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Moving forward into 2021
🕑 Added 2020-12-26 14:21:36 +0000 UTCHey everyone. As we start to get closer to the end of the year, I feel I should start to give a little glimpse on some of the things I'm looking to change in 2021. A lot of this comes from the experiences I've felt throughout 2020, and is mostly being done as a means to try and relax myself a little. Hopefully.
So to start, commissions are undergoing a slight change. I relaxed on a lot of things given the state of the world, being off work for a while thanks to the state shutdown, and the concern that we might face a second one on the off chance that things get worse (It did, and yet we did not). Commissions were open for longer periods, I didn't put a limit on how many commissions would be opened up, and it resulted in a lot of work through each period. I think I only opened up maybe 6 times during the year, though I had a lot of requests that made up for it. But this was why the November opening had such a limited number of slots; because I knew if I didn't set a limit I would be working well through December, and that's the one time in the year I need to break from writing.
As I've mentioned before, December is a busy time thanks to my full-time job. Christmas and a job in retail will do that. So I really need to take some time for myself and hopefully recharge my brain for more mental exercises. There's definitely going to be some stuff to write, but for now I'm mostly limiting it to scripts, Prompts, and draw prizes.
Breaks are something that I'll definitely need to try and give myself next year, because it really does feel like I worked every day through the year. Obviously that wasn't the case, but I definitely haven't felt this worn down in some years. Again, this is all why I set a limit last opening, and even then the commissions bled into December.
Sales seemed to make up for that quite a bit, although looking back I don't feel I did it properly until November; having characters fit a theme ended up in a lot of them going unused, though the regular content did get its fair push. But with the incest sale being what I'll call a success (The slots filled up especially quickly), I'll be doing more themed sales like that while the character sales will hopefully be a bit more consistent.
That's going to lead into my next big change: Pricing. Yes, I'm aware times are pretty tough and most might not be able to afford $15/1000 words, which is the pricing I'll be using next year, but I want to make it clear that I do this because, as stated above, I was pretty busy, high in demand for one reason or another. Adjusting the price will make it harder on most returning clients or even new ones, yes, but it hopefully gives me a little more space to breathe.
That said, I'm hoping the sales will still reflect that I'm not trying to completely brush everyone away. The character sale is likely going to skew in favor of veteran clients, but as those tend to be the ones that I get the most requests for that was likely bound to happen.
To start the year off, I'm not going to have any slot limits. This is just to test the waters on what things will look like moving forward. Once I see how January goes, then I'll be setting up limits for sure.
And don't forget, if you have a continuous story from before 2021, your commission will be grandfathered in at the $12/1000 word rate that I had since April of last year. However, any stories before that price change are going to be bumped up to that as well. So if you had a story at $10/1000 words, it's now $12/1000 words.
There's something else I want to do regarding commissions; one thing I want to do is expand my horizons and find other places besides Twitter, Discord, and HF to advertise on. Nushara seems to be a good place to get more attention from, while Pixiv seems to have a Request form now, so I might consider moving to those instead of keeping the out-of-date HF commission guidelines up every time I open up. I've already rewritten them to hopefully come across more clearly, so when they go up, please be sure to give them a read.
One thing's certain, I want to make it known when I open up or close for commissions. I tend to have a lot of people miss out on comms even when I'm open, so already created a 'Client' tier on Discord so that when I open and close, everyone can be informed of that. Just make sure you follow the link here to ensure that you're able to keep up with the announcements:
When you plan to use your word count accumulated through Patreon/Fanbox/Subscribestar, please be sure to do so when I open up commissions. It's much easier for me to keep track of when I'm sorting through requests. As for the word bank itself, I'm making sure to put a cap on the word count. Any stories requested through the bank cannot exceed more than 5k words.
I'm especially going to make some tweaks to the Prompts, as I've been doing this enough now I have a better idea of what to do with it. This is because In particular, November had three different Mass Effect prompts thrown in, which probably split the votes just enough. I can't exactly limit it to one per person, especially since we're split across three platforms, but I will say this:
There will be a three-month period where you cannot suggest a certain franchise if it wins the vote. So last month, for example, was the last time anyone could put a Mass Effect idea into the pile had it won. This won't go into effect until next year, but the Resident Evil prompt that did win wouldn't be allowed until February, if that were the case. This is so everything can feel a little more varied each month, as I have noticed that most of the prompts go to either FF7 or ME. Neither is bad, but I was hoping with more variety is all. :P
And I think that's everything that needs to be covered moving forward into 2021! Have a good remainder of 2020, everyone! I'll be seeing you next year!
