Heyo, wanted some opinions
Added 2022-08-07 10:01:01 +0000 UTCThe last month was hard on my wallet as I had a bunch of things happen all at once. Don't worry, it isn't "lose my apartment" bad or my "health taking a turn for the worse" bad. Honestly it was more just a matter of a bunch of yearly bills coming due all at once? Should be fixed for next year as I did some stuff to make it work better next year, but it has cut into my savings deeper than feels comfortable. So after looking through my options I decided to see what everyone thought about me offering commissions? General opinions are fine, though I go into my thoughts a little bit more below.
This isn't going to be a quick money earner as I'm not going to let it get in the way of my normal chapters. As it is though I can probably offer commissions for short stories like what I am doing once a month. So short stories of around 2k words. The biggest difference will be that since it will be for a specific person there will be more back and forth on the story prompt.
Going to charge on the low end of a starting freelancer so 5¢/word meaning $100 a short story. I'm not actually charging per word mind you, that just felt like the best way to figure out a starting point. Though this is one of the things I'm directly asking for an opinion on. I have found people on places like Fiverr going for less of course, but the 5¢/word is bottom of the barrel freelance writing done for stuff like blog posts. I've also found people charging a lot more. So yeah, any thoughts on this would be cool.
Also, this isn't specifically for Patrons. As it is I figure I would post here first to see if anyone wants a go at it here. Though I would be making the post public because I don't know how often or much I will be doing this. If people like the commissions, I'm not going to string a lot of people along and have them sign up here for a dollar just for a chance at a commission. This Patreon is for my two main novels, NeoRealm and Dungeon's Path. Of course, once again, any opinions welcome.
So yeah, that was my thoughts on the matter. Offering a short story commission whenever I have some free space? Maybe more if popular, but I honestly prefer Patreon and similar stuff as it is more regular.
Edit: Having taken some feedback let me put out a few things.
First, this would be something I do once, rarely twice, a month at the start. Maybe if I get to the point that my base Patreon allows me to become a writer full time I might be able to do more.
Second, enough people have chimed in about the price. Like I said above, I chose the price based off of what I had seen and so since people see the price as high, the price will be lower. For the moment I'm going to cut it in half, though I'll post again about this so people see the new price of $50.
Third, a few people have chimed in about getting early chapters for my two main stories. I'm not against that and I have seen it done before. However, this would not be one person commissioning an extra chapter. This would be an open thing where once enough money was donated I would release an extra chapter and this wouldn't be restricted to patrons. It would be a lot of work for me because of the sheer number of scheduled chapters involved, but that just seems fair. I will probably be limiting it to once a month, though any money put towards it sticks around. However, I will not allow a large amount of cash to be built up. I'm not going to be promising extra chapters for months to come. That means once the goal is hit I'm not accepting a backlog. Also, if I ever do decide to do more than once extra chapter a month, each subsequent extra chapter would rise in price.
Fourth, as it wasn't completely understood, these commissions weren't going to be patron exclusive. You're already patrons and get a chance at having your short stories written once a month. I was however going to post here first as I've seen some artists handle their commissions. Though I was going to be even less restrictive as the post on Patreon would be public. Basically giving anyone who follows my Patreon a chance at getting in first.
Comments
Like I said in the edit, this was only going to be something that happened once, rarely twice a month. I wasn't going to sacrifice my regular releases. This was more of a thing to help shore up my savings after they took a bit of a dip in the last month.
Akhier Dragonheart
2022-08-12 04:39:28 +0000 UTCfwliw, I think your best option is to continue to write regularly as u can w/o burning out. distractions/noncore attempts to spike income are likely to have poor $/hr vs building your following, from what little I've observed. Cost cutting and living within ones income are key, but not magic. GL, u do u.
fbt
2022-08-12 03:42:58 +0000 UTCThis wasn't going to be anything I was doing more than once, maybe twice, a month. As for the price, very much something I will lower. After all, I posted here to get opinions on it and that is the overall opinion. Longer word count prompts would be something I wouldn't be against but that would be a case by case sort of thing and certainly would cost more.
Akhier Dragonheart
2022-08-09 19:54:18 +0000 UTCAs far as this idea goes, you might go with a lower price and so many per month. Maybe even drop extra chapters of your current stories and just keep up with public release. You are how many years ahead of public release? You can accept commissions and release them on here in place of extra chapters and use the lower chapter count to make up the difference in released chapters, hence so many per month. A lower price would encourage more commissions, while I don't know anyone who is willing to pay $100 for a single short story. You might also consider having a variable price scale based on prompt. If a prompt is something that would require 5000 words to really do right it would be a more expensive piece that would take up two slots of your adjusted schedule, whereas something like the last one you did about the supertailor was done in that amount of words. Up to you, but some thoughts.
Carl Mason
2022-08-09 19:49:59 +0000 UTCWith earlier chapters I'm thinking more along the lines of once a month if enough people donate I get an extra chapter out instead of a whole new tier. I have been considering a bit of a mix up on my tiers, though more to generalize things. Basically the current idea is that instead of having a NR tier, a D'sP tier, and a combo tier, I would have a couple tiers that had both with the difference being how many extra chapters they get. An example would be that there would be a tier that gets an extra chapter over the free release every third week (like how D'sP gets an extra chapter every second week). I'm actually probably going to post about this in the near future. Honestly this might have come along first if this and the last month didn't decide to sucker punch my savings.
Akhier Dragonheart
2022-08-08 07:17:50 +0000 UTCYou can add a new tier to the stories. Check patreon which one has more subscribers and start with that
Apoca
2022-08-08 04:47:41 +0000 UTCThis wasn't going to be Patreon exclusive, I was just going to post here first. And yeah, it wasn't meant to be a "money maker" and more as a way to pad my savings.
Akhier Dragonheart
2022-08-07 20:59:16 +0000 UTCThat is an interesting idea and I know some people do that. I would have decide how much to charge for that and it would be as a collective goal instead of as just a one person funding it.
Akhier Dragonheart
2022-08-07 20:58:24 +0000 UTCI'm not doing this to "make money" but rather to add back in some padding to my savings. Though I might lower the price after looking into it more.
Akhier Dragonheart
2022-08-07 20:57:32 +0000 UTCFair enough, I picked that as a starting point going by what others were offering. I'll have to look into it more.
Akhier Dragonheart
2022-08-07 20:55:57 +0000 UTCCould we commission you for earlier chapters form your ongoing stories?
Bakerdea
2022-08-07 18:38:07 +0000 UTCYeah you can try and it's not a bad idea but i doubt you can get much out of it in the end (market/money vs work and time you put into that) that not gonna add much to you and your wallet i think, seem pretty limited and just a little + to have on the money aspect if it's a bit difficult as of now for you on that, but heh who really know? :) Depend how are your feeling about it and if you think it's worth a shoot, maybe it will work amazing :P
Zarik0
2022-08-07 16:00:38 +0000 UTCPatreon has a wide range of users, and I'm sure some of the readers may be willing to commission stories, but I'm not sure how much traffic you would get without advertising on different sites. Although again, it's supplementary, so that may be good. Do what you feel you need to do.
Swayze0
2022-08-07 16:00:09 +0000 UTCIt's honestly too much for me, and I am afraid would be too much for a lot of people here. It's a good idea, only that I am not sure if there is market here.
Guilherme Silva
2022-08-07 14:14:13 +0000 UTC
