Patreon Changes

Hey there! Oxdarock here!

I hope you've all checked you inboxes! If you have, you'll find the link to all the pages of this month's comic! Thanks everyone who supported me this month! This however, isn't really as positive a news post as you'd think. The short version is:

Due to the issues regarding patron pledge limits and giving myself too heavy a workload, I will be reducing the amount of content per post. I will make no more than 4 paid posts a month. Each post will be a page of my current project. Voting polls won't be held on a monthly basis and I'll be adjusting the way I handle discount commissions.

While I prefer my current method of running my Patreon, it's still in the early stages of support. Even making four posts wouldn't cover even half of my monthly expenses in exchange for nearly a month's worth of work. Add in the voting poll pictures and I'm honestly killing myself with work while earning very little. It doesn't help when I try to rush everything in one go (I honestly dragged my feet getting the last few pages of the recent comic done). 

If that wasn't bad enough, looking over the successful charges of my patrons, I realized that some patrons have set a pledge limit to my Patreon. For those of you who don't know, for "pay-per-post" Patreons, patrons are able to set a pledge limit of a certain amount so that they aren't overwhelmed by artists who make a ton of paid posts. However, it can also be used to only be charge for one post and nothing more. This is really bad as about third of my patrons don't pay for more than one post a month it seems. It didn't even occur to me that people would do this since I stated exactly how many times I'd post a month to alleviate people's fear of over posting and I've kept to that thus far (in fact, I'd have been lucky to make it up to four posts). While my primary goal is to deter dine n dashers, realizing that people set such pledge limits hit me just as hard if not harder. And this month isn't the first time it's happened. I was about $70 short of what I expected in January (I'd made the mistake of relying only on the front page display of how much a creator makes per post), and a good $100 short of what I expected in December, which hit me really hard considering that I'd finished the entirety of the Snapzine 4 in that month and updated it over 4 posts (doesn't help that it didn't do nearly as well as I'd hoped either). 

Whatever the reason someone has for using the pledge limit system in such a manner, it doesn't change the fact that I feel like I've been taken advantage of considering how much effort I put into making content for Patreon. It's also really unfair for those who don't bother setting a pledge limit. I won't penalize anyone this month since I blame myself for not realizing this sooner, however I'll definitely be a bit stricter about Patron rewards from here on out (mainly towards new patrons).

Essentially, because I have no control over personal pledge limits and don't want to persecute patrons for doing so (I don't want to cause a big issue over this, plus that'd be a pain to do anyway), the only thing I can do to soften the blow is to give less per paid post. Besides, there's no real reason for anyone to be upset over this given the sheer amount of free, patron exclusive content I give out. Ultimately, the better my Patreon does, the more time I can devote to Patreon content.

On a side note, while I still intend to hold character voting polls as often as possible, the reason I can't is because of the sheer workload I have to deal with (which includes drawing the pictures for the previous poll).