Mia Mulder Community/Patreon Update! And a Poll!

Hello all you wonderful people! I write today to inform you about a great number of things. I'm a firm believer in letting the community know of any changes that I would potentially bring, however how small they could be.  We'll summarize in the beginning and then expand on them as we go.

Too long, don't wanna read:

1. I've updated the front page for the Patreon! This changes nothing for you since I doubt you re-read it every day.

2. I'm considering some changes to the patreon tiers. Nothing would change for existing patrons.

3. I want to get to know who you are! Who are in my community? Once upon a time I only had 200 subscribers and 2 patrons and I knew them all by name, now there are over 100,000 of you and several hundred patrons! So I'm gonna have a census! Link gonna be below!

4. You may have noticed it's been a little while since my last video. Literally not a single person has complained about that but the delay is digging into my soul and I really want to give you the content you deserve! So I have some ideas that will be presented in a poll below.

Alright so let's go to the meat of this post.

Quick update to the Patreon page

If you're re-reading my patreon front page every single day, and why wouldn't you, you may have noticed I've updated it a little! This is mostly to keep it up to date with how the channel works now, I rarely have time to make a video every month because they're no longer 20 minutes long. They get closer to one hour now and that takes a lot longer to make better.

Add to that time I want to spend experimenting on things that might not work, or taking editing courses for example the time adds up. Fewer (but better) videos come out and I want new patrons to get the correct expectations when coming to this page.

I also updated the video I use to illustrate a "typical" Mia Mulder video from the one about the military to the one about "The Trans Debate" because this new one is more recent and I'm also very proud of it.

(Possible)Changes to Patreon tiers!

This is gonna be partly me gushing over how grateful I am and also boring financial stuff that could impact us all. (But almost exclusive just me)

Since setting up this Patreon several years ago it's grown from a way to barely be able to afford lunch to become my primary source of income. I am truly humbled by that and eternally grateful to be able to make YouTube videos as a job.

When I set it up I never expected that to happen, and all the tiny changes to the page over the years have been me trying to adapt what I thought would always be a microscopic operation into a reliable income that's all above board when it comes to taxes, fair exchange and building a healthy community.

At the start however, I just wanted to build a community with low bars of entry. At the time I was broke so 1 dollar mattered a lot to me, so why would I have a higher minimum tier? I also personally hate paywalls in general so I set up my tiers with the "basic" tier being 1 dollar.

And it's been swell! Honestly, no notes. It's just been swell. But I've been told time and time again that I'm making a mistake here on Patreon about that "basic" membership tier. And it has to do with how most people, not all, use Patreon. Most people just use it to support their favorite creators. A lot of people enjoy the streams and extra content but the overwhelming amount of patrons don't partake in that and are content in just supporting. And that's amazing to me because I never expected unconditional support like that to exist.

And they almost always gravitate to the the basic option, and that makes perfect sense if you're not looking for special benefits anyway! And this is why many creators have their "basic" tier be at either two or three, sometimes even five dollars. Many also only support for a few months or so and then cancel their patronage once they feel they've supported a comfortable amount.

But for me that's the one dollar and the difference between 1 dollar and 3 dollars is not huge in the grand scope of things for an individual looking to support but on the scale of Patreon it can quickly add up. Especially since that 1 dollar isn't the full 1 dollar after Patreon takes their cut. And I've been told time and time again I'm leaving money on the table, so now I'm considering not leaving it there.

This would mean, if I decide to do it at all which isn't sure yet, that the current 3 dollar tier becomes the new "basic" tier. No rewards would change, everyone would get exactly the same thing they pay for right now, including current patrons on 1 dollar. Your patronage wouldn't change or go away, it would only change for future patrons.

Again: It would only change for future patrons. Current patrons would experience no change whatsoever.

This change *could* drastically increase the income of the channel in the long term and make it more able to sustain itself, be less reliable on sponsors and be more able to take time on videos. I'd also be less reliable on big patrons, since one $20 patron is so much extremely more significant to the overall income than a $1 dollar patron. A shift here would make "smaller" patrons make up a larger chunk and there would be less of a impact should big patrons decide to stop.

It also means that all the membership tiers actually are connected to a proper reward since currently 1 dollar patrons get access to next to nothing. Thanks in the credits and streams are almost all behind at least the 3 dollar limit already. It'd also reduce the overall amount of tiers and in general streamline the whole process on my end.

Now, this isn't final because I want to hear from you first before making any changes. If you think this is a bad idea that reeks of greed, then please tell me so and I won't go ahead with it. I'd much rather be on good terms with this community than "optimizing my revenue streams". This is after all pretty much only for my benefit. So if you think this is a bad idea I want to know and I won't make any changes if that's what people want.

One thing I *did* change without asking the community, but only because this has literally no effect on any patrons whatsoever, is enabling year long Patreon pledges for a 10% discount. If you wanna save a few bucks and know you wanna be a patron for a full year you can support me in bulk! But you can still use the monthly option if you prefer to not be tied down which was the previous standard which is why nothing changed. 

The Empress (me) demands a Census

Not really demand, but more a fun thing if you would like and absolutely no worries if you don't.

My channel has grown a lot over the years and I often forget just how big of a number my subscriber count is. Primordial humans weren't evolved to consider groups of people in the thousands, much less over a hundred thousand people. And I've come to realize that while in the beginning I could pretty easily remember all my patrons by name, I started out with 0 after all, now the number is a lot larger.

You know me a lot more than I could ever know each and every one of you. I don't know what kind of videos you want, what kind of posting you enjoy, what your views of my channel are or even what you may think of certain topics over others.

