The Goal Changes (Finally)

So I finally managed to get a little free time and come up with some more realistic goals for my Patreon.  (This does not affect the Delta Project's Patreon at all).

When I first started working on BT several years ago, I had my husband who allowed me to stay at home to focus on BT.  Any additional money it brought in for donations definitely helped, but it wasn't anything I could live on.  Unfortunately with my situation now, after my husband's passing, I can't do the same thing.

So on average, the comic pages take 6 hours to make.  Since I make 5 comics per week, that's 30hrs per week just making comics.  So in order to make minimum wage earnings on the comics, I'd need to pull in $300/week.  Right now, I'm making half that.  So I'm making about $5/hr on the comics if I consider Patreon as my main source of income. I only get maybe $10-20  per month from Paypal donations, so I'm not really including them in my estimate.

For me, this is a labor of love, so I would continue making the comics even if no one donated towards them.  However, I have bills to pay, and because of this, it is simply not sustainable for me to continue using up this much time on the comics and expect to be able to pay bills.

So as much as I hate to do this, I am changing the goals to be about double of what they currently are.

Note: I have not gotten a chance to change the rewards yet. I still want to reward people based on how much they've given (total), but I cannot do this until I get some free time to work it out, and to have time to work on rewards.  So this is not included.

Here's what I'm thinking about changing it to:

No Goals - Kaerwyn will still update 3 times a week.

$200/month goal - Character AMA Once or maybe Twice a month depending on how popular they are.

$500/month goal - One Patron will win a free adoptable from my available adoptables.

$600/month goal - 1 BT per week.

$800/month goal - Commission Raffle.  I'm still waiting to hear from Patreon about this, but apparently "random prizes to a patron" are okay.  But raffles are not.  I think I can get away with giving a free prize to a random patron without Patreon getting pissed.

$1000/month goal - 4 Kaerwyns per week.

$1200/month goal - 2 BT's per week.

And I might leave the impossible lol goal up anyway just for the laughs.

Keep in mind that these numbers are based on Patreon's pledges - but do not reflect how much I actually get. There has been a fair number of pledges that are constantly denied by their credit card companies, and Patreon does not try to get the money after the processing period.  In addition, Patreon takes about 15% of the pledges for their own and for fees.  So even with this model, I will be making less than minimum wage.

I'm just explaining this because I don't want people to think I'm greedy.  I actually don't care about making it big with funds on the comics.  But right now the comics aren't earning a workable living wage for me.  So they'll have to get backburnered until they can provide that.  In the next few months, I'll be moving, so I can't really wait on this any longer, I need to start saving up and making as much as I can.

Really I'd love to get in a lot more people donating, even if it's only $1.  If everyone that read the comics, that is not currently a patron, donated $1, I'd be making $400 extra a month. And that would easily give me the opportunity to focus clearly on the comics.

Here are some other things I had in mind as well:

Patrons, no matter how much they donate, will continue to get the comics as early as possible.  It's much more likely I will be able to get them to you earlier if I have more free time (Either from making fewer comics or from making enough money that I can give more time to comics than other work).

If Patreon doesn't allow my raffle idea to work - I might just make it a "random reward" for people who have donated X amount or people who have pledged X amount. That amount will probably be for the $20+/month pledges.

I'm thinking about offering to do articles and info regarding Artwork, TF, stories, worldbuilding, anthros in art and literature, etc.  This, as well, would require I free up time to make this possible.

I'm going to increase my rate for commissions - HOWEVER, I'm thinking about giving you guys some discounts. For example, people that donate $20/month might get a $5 discount.  People that donate $50/month might get a $10 discount.  I haven't quite decided what would be best for this.

As always if any of you have any suggestions or input, I'd love it hear it.  If you don't want to post here, you can email me (jakkal@gmail.com) or send me a private message through Patreon, DA or FA.

Once again, thanks to you all for making this possible and to helping me out.  I wish I could keep this going for  you, but I'm just not making it like I had hoped to be.