The financial situation of Exiern (Part 1) (Patreon)

So this is the last of this run of posts that will be going up before we take a break.

The TL;DR version is that Exiern costs more to make than it earns and that's what Scott had to give it over to me. If it broke even or more, chances are he'd have been much more likely to keep it and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Well not exactly anyway.

So that's what we're going to talk about today.

Exiern has for a long time now mostly oscillated between $350 and $400 US for many years now. You can see the ups and down through a remarkably narrow range compared to many other Patreons here:

https://graphtreon.com/creator/exiern

(Special thanks to Tom who's been running the site for a long time now, we've been an early supporter after The Bad Webcomics Wiki forum led us there!)

Advertising used to bring in a lot more at one point but we've trickled down to $80 US for the last month.

To be on the safe side, let's say monthly income of Exiern is about $450 US on average.

Well, that's not bad ... (Exiern has a financial toehold it's fought for to get and hold onto among all the other webcomics out there.)

but

Exiern costs about $1400 US/month to run.

Why so much? Well, it's because we have two artists. Especially given the last 12 or so months, we can't not have one of them either. Various things have happened over the years where as a result, we've been lucky to provide a weekly update (any kind of weekly update - hence so much non-story related filler) because of the various pitfalls our artists have been navigating.

This actually isn't a plug or push for the Patreon.

It's seven years old at this point. Everyone knows it's there and what it's for so there's no say anything beyond that now. Also everyone knows what you can get from it and we've just been over that too in the last few days. Any improvements we can make to that, we're always open to talk about it.

Also, as something else that was something different from the usual "Please join our Patreon/like and subscribe etc!" where we could also have a bit of fun on top of not just looking like we were having our hand out was our Health and Lifestyle blog Rxiern.

http://exiern.com/comic/welcome-to-rxiern-the-exiern-health-and-lifestyle-blog/

Some tips to save some money which we then tongue-in-cheek (how much tongue is up to you!) said you could bung us at least $1/month in appreciation - but it's true that so many of us can end up with so much more money than we currently do even without earning one extra dollar. 

Thing of your expenditure like leaky pipes and water loss and there can be so much you can fix.

A quick summary of the advice which was just a few items at the time (because long lists lead to people glazing over) and keep the ideas simple to execute too (else more glazing over!).

Lowest effort:

Use less washing powder when washing your clothes (half, a quarter or even an eighth of the usual amount).

Extreme version lowest effort:

Use none most of the time! The Rxiern article and links explain the logic.

Low effort:

Dry your razor blades after rinsing - they'll last longer

OK, a bit of effort required now:

There's various ways you can easily sharpen and reuse your disposable razors. They'll last a lot longer and you can save a lot of money by buying new ones much less often. Added bonus, think of the environment. Check out the page and links on Rxiern as to how!

Now about glazing over once again, long posts can also tend to have that effect, so once again, we're going to split this post in two. Hopefully see you again for the next one, coming straight after the last one!