July Retrospection (Patreon)

Alright, now that I've actually gotten my whole to-do list cleared and it's the end of my first month having a Patreon page I figure I could do some thinking, and I'd really appreciate it if you guys had anything to say about it.

First thought: boy that was a lot of work hahaaaah. Maybe I shouldn't have done those double requests in the same month I had some commissions lined up. I slacked a little hard at the beginning of the month too, and it really gave me a sense of how I need to manage my time if I wanna take this seriously.

I've added an earnings goal to the page, by the way! Thought about it a little, and making my goals a little more concrete really helps.

Second thought: boy I sure put in waaay too much effort for those sketch requests hahah. I sure hope all my $5 tier patrons liked what they got, but honestly the amount of effort I exerted in 'em was as much as a colorless commission. I'll try to keep requests at a reasonably good level of quality in the future, I'd hate to gip you guys for your whole $5 lol, but I definitely gotta ease back on the effort I'm giving 'em.

I'll give another month a go and see how I handle the proper workload I expected for it. If take care of it in a speedy enough fashion I might bump the limit up from 5 to 7, maybe more. If it takes a lot more energy than I expected I mmmmmight bump it up to $10. We'll see.

Third thought: Patreon-only communication really sucks! Flagging people down individually sucks enough, but Patreon's DM system is horrible. It doesn't even have an image uploader, so I've had to just upload requests to Discord to link a couple of you.

I've got... plenty enough reasons to not make my own Discord server, it's why I didn't launch this page with one. But, now that I've had this month where I had to only communicate with individual Patrons and rely on email notifications, it's really bad and inefficient to not have one haha. That being said, would you guys actually be interested in one? This is the part I'd actually like a response to, so please lemme know and if you guys are I'll start setting one up.

Final thought: Patreon's in a pretty shittier spot right now, huh?  Honestly. They lost that recent lawsuit apparently? There's a lot of users I imagine they'd lose if the whole platform went down, but even before that the idea of my content being policed and anyone trying to make me manage what content I have outside of this platform is pretty terrible.

If it comes to it I'll hop platforms over, but the main alternatives are SubscribeStar and Pixiv fanbox and I'm not too keen on using either honestly. This is the other part I'd actually like a response to as well, so if you guys have any ideas for alternatives I'd be pleased to know. Took a lot out of me to convince myself to finally do a Patreon, so I'd kinda like to stay committed to this current work model I've got going on.

Finally, thanks again to all of y'all who've subscribed to the page, thank you for supporting my stuff and I hope to keep your support in the future.