2024 Tamberlane Patreon Revamp: THE PLAN

Hey folks! Thanks for your patience! Ari and I have been tinkering with the future Patreon plans a bit here and there in the background, but mostly we've been resting and recovering. It's been profoundly nice to spend this month focusing on the comic and taking our time to really think through what we want to offer.

As it stands now, I think we're pretty happy with our plans. It may take well into March to get the revamp set up entirely, as there are a lot of moving parts to update and we want to make sure we don't miss anything (or put pedal to the metal without reason).

I'm sure you're curious about our plans, so without further ado, let me lay it out for you!

Revised Tiers (formatted: Old Name/New Name)

Symbol meaning:

🟢 - frequent or automatic delivery
🟡 - delivered infrequently or "as available" -- maybe once every 1-3 months
🔴 - rarely delivered, no timeline guaranteed or expected

Free

• 🟢 All public art
• 🟢 Tamberlane's weekly update
• 🟡 Newsletters (periodically)

$2 - Fledgling Fox/Parsley Peers!

• 🟢 Read comic pages 1 week early
• 🔴 View cast Q&A before public release (made periodically)
• 🟢 Thank you on website (after 12 months of patronage)

$5 - Bat Believers/Belfry Buddies!

• 🟢 Free copy of all Tamberlane main-comic PDFs (once per PDF, will receive PDF book updates)
• 🔴 Thank you in published books and PDFs
• 🟢 Access to private Discord livestreams
• 🟡 Vote in various polls (periodically)

$10 - Kitty Cat Cadets/Piper Pals!

• 🟢 Read every comic page as soon as it's done
• 🟢 Author commentary on released pages (periodically)
• 🟢 Thumbnails/planning or concept artwork (the best ones)
• 🟡 Timelapse videos of comic work (the best ones)
• 🟢 Ask cast questions to be featured in Q&As

$25 - Skunk Sponsors/Marie Musketeers!

• 🟢 1 Free TfT from the shop (one time use)
• 🔴 Access to new TfTs the month they release (as available)
• 🟢 Name included in "This page sponsored by" list on website
• 🔴 Considered before others for commission slots (as available, slot not guaranteed)

$50 - Coyote Commanders/Oakewood Oldies!

• 🔴 Early access to commission openings (as available, slot not guaranteed)
• 🔴 Discount on commissions (as available)
• 🟡 Commentary on writing process behind larger arcs or scenes (periodically)

$100 - VIP Very Important Possums/Jonas Jokesters!

• 🟡 Suggest characters to be featured in future art studies (as available)

$150 - Tamberlane Treasures!

• 🟢 Extra special thank you in published books, PDFs, and on website
• 🟢 Taint 1 Discord member per month
• 🔴 Bigger commission discount (as available)

Don't forget that all tiers are cumulative! So if you pledge at $25/Marie Musketeers, you get all the benefits of the $10/Piper Pals tier, $5/Belfry Buddies tier, and $2/Parsley Peers tier!

Ongoing Rewards

Every 50 paying patrons we will do a public free art raffle stream. There will be multiple raffles during the stream, during which several people will get free art drawn on-stream. Some may be like Scottderg's streams with other guest artists and voice hosts, and some may be just me; depends on how we're feeling at the time.

If you're wondering why we don't restrict it to just patrons, or do raffles through Patreon, the answer is lottery laws. Any raffle you have to pay to enter is against Patreon's rules. I'm sure you've seen Patreon-related raffles around (I know I have), but I've also seen friends get dinged by Patreon for this practice, so we don't do it. The same is true for "if you're a patron, your sketch gets to be color!" or something like that. Unfortunately, they're pretty strict.

So! Art raffle stream, free to everyone, live on Twitch. Every 50 paying patrons.

Philosophy

Our aim with this revamp was to center as many of the rewards as we could on the comic creation itself and its natural byproducts (like process images and videos), without putting extra pressure on ourselves or requiring a lot of extra work.

We also tried very hard to figure out how to treat the Patreon as a method of support for the comic, rather than think about it in terms of equal exchange. The reality is that we are putting out a very high quality comic for free to tens(!) of thousands(!!) of people, and that is a pretty mighty service we provide on its own. Patrons are sponsoring the production of Tamberlane on behalf of themselves and everyone else who read it. While we wish we could shower patrons in more personalized rewards to show our gratitude, we have clearly discovered it's just not sustainable in this case.

