Harmonist11
patreon
Thoughts and plans going forward
🕑 Added 2019-10-02 23:39:52 +0000 UTCHello everyone. I've been meaning to do this post for month or so now, and finally got around to doing it. It's a lengthy post, but talks about my Patreon's status and future plans. Nothing urgent, so read when you have the time. :)
Patreon Relaunch so far
It's been roughly half a year since I started the process of moving from my previous full-time job to trying to do art for a living. I want to talk about where things are standing right now, and what challenges I'm currently facing. What I've succeeded at and what I've failed at.
First of all, my Patreon relaunch campaign started off on a great note back in May/June. There was more support than I anticipated, and the following month was also great, as revenue increased slightly. However, from there on there hasn't been much progress. In fact, last month support decreased by a tiny bit.
A little while back I also started selling my Patreon content as archives on Gumroad. The initial sales were great, and there have still been occasional sales, which boosts my income a bit, but it's not a very reliable source.
I also try to do commissions occasionally, but there are more taxes involved in doing business that way, so it's not been very efficient use of my time. (I'm probably moving commissions over to Patreon in form of more pledge tiers at some point.)
So, I'm making some money, and I'm still within the budget I expected to be in, but I have to be realistic and admit it. This won't work in the long run. Now, before anyone panics and thinks I'm thinking of giving up right away, nope, pretty much the opposite. But whatever I do, I have only about half a year at most at this rate.
To be as transparent as possible, my income would need to go up by about 300€ a month (that's roughly $330 USD) in order to break even with my expenses and to keep this way of living sustainable. It's not a huge amount, but how I go about achieving that can still be a challenge.
So, what's wrong?
The lack of increase in support on Patreon is of course not the fault of my patrons. People pledge and un-pledge according to their interest and financial situation.
I feel like I've succeeded in a lot of things I set out to accomplish with the relaunch of my Patreon. I've produced as much art as I've promised, based on the goals on my Patreon page, which has been '2-4 colored works, of which two are hi-res works' for quite a while. In fact, last month I did a total of 7 colored works, and a lot of variants. That's twice as much as the intended amount. It would seem increasing art quantity doesn't make a considerable difference.
I know I haven't managed to meet all the goals I set for my Patreon, like increasing art diversity. I've done a few pics that are outside my usual range of things, like foot worship, but in all honesty, I don't see slipping in an unusual pic or two here and there is gonna get me more support. Not in a way that makes a real difference. And I'd need to keep doing that stuff regularly to keep the support going. I'll still keep trying to do something slightly different each month for one pic though.
Another thing I haven't quite managed to do is regular appearances of OC's, like Harmony, the mascot. I'd like to fix that at some point though! It just keeps getting pushed behind other projects.
And then there are also a few patrons who'd prefer more 'happy' variants of my works, but that's also offset by patrons who don't want any of that.
Another issue I've noticed is that in order to sell my stuff on Gumroad, I need to have a lot of exclusive content on offer. But if I make most stuff exclusive, I can't use them to promote my art in my galleries, except as tiny samples with 'buy the real one on Gumroad or Patreon' sticker attached, which isn't exactly appealing. It's tough to decide which is more important.
So, what are my plans to tackle these problems?
Regardless of what I do, we need to face the fact that it's going to affect the art I'm doing here in some way. However, I do intend to stick to the established goals. Just... I don't think I can afford to do as much extra exclusives as I've done in past months. I need to put some of that time towards other things. Mostly custom artwork. However, I also have to be honest and admit that doing a ton of commissions can be stressful, and I'm not sure if that's something I want to keep doing in the long run. So I need to make sure there's enough variety to keep me motivated it if I go that route.
Which brings me to a topic I've discussed before, at least on Discord, can't remember if here on Patreon, but let's go over this again. I used to do slightly less NSFW stuff under a different alias, HitmanN, over at DeviantArt. It was still mostly ecchi, nude, skimpy clothes, pin-up, etc stuff, but tries to avoid turning into porn. That account has been on hiatus for like a year now. I've been thinking about establishing a second Patreon account for that alias to also do slightly less-NSFW stuff on the side, primarily the occasional commission, and maybe a pin-up picture each month, to see if there's support for that stuff there. My primary attention would remain on Harmonist11's Patreon though, it being my primary source of income, but some of the time I normally use to do bonus stuff as Harmonist11 may be directed toward HitmanN's Patreon.
I actually have the account pretty much set up and ready to launch, so that may happen in the coming days. I just wanted to let you all read about it here first, so it doesn't come as a surprise.
Second thing I'm going to do is making less of my colored stuff patron-exclusive. There will still be a monthly exclusive work for the $5 tier patrons, but probably just one. The rest should be public to some degree to help promote my art. Some variants would remain patron-exclusive though, of course. I think the ratio I had going in June was pretty good.
Third, I will probably bring back the third art request slot to the $70 pledge tier here as well. There used to be three, but I dropped to just two, couple months back, to see if focusing on my own stuff would be better. I think I can afford one more request work per month again. Though no more colored freebies like last month. ^_^; The third slot will possibly open next month.
