Hey everyone, since we already had around 500 responses to the survey, it's enough information for me to share some data from it.
The initial questions were more to understand the "who is my audience".
Two interesting points on this, is that the average age is older and the "how long have you been my patreon" also leaned more towards "more than one year". Which is great, since it means more people are staying for the long run.
So, here's a sum up of the questions.
The other questions are mostly things that are interesting to me. There's a lot of great feedback, and here's some things to highlight.
- I made small changes on the "welcome post" (the one that's pinned at the top of my feed) with a small "FAQ" to make it clearer how patreon works, where to get the rewards and all that.
- Also, to alleviate some issues with MEGA zipping the files (keep in mind this is not an issue with MEGA specifically since all hosting services have that issue), I'll make a test on the next month to have all the JPG files (NSFW, SFW, WIP, Wallpaper Folders) zipped and only the PSD/video files to be download individually.
- I'll be making some small changes to the Gumroad structure to see a way to include the .psd files as well. But that will be done next year.
- While delays are never a good thing, sometimes "life happens" and I might loose days of work due to possible health issues, technical issues, things out of my control (power outtage etc).
The thing is, it's very hard to recover those days since the schedule is tight as it is, so if the month start 2-3 days late, odds are it will also finish 2-3 days late, which would cause a delay on the next month as well. Moving foward, to prevent situations where we have delays on the reward for more than one month, I'll simply cut one of the works that month or include a 4th "more simple" drawing (like the image I made of Iris years ago, the one where she has earbuds listening to music) and adjust the schedule so we don't have 3-4 months in a row of "late rewards".
Possible future changes
I'm always following up what other artists are doing in terms of what they offer/price range etc.
But whenever I see creators with a dozen tiers with things like "includes extra variants, includes random image from another tier" or segmenting the rewards in several "parts" I find it to be super confusing and hard to know what you'll get.
So I prefer to keep it simplified and do the pricing about the amount of works created on the month, the time it takes to make them, the quality of the works delivered etc.
Also, the vast majority of people like the current tier structure and think there's good value on them compared to what is offered elsewhere.
Things like psd/video files, those things are a "bonus", those files will be created regardless, so they are not increasing the price of the tier.
With that in mind, I'm planning those changes for next years.
- $5 tier: Include the video files, so this is the "default tier" to get everything from the month, so people that want the video files as well don't feel forced to go to the $10 tier.
- $10 tier: Instead of choosing +2 works from previous months, you'd be able to pick a full pack from previous months (with all it works included), so this would be the tier to the people who want to complete their collection from previous months. This way it would be faster for people to complete their collection and it's "easier to choose".
People often ask for higher tiers for "more stuff" but I honestly don't know what to include on those tiers. Comissions are off the table and physical goods on patreon are a nightmare to manage. And I honestly don't plan on having "more things" to manage on patreon.
So unless something really cool appears, we won't have a higher tier for the time being.
I know this is a long and text heavy post, but I think it's important to keep tabs with you guys and tell how people are feeling about the current structure.
Let me know what you guys think and I really appreciate you all that took the time to answear the survey!