So we are gearing this Patreon largely toward the cheaper rewards. But we're not getting rid of the higher tiers, as several folks clearly wish to support Tamberlane in a big way. For those tiers especially, we focused on giving recognition and appreciation to folks who already intended to support that much, rather than trying to pack them full of shiny personalized rewards that might induce new folks to sign up. Choosing not to dangle shiny sparkly non-comic rewards in front of passersby is… hard. It's a major paradigm shift for me. But I think we've done a good job balancing what we can reasonably offer and still providing some worthwhile appreciation to folks who go out of their way to put extra money on this Patreon.

You'll notice that a number of rewards are available without specific time frames and that's on purpose. Chronic illness does not keep a schedule and that's one of the main sticking points we've run into in the current incarnation. Many folks suggested doing things on a quarterly or scheduled basis, and unfortunately, that leads to having to miss out more often than not -- and then obligations pile up while I'm sick, and then I have to spend time catching up, which delays everything else, and so on.

So rather than having scheduled promises, we have opted to list things we enjoy doing when we have free time, and explained who gets access to what when it happens.

However, you probably have some more questions (or I have some answers that you didn't know you needed)!

What about…?

• Did you mean to say $150 for the highest tier? Wasn't Resident of Abroad $250? Yes. Without tangible rewards like the commissions, we didn't feel good about 250 as the number. By picking 150, it'll take some pressure off of us, and free up some money for folks to support other people (or let them funnel it into other channels to support Tam if they REALLY want to). Custom pledges have always been a thing in Patreon so if someone wants to pledge $250 anyways, they can do so!
• What's the art study thing? I plan on using Fridays to do whatever art I want to do, and that includes a list of topics I want to practice and get better at. Some examples are lighting, dynamic posing, perspective, negative space, and texture. $100 patrons will be able to submit characters to a form -- including their own OCs!! -- and choose the top study subjects they're interested in seeing for each character. When I pick up that topic, I'll choose a character from the pool that interests me. These are not guaranteed. This is not a commission or a request. This is me wanting to give back to folks who are so generous by giving them an option to participate in my art.
• Beta Bats? It was repeatedly pointed out (correctly!) during the survey that my beta readers should be a trusted group, not determined purely by length or amount of patronage. It is no longer an available reward.
• Emotes? Currently, you can get a new emote for every $1000 you end up pledging, and 1-2 slots on the Foxglove Discord server. However, this system has some major flaws. Notably, if someone with an emote on the server ceases patronage, we have to remove the emote regardless of its usage by the community. In addition, the server has limited space for emotes, and Tamberlane is not the only comic/patreon connected to the server.
  So, we are going to be removing all patron emotes from the server and the Foxglove Creators will recreate them with canon characters or staff. This will be a slow process most likely, but that's the goal.
  We are cutting off emote requests as well. I will fulfill any still in the queue, so if you've paid over $1k to Tamberlane, go ahead and submit your requests to the form (as currently available on the Rewards Index). I will close the form at end of March.
• Residents of Abroad? In the current iteration, once you become a Resident of Abroad, you will continue to keep permanent access to the Patreon-related Tamberlane channels on the Discord. Unfortunately, maintaining permanent access long-term is a headache for many logistical reasons, and we have opted to reduce our mental overhead. When we revamp the Patreon, the Resident of Abroad tier is going to be hidden from public view. Current Residents will continue to be able to support at that tier as long as they want, but non-Residents will not be able to join up to that tier any longer. Residents will retain their access to the discord channels for 6 months after they drop from the Resident tier. Thank you so much for your support!!
• Monthly postcards? I really struggled with this one. I love sending it out to you guys, but it is a logistical nightmare on so many levels, is at the timely whims of the postal service, and costs a couple hundred bucks every month. Ari correctly pointed out that the more people who join that tier, the greater the headache and cost grows. We considered sending a digital version instead, but it just didn't feel worth it for the difficulty in arranging it, and how would that be any different from a regular Patreon post anyway? I made the difficult choice to axe them entirely. February's postcard (sent in early March) will be our last.
• Commissions? If you missed all the previous posts, we are removing commissions because they take significant time away from the comic, they are difficult to fulfill, Patreon is a terrible platform for commissions, and we're hoping that this revamp will free me up to have time to actually take commissions again! There are more reasons, extensively outlined in the surveys and posts we've already put out, but that's the gist.
• Cast Q&A's? These are no longer quarterly! They have been very difficult to wrangle, especially on a timely basis (see above note about scheduling). Those who filled out our most recent surveys will know that we are exploring other ways to do these. Rather than choose one specific method -- headshots, sketches, a character logging into the Foxglove Discord for a day to chat with people --  we're going to go with whatever sounds fun at the time when we're making things. Patrons at $10 and above can always submit questions, and we'll coordinate answers as we're able.

