The Tier Dilemma & Image Critizism.

Hey guys!

Hope you're having a great Friday! Here's another status update to keep you informed of my thoughts and way forward here on Patreon.

I have two topics I want to address today, tiers and image critizism.

1: The Tier Dilemma

I've been having a dilemma this year. Before the summer I added a few new tiers to this Patreon channel, tiers that were meant to replace the old ones. The idea behind that was that I would open a door to be able to make a living on Patreon, meaning I could say no to clients and spend way more time on Patreon.

However Covid came along and I didn't want to force people to upgrade to a higher tier. Many people had to end their patronage and I lost about 10% of my followers which I completely respect and support (however it's back where it was now). Additionally, I really didn't want to come off as greedy or ungrateful towards the Patrons that have been here with me for so long.

Because of that I decided to keep uploading content to the old 8/10 dollar tiers which obviously has been confusing for Patrons. Naturally that resulted in that the vast majority of Patrons have stayed on the old tiers, inevitabely making it impossible to reach that goal of making a sufficient income on Patreon, hence I've still been forced to take on client work. That's on me, with my typical swedish modesty I was cutting the very branch I was sitting on.

Trying to do something about that, I've now started to, little by little, upload content exclusively to the new tiers. I don't really want to force people to switch to a higher tier, but it's what I have to do to reach those goals. I really want to make it worthwhile for everyone. However now a few has reached out to me asking why some new posts are locked to them, and I totally understand and respect if this fact would upset some Patrons and I wouldn't be mad at you for ending your subscription.  

An alternative way to reach those goals would be to gain a lot more Patrons. If I had more Patrons to this channel, I would be able to stay on a lower tier price and still reach this goal, and this is something I've been trying to do by starting to add videos to YouTube that would act as marketing for my Patreon channel, however it's not actually giving much results at all so far. I guess I'm unable to make it interesting enough, maybe because it's so focused on FStorm.

Anyway,  it's not at all bad news. With sacrifices comes payoffs, and even to everyone doesn't like that I've started to exclude the old tiers in some of my posts, it's obvious that it works and I'm actually getting very close to reach that goal this month, which I appreciate A LOT. A few posts ago I shared a new schedule for patreon, setting aside 3 full days a week for Patreon, and the other days are supposed to be a buffer for R&D or other things necessary, however I haven't properly been able to commit to it yet because I was still having unfinished B2B projects that I had to say yes to for reasons explained above. But as long as things don't go downwards from here on, I'll most certainly be able to commit to Patreon the way I want to the coming months.

And that brings me to my next point:

2. Image Critizism

Being able to spend more time on Patreon ahead, it also opens up new doors for other kinds of content. It don't only want to sit and record project videos all the time, I want to add more diversity to this channel. I've constantly been asked to do image critizism here on Patreon but I didn't want to do that because I simply don't feel like I'm in a position to critizise others works. Again, swedish modesty. Critizising images gives me the impression that I'd think I was better than others which is something I'm not at all comfortable with. Peoples art is their art, and it's not up to me to tell people how to do their art.

However it's still something people insist on, so I thought I might as well just give it a try. I always want to encourage other people to leave their comfort zones, so I guess I better try to lead by example. A huge discalaimer though, I cant guarantee that it'll end up in any kind of good content. As said, I don't believe I'm better at this than anyone else.

There are two ways to do this, public or private. Public meaning that I would record videos where I look at peoples works and do image critizism, and private meaning that it would only be between you and me and not shared with anyone.

I've registered a new email adress for this purpose, so if you'd want me to share my thoughts on your work, do the following:

• Send the specific work/image in an email to submissions@viz.guru
  (Note, specific work, not just a behance link)
• Include your Patreon alias
• Let me know if you want it public or private

Previously I also had an idea of reviewing peoples scenes, in other words you would send me a scene, I would open it, strip all lighting and settings and try to do my own version of your scene. Maybe it would get better, maybe it would get worse, who knows, but it'd be only for fun. I never got around to do this because of the same reasons as everyhing else, but if this is interesting to you, you're absolutely free to send your scenes as well, using the same instructions as above.