Stefan Große Halbuer
patreon
Upcoming changes to my Patreon
🕑 Added 2025-12-29 12:41:36 +0000 UTCHey everyone!
I hope you all had/have great winter holidays and a nice final days of 2025!
A while ago I already wrote a post about my growing uncertainty about how to continue my Patreon. I've had some quiet quality time to reflect on a couple things during the holidays, including that matter.
I'd indeed like to change a few things, and I'm pretty excited about my ideas. So I can't wait to hear how you like and support it 😊 Here's the plan:
1. I'm starting a mail club!
I love sending printed goods around the world. I always had the dream to make this a substantial part of my income, tried lots of print on demand options, limited print runs, and built a pretty good knowledge base. But I've never had the courage to go all in on this.
However over the year, selling my prints at cons gave me lots of confidence. And I see that there's more potential in selling my prints.
Shipping large prints is difficult though, and it's become a full mess given the US tariffs, and given that most of you are from the US. So why not go a little smaller? Like, letter-sized?
Here's the plan: An affordable subscription based mail club (also sometimes called snail mail), where you get a letter from me along some new printed art each month. Not an invention I had, mail clubs have been around for a while, but I really love the idea.
2. What's the club going to be about?
That's the second fun news: You know I've been working on my Suits of Life card deck, and it's going to come to Kickstarter very soon (most likely around February). The deck art is done now with "only" the logistics and campaign management to be done (more on that coming in a separate post soon).
Making cards has been an awesome experience, so when looking for a new project, it was a natural decision: Next, I'm going to make a Tarot Deck!
The mail club will be about exactly this: you will receive a new Tarot artwork each month, along some lore and Tarot meanings, and some self reflection guides fitting to the month's Tarot card. Here's some art for The Tower I finished recently:
3. How does this affect the Patreon pricing structure?
I'm going to adjust the Patreon tiers once I have a start date for the mail club. Most likely it will look like this:
Regular Mail Club Membership: Around 12 EUR/month and for each month you're subscribed, you'll get a letter with an art print, letter and some occasional extras.
Founder's Membership: Around 16 EUR/month, coming with an extra sticker.
Worldwide shipping will be included in both.
I will still keep the lower priced tier for everyone who'd like to support my art with a monthly tip and/or just read my posts. However I will focus future posts on WIPs/previews/making ofs around the Tarot art.
The mail club membership will also be available in my Shopify shop for a little less (due to Patreon fees). In return, there will still be free brushes and goodies coming with any Patreon tier.
4. Why am I doing all this?
Making money in the creative industry has become harder and harder lately, and the industry is in the middle of a disruptive process. I always have, and still will keep my standpoint that diversification is one possible key to success as a creative freelancer. However in the current environment, I want to intensify the work on my personal projects and publishing, hoping that this will counter the missing client work.
We'll see how this goes, but for now I really hope you resonate with the mail club idea! I know that not everyone is able or willing to pay for a higher monthly subscription, even if there's a physical print coming in return, and that's absolutely fine. Either way I'd love to read your thoughts and feedback!
5. Anything else? Yes!
Did you see that I'm running the Zinuary creative challenge in January?
Here's some more details on Substack if you'd like to start the year with some creative power (and get some feedback from me while doing so)
Let me know your honest opinion about my plans, and I'll of course keep you updated about the next steps! 😊
Happy New Year everyone, and see/read you in 2026!
Stefan
