Re-examining our Patreon tiers (Part 1) (Patreon)

Lots of people including many webcomics creators are currently trying to help us. This is leading to us discussing the income and expenditures of Exiern.

But first we're going to cover the Patreon content specifically today - its present state (Part 1) and tomorrow - where to go with it (Part 2). 

Finally we'll be covering the overall financial situation on the 31st of March 2021 before wrapping up this phase of the behind the scenes posts.

Jaycee Knight of Bloomin' Faeries has very kindly looked at not just our site and things to fix there but also our Patreon based on advice he got from Brad Guigar of Evil Inc.

Jaycee also told me about Brad's site webcomics.com which has a lot of advice and I'm going to sign up to it as soon as I can as part of the overall revamp and overhaul of Exiern.

(It seems strangely fitting that I've owned badwebcomics.com for going on five years and I don't think I mentioned that not only did I discover Exiern through The Bad Webcomics Wiki entry on it. I think I did say something along those lines on one of my first if not first ever comments here, I also did a major rewrite of the entry there. Strange how I ended up running the place here, isn't it?).

Thanks to Jaycee for letting us reproduce his advice above, he thought it seemed like maybe it was a bit too much information because people may not like seeing how the sausage is made so to speak but he also said he didn't necessarily know our particular audience so go ahead if we wanted to. I assured him that everyone here not only likes sausage but especially how it is made (vegetarian and vegan sausages too as/if applicable).

(I bet some of you here at least are patrons of Bloomin' Faeries! though!)

Anyway, moving along ... yes, Jaycee has several good points. Definitely need to rewrite the tier descriptions but also make clear what's offered. 

Also asking everyone what improvements they think could be made to their tiers so please feel free to message us or add to the comments below. 

I've been increasingly terrified people are going to leave if they were to feel they weren't getting their money's worth so you may have all noticed I've increasingly been lobbing things into all tiers as fast as I can find them. How's that going for everyone, as you can imagine, I'm really keen to know!

Here's currently what's happening in practice and descriptions will be updated after consultation with patrons:

$1 - Past and Future

Currently in practice people are getting:

Posted early:

Exiern pages (sometimes uncut versions)

Dark Reflections: Zen pages (more coming very soon!)

Dark Reflections: Chaos pages every week (as of this week!)

Broadsword pages - aiming for at least monthly for now

On top of the open access release of the first 6 pages of the $5 tier story Neese free to anyone who wanted to read it for no charge, the $1 tier also got access to the next 10 pages after that as well up to page 16. Neese is currently up to Page 46 on the $5 tier.

Miscellaneous art we've created in the past for all sorts of reasons as well other random images found in the archives from over the years.

I think the $1 tier is increasingly good value especially as we add things compared to many other webcomics out there. What's everyone else's thoughts on this tier?

$5 - The Side Questers

Neese pages: 

As fast as we can create them because of all that time there weren't any at all being published. There were several this month already and we aim to publish as many more as we can every month from now with their being published as soon as they're completed. As stated above, Neese is up to Page 46.

In the recent past, this tier also did receive early previews to the Dark Reflections prologue "All My Sins Remembered" (getting all 10 pages immediately last year as opposed to it being published later over two weeks for everyone else) and also all 20 rebooted pages over the month of January as opposed to site publication which is still only up to Page 12 as of the time of this post.

However, I think there's more we need to be doing at this tier so I really want to hear everyone's suggestions on what you'd expect from this level and also what would make you consider increasing your pledge to this level.

One question for starters, there were a couple of large page drops as described above but those were a couple of specific events as opposed to ongoing regular events, I'm thinking we may need more in this department here? Thoughts, everyone?

Also, we have to start planning for when Neese ends as we're well past the halfway mark as it happens as well.

$10 - The Dispatch

This one I'm definitely going to talk about more with the people on the tier but I don't think I can send anything out anymore, it's just not practical for me at this time but also, what do people most want out of their contribution here? I think it's time to ask.

Everyone on this tier as of this date has been grandfathered in to get one commission if they want it as compensation and are aware of that. In fairness to the artists having to make them, anyone new to this tier from now would have to be at this level for a period of time first but I'm more than happy to talk about that in concert with patrons and the artists.

We've also published one exclusive piece of art for this tier (there will be more) as well as two very advanced previews of our contributions to Lana's Sexy Summer Swapmeet 2021 - they won't be published until June at the earliest.

More content exclusive or early definitely coming to this tier.

$25 - Producer Credit

We did have one patron on this tier for a long time and for that we're very grateful. Definitely going to alter/add to this one. I do have something in mind but I'll have to talk to the artists first, of course.

Anyway, that's where the Patreon is currently now in practice. Hopefully we'll see you all here tomorrow about the various places it could go in future. We really want to make sure everyone's being looked after here!