I'm hoping to change that by stealing a concept by the Vlogbrothers, which probably works a lot better for a community that massive, The Census!

The Mia Mulder Community Census is basically just a questionnaire that you can fill out with whatever information you want to. It's completely anonymous, I won't know who answers what or even who chooses to answer it at all. It's possible no one will, and that'll be a learning experience of it's own.

I'm doing this because while YouTube analytics are extremely powerful they can't see the difference between a person who sometimes puts on my videos while they're at work maybe a few times a year and a person who shows up to every stream, every premiere and who is deeply invested into Mia Mulder lore. The people who know why I used to hold a plant-pot in a bunch of my earlier videos.

In short, I want to know what my community thinks and who you are and how you might differ from the massive analytic block of data that YouTube gives me. It'll be a moment for me to maybe see ways in which I can continue to have and grow what I think has been a very good community of people.

I wouldn't want to lose that should I one day have a viral video and suddenly skyrocket to 1 million subscribers. According to my analytics, I'm not gonna hit that for a couple more years but still, I would like to be prepared just in case!

The link to the survey is here: https://forms.gle/EUoH9FZNZRb1tFTG7

I'm not going to analyze the data itself for at least a month so there's plenty of time to answer, and I will also go out with this link on YouTube, twitter, Facebook and wherever else I suspect Mia Mulder fans go to hang out when I eventually release my upcoming video and more people are likely to see it. Speaking of which...

Oh god this video is gigantic what am I going to do

So as you might have noticed, this post is a lot more verbose than many previous ones have been. That's because, which I've already mentioned here and there but not as official as right now, I've just started adhd medication! Specifically Vyvanse.

Because it turns out: Holy shit! I've had severe ADHD this whole time!

No wonder I can't have a structured workflow and videos keep getting delayed and whatnot. The medication is changing my life as we speak even if I'm still adjusting to it.

At first I thought it would help me make videos. Surely, the medication that gives you focus and energy is going to help with that, right? Well, yes. But it's almost working too well.

You see, my last "longest video" had a script around 20 pages long. It was a slog to write and read and shoot and took a long time to make into a full video since I also tend to add stuff and write more as I edit and YouTube scripts are a lot more disorganized than "real" scripts, at least for me.

Now with this medication writing is a breeze! Huzzah! And the script for my upcoming video, which was already planned to be long anyway, now has a script over 45 pages long and is estimated to be, unless I do massive cuts and re-writes, two and a half hours long if I'm lucky and assuming I don't add more stuff to it. The reason this post is way longer than most other posts I do is the same reason my script never seems to stop growing! My meds are making it *very* easy to accidentally just write a thousand words on a whim.

This of course takes a really long time to edit, and record, and fine tune and all that jazz. Big parts of the video are already recorded, some are edited but some parts and scenes are not yet. And while I am making progress and trying to disconnect my focus from ballooning the video even more there is still plenty of work left to do. I was hoping to have this video done last month, then last week, then this upcoming weekend. Now I don't know. I'm hoping I can be done around mid September with this absolute beast of a video. I blame David Graeber, whose work inspired this video.

Now, here comes the choice and a question for you my dear patrons. Or at least advice you can give to me and then we'll see if I listen or not. Democracy doesn't exist in this section.

Should I split this video up in two, or more, parts?

Now let me make a case before you vote. I personally dislike videos split up in parts with a passion. As a viewer it forces you to split your attention into two or more videos, with different credits, two separate "intros" and different commenting fields. It's a mess. I personally would much prefer to work on this video a bit longer, finish the entire beast by mid or worst case late September and release it as one giga-video that would be divided up in chapters so that you don't have to sit through 2.5 hours of me, raving about fiat currency while manic on adhd medication in one sitting.

But I want your input. Maybe this is creator-brain talking, telling me split up videos are bad because they're bad for the analytics. (People don't tend to carry over to watch a part 2 as much as they'd stay on the same video for example. And part 3? Forget about it. Retaining a viewer is so much better than splitting that up into two views for the viewcounters.)

I do feel a need to get more content out to you wonderful patrons since you, if anyone, are the people actually paying for me to produce them. But every time I mention this issue I'm also faced with people telling me it's okay to take my time and polish what needs to be done. For this video, despite it taking ages, no one has complained about me being late and it hasn't been mentioned even once in exit polls by patrons who for some reason or another decide to cancel their patronage. In fact, I'm actually picking up more of you despite not posting anything for a while.

(Are you paying me to shut up?)

There are probably some perspectives I'm missing out on and in that case I want to hear them! Let me know below either by using the poll option or by giving me your thoughts in the comments below.

Maybe I'm overthinking this whole thing and this whole multi chapter Patreon Update is just a result of my strange anxieties brought on by, once again, that damned medication. Truly it is both a blessing and a curse.

Post Script

I really appreciate this community I've been blessed to be a part of. I realize that for a long time I haven't been nearly as communicative as maybe I should have. Obviously this is a fan-creator dynamic and neither of us owe anything to the other, but I truly enjoy hearing from you and your thoughts in comments, both on YouTube and here on Patreon. I'm going to try to be a bit more responsive to those in the future now that my brain seems to slowly start to work as it should for the first time since ever.

Now I have the energy and while I still have ADHD and will probably forget things time and time again, or misplace a comment, or have to postpone streams, I am hoping to at least be able to take the time and say a few words about it.

If this post (and basically anyone who actually talks to me in real life and now has to tell me to finish a conversation) is anything to go by, maybe this is too many words. But it's a process!

Thank you for being a part of that process with me!