Content wise, no huge changes. Will try to draw more Harmony, the occasional art diversity piece and so on, but otherwise the usual butt action. 'Happy' variants or pics might also happen, but not regularly. I'm still contemplating on working on a comic this month. Lots of those unfinished and in preview state.
Now, what can YOU do to help?
First, I'm of course asking everyone to consider if they could up their pledge to the next tier. If you have the financial means and interest to do so, of course.
Those of you who already support me at the highest available tier, but would be willing to pledge more, consider subscribing over at Gumroad as well, or buying content archives again separately. I will keep thinking of stuff I could offer for tiers beyond $10 that wouldn't be counter-productive or a burden to my schedule, but right now there's nothing planned.
Gumroad: https://gumroad.com/harmonist11
At the very least, I'm hoping that you won't decrease your pledge despite a small portion of my focus possibly moving on to do less-NSFW works under the HitmanN alias. I will still hold on to the promised art quantities on my Patreon page. And of course, if you like the stuff I do as HitmanN as well, why not consider pledging in that Patreon as well, when it's up?! :)
Thoughts? Ideas?
The above may be quite the wall-of-text, but ultimately I'm just talking about shifting my timetables here. A few days a month doing less-NSFW stuff, a bit more commissions and requests instead of bonus stuff. Otherwise, same old, mostly.
As always, thoughts and ideas are welcome! Sorry for the super long post and thanks for taking the time to read it. You guys and gals are still awesome! Thanks for your continued support!
Comments
Harmonist11
Interesting statistics. I was aware of e-hentai, but not the popularity. Are there limitations on who can upload stuff there? I have no idea how the site works in terms of who is submitting stuff there. Like, basically, what could I do there?
If it helps, I was doing some research into site popularity, and the next most popular site you can go for hentai (that I could find) after pixiv is e-hentai.org. If I search for you there, the first gallery has a commenter that says he didnt realize you were still active and its been upvoted 7 times in a week. I realize you cant control your own content on sites like these but it might be worth your time to seed them with say, lower resolution patreon watermarked variants of some otherwise exclusive new images. for reference hentai-foundry is ranked #8068 most popular website. pixiv is #508, and E-hentai is #887 according to alexa.com
Harmonist11
It would indeed be ideal to have one more tier, but coming up with a reward to justify the price is difficult. The problem with the ballpoint sketches was not specifically that I'd need to pay VAT on those, but because Patreon already charges VAT on those pledges, and that VAT is in that case incorrect. Digital goods sales use the customer's country's VAT%, but physical goods sales should use the seller's country's VAT%. Patreon handles all VAT as if it's digital sales. It's easier to avoid the VAT headache and just sell digital goods, since Patreon handles the VAT on those just fine.
Boliwod
Reintroducing a tier between 10 and 70 would be ideal. Maybe make your potential work from the proposed alternate account available at a 20 or 30 dollar tier? The ballpoint sketches were awesome, but I understand how it's not cost effective for you to do those.
Harmonist11
Thank you! :)
Van Binh Nguyen
I wasn't here for a while. Didn't know you change your patreon :) Of course I support you. As one of my favourite artist I join in a slightly higher tier.
Harmonist11
pixiv fanbox isn't really an option for me because as far as I know they don't charge and remit VAT (Value Added Tax) from customers from EU, which means I would have to do that myself. Which means more expenses and more work for me, and that's on the basis that fanbox provides the information needed to calculate VAT for each customer. Patreon and Gumroad handle VAT for creators, so I don't need to worry about that part one bit. As for public commissions, I'm not sure if I understood correctly, but majority (like 2/3) of my commissions are already publicly available and/or I post them on my Patreon (eg, Shantae commission in August, Kairi commission in July).
John doe
Speaking of commissions, have you considered doing what some other artists have done and "double dip"? When you have commission slots open, you could make an announcement via patreon/discord for patreons who are willing to take public commissions. You could create a special guidelines and post them on your discord(perhaps you could even make a special commission section) for these public commissions so that they fit the general tastes of your audience and then use them as content for your patreon and public promotion. I noticed you also have a pixiv account and I know pixiv has their own patreon service called fanbox. There are many users from Asian countries who don't use patreon or don't know about it so opening up a fanbox might bring a larger audience and it's also a nice backup if patreon ever decided to nuke your account for whatever reason(I'm not sure if they accept paypal though so you might have to do research into that).
Harmonist11
My art here is purely NSFW, so mixing in SFW here wouldn't make sense. Likewise, majority of the audience following HitmanN don't care for the stuff Harmonist11 does. In fact, knowing about it might scare some people away. Besides, I think it's kinda greedy to have NSFW variants priced so much higher than other variants. Having to pay $5-10 more just because you prefer variant B over variant A... kinda nasty. :p
Pierre Johnson
Some artist have the NSFW content in the 10-15 tiers and SFW below and sketches/doodles/tip jar at the lowest tier. First I'm hearing of this alter-ego btw lol
