A few changes to my tier

Hi everyone ! I launched monetization less than a month ago, and I feel it could use a bit of refinement. So I’m going to tweak my Tip Jar tier a little. As always, a quick TL;DR before the long wall of text:

No more free trial — it can interfere with the intention behind tipping.
Bi-monthly ZIP recap — weekly ZIPs were a bit too much.
Patron bonus — includes 2K variations of my daily content and a few hours of early access.

Ok, let’s dive into the details for each of these points.

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• Removal of the 7-day free trial:
  While it may sound nice, I realized it’s actually counterproductive for a tip setup. Since all my work is already freely available online, a free trial doesn’t make much sense.
  Even worse, it can mess with people who just want to give a one-time tip (subscribe → get charged → cancel renewal). With the trial, they’d have to wait 7 days before being charged, then cancel after.
  
  So I decided to remove it and replace it with a simple rule: If you ever want a refund — for any reason, at any time — just ask, and I’ll do it. No questions asked.

• Replacement of the Weekly and Monthly ZIPs
  I publish around 5 posts per week, each containing 2–3 images or GIFs. Creating a new ZIP file every week for about 10–15 assets feels excessive, almost like spamming.
  
  Instead, I’ll now post a ZIP recap twice a month (on the 1st and 16th). I plan to look more at collections and Patreon’s new layout to provide a more easy access and organization to the published content.

• Two little extra bonus:
  While it’s not exclusive content, I’ll start including 2K versions of each of my daily content for patrons only. Keep in mind that, due to how AI generation works, the 2K images might slightly differ from the original image. For 2K animations, there’s a small side effect as well: the video may play slightly faster.
  
  I already have several images ready to publish, but since I don’t keep my text layers once an image is finalized, for the next couple of weeks the 2K versions will only be for the no-text images. After that, I’ll start including both 2K text and 2K no-text variations for each post.
  
  I’ll also give Patrons a bit of early access to my daily content compared to DeviantArt and Pixiv. I usually post around 3 PM UTC on those platforms, but for Patreon, I’ll publish at 10 AM UTC.

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About tips and how I intend to use them

I already have a daily job and I’m not struggling to pay the bills — so I’m not really here to make money. For me, tips are more about giving a bit of legitimacy to what I do as a content creator than anything else.

All the funds I receive from tips will stay within the AI generation ecosystem — I won’t use them for personal expenses. Basically, here’s what it currently costs me each month to generate and share images & animations (in USD):

• Pixiv Premium → $3.5

• DeviantArt Core Plus → $6.5

• NovelAI Opus → $25

• Tensor Art Pro → $10

That’s around $45 per month. So, tips will mainly go toward covering those recurring costs.

If tips ever go beyond that amount, I’ll use the extra to explore more advanced tools or subscriptions — things like SORA2, for example.
(To be honest, I haven’t really planned for that yet, since it feels pretty unlikely I’ll ever reach that level of support 😅 — but if it ever happens, I promise it’ll go right back into improving what I create)


Some sides notes

I want to be as transparent as possible with my Patrons : I’ve removed my DeviantArt Tip Jar. It was the same price and offered the same content as the Patreon tier, but it ended up being a bit of a headache to manage. On DeviantArt I had to post the same content publicly and also in the Tip Jar tier, I couldn’t copy-paste deviations…

In the end, it felt a bit redundant compared to Patreon, since it was subscription-only and not really a true tip service. So I removed it and will keep focusing on Patreon for subscription-based tipping.

Instead, I’ve opened a Throne.com page for true one-shot tips. I think it’s quite useful for some users because they don’t need an account and their tips can remain completely anonymous. That said, you’ll get more content and benefits by supporting via Patreon than via a simple tip through Throne.


Little by little, I’m thinking more about creating some exclusive content for paying subscribers only. The 2K versions and early access are already a step in that direction.

I want to take my time figuring out how to handle exclusivity. I also keep in mind that content here often ends up leaking online, so making something fully Patron-only could unintentionally penalize my followers on Pixiv and DeviantArt.

Maybe temporary exclusive content could work? I'm not sure but I’m keeping an open mind.


I don’t use social media or Discord, but I felt it would be nice to have a simple page where I can talk more freely. I put together a Rentry with some details about my workflow, the tools I use, etc. Feel free to check it out if you like : https://rentry.co/gerhard96


Thank you everyone for your support !