The Big 2023 Campaign Update

Do you have any suggestions on ways to improve the visibility and value of the campaign without significantly increasing my workload?

I’m FINALLY rebuilding this campaign after nearly a decade. (I launched the campaign in November of 2013).

We’ve seen a decrease in patronage of about 22% from the peak, and this obviously hits my bottom line (and my ability to pay bills). 

I’m finally updating graphics that I’ve been using for at least 8 years (most of my Patreon graphics still use the old Patreon logomark that was retired in 2017), and working on stuff that will improve the value for patrons without overly adding to my workload.

Once upon a time I was trying to create a patron-exclusive release every month, typically an 8 page zine or equivalent. This proved to be too much workload added to my existing schedule… so….

Step 1:
Swapping in new graphics for the Backstage Pass and Release the Kraken posts.

Step 2:
Release the Kraken is going from public to patron-only, so every month patrons get commercial license access to two maps that non-patrons won’t have.

Step 3:
Recap PDF at the end of each month. This is an extension of the Backstage Pass effectively – at the beginning of the month patrons get a zip file with all the maps being released that month. Now at the end of the month they’ll also receive two PDFs of the releases with the associated text. One will be posted in spreads for easy screen reading (as shown in the attached image), the other in standard page format for printing.

Step 4:
Make the recaps & associated backstage pass zip file available to non-patrons using the new sales system here on Patreon at a cost of $10 per month for the zip & 2 PDFs (price still subject to change, we're workshopping it). So if you want the patron goodies but aren’t into subscription models, there will be alternate means of getting them.

The following is tabled for consideration for now, but not finalized:

Possible Step 5:
One patron-exclusive map every month – not posted to the blog but made available exclusively to patrons. This might be a commercial map for those at the higher tiers (?).