Update on a future project and Patreon rewards. (Patreon)

As you know, because of Scott being very busy among other things, he's handed the running of Exiern over to me. The other issue is financial. Exiern usually costs more to make than it earns (about $1400 US/month cost versus around $500 US/month as of recently only income).

Things have changed a bit for a while, one of our artists has gotten a very exciting opportunity which indirectly has the costs and income being approximately equal for up to the next few months, possibly. That's not because our income has gone up in any major fashion.

Now we don't know how long it's going to last, so I'm going to use the opportunity to try and push Exiern's income higher in the long run. It's not likely to happen overnight but I have to try, especially for if Scott needs to take back the reigns due to the unforeseen happening to me - realistically, Exiern's income needs to be higher if that's the case.

So, here's a plan I'm going to bring up in the months going ahead and we want to see what you all think about this.

We're going to pick a future month (provisionally December 2021 but it could move forward) where we're going to suspend the Patreon payment to us for one month. That means a free month for everyone!

I'm going to then write to every former patron (the ones who've spent at least $1 before cancelling their pledge at the very least) and ask them to consider using that time to come and have a look at all the content generated since they left - and to see if they'd consider ever rejoining. In the interim, they can look around at past Patreon content for free!

A variation of this has been used with quite a lot of success by Jaycee Knight of Bloomin' Faeries who came up with the idea independently (we thought of it separately).

This would also be especially fair to patrons who left in 2019 and 2020 as there was a long period of time when content that should have been posted then got delayed into 2021. So, at least some of it is stuff they should have seen at the time (note the Neese and Dark Reflections page drops we had all at once recently).

But of course the also fair question to ask is, what about patrons who never left? Well, firstly they'd be allowed to try the higher tiers and consider remaining at them for a while at least if they like the content.

But also, for everyone who's never cancelled their pledge (as well as those who already could go no higher), there's a bonus story being made. It's going to be probably at least 30 multi-panelled pages and it's going to be mailed out to all existing patrons who've made a nominal lifetime contribution (probably $10 or less). It won't go on the Patreon itself until later, so new people joining won't see it straight away. Only long term patrons!

It's made and written by someone who's had some serious experience doing this and is quite good at it too (so not me!). We're in the pre-production process right now for later in the year.

So that means all of you guys will not only not have to pay on the due date of whichever month this is going to be (so a free month!), you get a bonus story which any new people are going to have to wait for a bit until they've spent at least a bit of a lifetime total!

We will of course take into account anyone whose circumstances mean they have to drop out between now and whenever this happens on a case by case basis (someone who's been a contributor for many years and a substantial lifetime payment contribution but had to drop out in the last few months for financial reasons - will get mailed a copy for example).

Anyway, that's the plan. It's a large upfront cost but even if it boosts the Patreon total by a couple of hundred dollars on average over two years, it'll pay for itself and then some.

The key thing is, we need to try different things to get the Patreon to have a significant boost and this is the next major project we're going to go with (along with separate non-Patreon income raising ideas independent of this but more on them later).

So, what are everyone's thoughts on this?

To summarise the current plan:

Sometime this year, every current patron who has spent a nominal amount (probably between $5 to $10 inclusive) will receive one month with no Patreon charge and a free approximately 30 page multi-panelled story to read as part of our major promotional drive to get more Patreon supporters and readers.

Let us know in the comments below what you think!

(I'm also going to start to write to every existing patron as well individually in the next few weeks. There'll be a general mail out first about that where I write one message and hit group send but then there'll be individual messages later. There'll also be a chance to opt out from receiving a message from me too, see the group message for details please.)