Removal of Token Tiers

Hey folks,

So, I know this is not the update folks wanted to hear, but I think its been long overdue for a while. For now, at least, the token tiers will be removed from my Patreon. This is not a decision I'm making lightly, as anyone who can do simple math can tell you: it is a very large chunk of my monthly income that I'll be short on. My monthly expenses are not small (thanks, student loans). It is far from ideal, but if I want to try new things, I'm going to have to make some sacrifices elsewhere.

I don't need to pretend, here; I did a poor job estimating the workload. A part of it was definitely that there were a decent portion of people that, prior to the revamp, didn't regularly redeem tokens. That's not to place any fault on them, of course, just that -I- didn't heavily consider how much that was impacting my perception of how much work I was taking on. That, alongside the slavestream redeems just made it very foggy for me to predict at the time. I simply reorganized the income from all tokens into JUST commission tokens and not streams. The backlog from folks who haven't redeemed many tokens was not something I put much thought into, and I didn't really think much on those folks getting back onto token tiers after the revamp. I did a lot of thinking on this revamp back then, but obviously not enough.

There's also the problem that my monthly expenses actually HEAVILY increased last year, unexpectedly (thanks, student loans). Factoring taxes into it, my monthly income from Patreon was now only JUST barely covering my expenses, as opposed to having a bit of extra breathing room to treat myself for trips or food/groceries. Obviously this had a huge negative impact on my mental state that I'm still doing my best to recover from, and things like groceries started to really build up on my credit card. I know that, at a glance, lowering my monthly income may seem very counterproductive to fixing this, but as a whole, more work was coming in than I was able to put out, and all that work wasn't enough to cover my expenses. When you add onto it that the tier prices haven't changed to reflect my recent commission price changes, it becomes a losing battle. I need to make a radical change to fix it rather than slowly burn out all of my resources.

And, honestly? In general, I'm wanting to move away from a purely active source of income. I don't want to be purely reliant on taking more and more commissions on a constant basis. I've always been interested in making merch to sell or even doing stuff with small games. I can't pursue that if all of my time is spent on commissions. I want prints or merch or art packs that can be a passive source of income, so I can spend more time on things I want to do. I enjoy commissions a lot, but I don't want it to be everything.

Initially, the plan was to put off removing the token tiers until I had a couple other things in place. I was going to continue pausing Patreon for another month or two while I worked on clearing up this queue of patron rewards as well as some merch and an art pack. As stated previously, whenever I pause my Patreon I'm using money from my savings to pay for my monthly expenses, and I had enough that (while it's not ideal that I had to) I could take a couple months to get enough work done and potentially set myself up with more passive income. I was going to wait to assess the art pack's performance first to see if I COULD remove the token tiers, but as I said earlier, I came to the realization that the tokens are a bit of a losing battle and no longer reflect my current prices. Thus, I was going to cancel them either way, it was just a matter of when. Therefore, it would just be more advantageous to remove them now and retain at least a little bit of income from the non-token tiers to cover some expenses than to just lose all of the Patreon income.

Are the tokens themselves going away? No. That would be ridiculous for folks who have spent so much as it is. Token redeems will continue at the same prices as before. As stated earlier, they're quite a bit cheaper than my current prices, so I -will- be stricter about what is allowed for a patron reward. Folks with tokens can continue to redeem them as they please on patron rewards or to discount commission slots. I also have a plan in the future to help folks with awkward amounts leftover: a commission batch exclusively for folks with patron tokens. Everyone will get one slot guaranteed unless they opt not to get one (I'll contact everyone individually). The only caveat is that you MUST use tokens to pay for it to some degree. There is no limit on complexity; it will be a normal commission slot otherwise. This way folks can use up leftover tokens on something they want rather than settling for a simpler idea within the restraints of the patron rewards. I'll have more information on that in the future. This idea WILL have to wait, though, until I can clear some balances a bit first. I will probably need to take another normal commission batch after this one just to help clear things up first. After things have stabilized, though, I'll make a post about it (and message folks individually).

Will token tiers ever come back? I don't know. I don't plan on it. But, let's be realistic: the whole art pack and merchandise plan could completely fail. I have little experience with those sorts of things, and it's very, very possible that there will be few people who would be willing to buy art packs or merch with my art on it. No matter how many followers you have, one always has to consider that it could still just flop, and I'll have spent a long time working on things for little return. This whole situation is risky, but I have to give it a shot. If things don't turn out well, its possible some revised tiers may come back. There wouldn't be as many as there are currently, for certain, and they'd be priced more appropriately, but it may end up being necessary. That will have to be assessed at a later date though.

How is this going to interact with yearly subs? I don't know, but I'll be sure to assist however I can. Patreon really only works in theory at the best of times, so if it doesn't play nicely, lemme know and I'll do what I can. I'll be clearing the tiers at the end of the month, but before billing unpauses, so be sure to swap to a regular tier before then! Patreon does not automatically swap you to a different tier, so please be sure to do so. They'll charge you full price but give you no benefits because you didn't set a tier.

Again, sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I know a lot of y'all will be very disappointed. But as I've stated before - I'm really wanting to explore new things. I've had projects and goals I've wanted to pursue for a very long time, and with the way my work has been set up, I've had no time to do so whatsoever for a decade, now. If I don't take the chance to give it a try, I might not get another opportunity. I need to shake things up and make room for new things I'm wanting to try.