from an episodic basis to monthly.  Currently we're only billing patrons for mainline episodes as we promised would be the case at the beginning of Season 12.  Most of the patrons we spoke with last week seem to have forgotten that deal and honestly thought they were paying for non-magic episodes anyway and seemed content with that fact.  I wish we'd known that 6 months ago so we wouldn't have been hemorrhaging money this season, but that's not your problem.  

We originally chose episodic billing because we didn't like the idea of billing people for a month in which we made nothing.  We shocked ourselves the other week when we counted our total released public episodes.  Even being a seasonal show with multiple breaks a year we hit 154 releases in 156 weeks when we hit our 3 year milestone.  This is partly due to First Impressions previously being made in addition to an episode that week (WHAT THE FUCK WERE WE THINKING) and multi-part episodes where we'd release multiple 1 hour+ episodes in a single week.  We also went through the schedule for the past 3 years and realized while we've done month long breaks before, they've never been a calendar month, often being centered around holidays that occur at the end or beginning of a month. We've also somehow never released less than 2 episodes a month in the history of this show.  This made us realize we were overly pessimistic about our future release schedule when we made the Patreon and we should have probably been monthly from the start.

Second, and much more interesting for you, is we're upgrading our current benefits. We need to increase our income while doing all of this, so we need to entice you to spend more money supporting the show.  Other than being sexy and lovable the only real thing we can do is bribe you with benefits.  Eric, several patrons, and I have spent the past several weeks combing the internet for successful Patreons in the gaming and podcast communities to see what rewards they offer at which prices.  We dissected a bunch of the results and found the ones that would translate well to our audience and picked ones we believe we can deliver on reliably.  Here is the current list of benefits per monthly tier we're looking to move to:

(Bolded bullet points are new to that tier)

$1 - Patron 

• Private Discord access 
• Access to private game servers (Minecraft/Valheim/etc) to play with other patrons and hosts 

$3 - Supporter 

• Vote on episode topics 
• Bonus episodes/bloopers/etc.
• Private discord access 
• Access to private game servers to play with other patrons and hosts  

$5 - Champion 

• One patron name randomly read per episode from this tier 
• Name in the shownotes
• Vote on episode topics 
• Bonus episodes/bloopers/etc. 
• Private discord access 
• Access to private game servers to play with other patrons and hosts  

$10 - Swaglord 

• Sexy discord color and bonus features on discord 
• Access to Swaglord channels in discord 
• Live audience to episode recording once per season
• One patron name randomly read per episode from this tier 
• Name in the shownotes 
• Vote on episode topics 
• Bonus episodes/bloopers/etc. 
• Private discord access 
• Access to private game servers to play with other patrons and hosts.

$15 - Confidant 

• Monthly hang out with hosts and others of this tier via discord 
• Perma-shoutout once per month 
• Name prominently shown in the shownotes
• Sexy discord color and bonus features on discord 
• Access to Swaglord channels in discord 
• Live audience to episode recording once per season 
• Vote on episode topics 
• Bonus episodes/bloopers/etc. 
• Private discord access 
• Access to private game servers to play with other patrons and hosts  

$20 - Super Impressive Master Patron 

• Signed magic card and host-designed 3D-printed model once per season 
• Sexier discord color to really flex on the peasantry
• Name prominently shown in the shownotes 
• Monthly hang out with hosts and others of this tier via discord 
• Perma-shoutout once per month 
• Access to Swaglord channels in discord 
• Live audience to episode recording once per season 
• Vote on episode topics 
• Bonus episodes/bloopers/etc. 
• Private discord access 
• Access to private game servers to play with other patrons and hosts  

$50 - Producer 

• Initial pledge: signed playmat or signed objective markers. 
• One of the hosts will sit down to do a cube update with you each set. 
• Brad will design you a PoE character once per league. 
• Make your own Discord title and color. 
• Perma-shoutout every episode as a Producer
• Signed magic card and 3D printed model once per season 
• Access to Swaglord channels in discord
• Name prominently shown in the shownotes 
• Monthly hang out with hosts and others of this tier via discord 
• Sexy discord color and bonus features on discord 
• Live audience to episode recording once per season 
• Vote on episode topics 
• Bonus episodes/bloopers/etc. 
• Private discord access access to private game servers to play with other patrons and hosts  

$200 - Spiteful Idiot

You're an idiot, but a spiteful idiot and Brad appreciates that. 

• Initial pledge: Eric paints a model and sends you it. (Brad will force him to do it.) 
• EVERYTHING ELSE

All of these tiers, prices, and rewards are subject to change still.  If you have ideas for other low upkeep benefits please share them with us and we'll discuss adding them as well.

When's The Change and What Do You Need To Do?:

The changes will occur in the first week of July. We need to time this in a way where we don't double charge any of you for the month when we make the change over to monthly billing.  After talking to Justin Parnell we determined the safest time to do the swap is in the first week of July while we're off-season. (I'm blaming Justin if things go badly, always have a scapegoat!)

If you're currently a patron you'll be transferred to your new tier at the same price point, if you are part of the $2 tier you will be removed as a patron without notice from Patreon because they're terrible.  I will be attempting to contact every $2 tier patron before we do the change over to get as many of you transferred over as possible.  I am not a fan of the idea of losing a chunk of patrons without any options to them or us, so we'll have to work around Patreon's inadequacies.  Once the change over to monthly is made you can easily change your tier to whichever one you want, you should just get charged for your new amount at the end of the month.

Alright, I've rambled enough! If you have any feedback for this change you can post them in the comments here, contact me on the patron discord, or send us an email privately.  If you're not a patron and read all of this, consider becoming one, because you apparently care about this far more than I expected.