Subscription Billing

In addition, as we polled about recently, we are considering switching to subscription billing -- where patrons are charged monthly on the same day they signed up rather than bulk charged on the 1st. However, we are conscious of the fact that it makes billing complicated for patrons. As sometimes happens, what the Patreon FAQ says and what happens in reality differs. 

Let me break down what this would mean.

• If we switch to subscription billing and you are already a member of this Patreon, your monthly "anniversary" date will remain the 1st and you will be billed every month on the 1st as you have been already.
• New patrons will be billed on the monthly anniversary of the day they signed up. So if they signed up April 12, they'll be billed again on May 12th.
• Any subscription-based Patreons you sign up for will be charged separately -- which means you pay a fee for each one, instead of a one-time fee for all the traditional billing patreons you support at once. However, their FAQ states that any subscription-based billing that happens on the same day -- e.g. if you coordinated it so all your subscription anniversaries are on the 12th -- then you'd only pay the fee once (as it's per charge, and they bundle anywhere they can).

However, I did have one patron reach out to say that even if that might be the case, their subscription bills -- all coordinated to be on the 1st -- and their traditional batch billing bills  -- also on the 1st -- were still charged in two separate groups, so they still got hit with fees twice. In addition, they were charged on separate days despite ostensibly both being supposed to go through on the 1st. (Correct me if I got the details wrong, but that's how I understood it.)

I reached out casually to Patreon's discord to see if this is intended behavior, but didn't end up reaching official channels. My next step is to contact Patreon specifically and see if this is intended behavior. If it is, I want to be able to at least warn my patrons about it and give concrete information of what to expect, ya know?

Anyway. We haven't fully settled on this, because billing issues like this are never great. But as it stands with traditional billing, I've had a number of times where I've had to refund someone who signed up at the end of the month and got charged again the next day; I've had to explain the process to people and guide them through expectations; it's a very clunky system for anyone who doesn't understand what's happening. It would be very nice to say "it works just like any other subscription service." And it would be so nice to have a 7-day free trial for folks to see what cool stuff is on the Patreon. Overall, subscription billing would be tons easier for me. But I recognize it's suboptimal for everyone else, so. Still pondering.

So yeah. Expect us to switch to subscription billing, and if we ultimately decide not to, I'll update ya. I apologize to the couple of you who didn't like this choice. Hopefully it won't be too bad. If it means you won't support anymore, I completely understand. Please do what works best for you!

Now what?

Now, we figure out all the little bits and pieces of what it'll take to migrate to this new version. We have to rewrite the front page, edit the Patreon Introduction comic, adjust all the tiers, edit the Reward Index, implement the new "Collections" functionality on Patreon, update the shop coupons and my commissions offering page, adjust the API integrations we use with Patreon for the website… The list goes on. It's a lot of small pieces.

But just like in the past, we will probably do the actual Patreon site updates live on Twitch as a little party. We'll keep you posted for when that is.

Thank you so much for your support, your patience, and the kind words you all left on the survey. Y'all are the reason I have the courage to do this, so thank you!

Cayt & the Tamberteam

P.S. I am apparently such a wordy worderson. I'm sorry you have so many words to read. I tried to cut it down, but there's a lot of important info here. GOOD LUCK, I APPRECIATE YOU

EDIT: 

It has been suggested to replace the monthly postcard with just posting bad jokes on the Patreon monthlyish for $25+ folks (as that's mainly what the postcards were!). I am down with this idea. If that interests you, please drop a line in the comments.

EDIT 2: 

Oops! I drafted this up in February and didn't fix a typo. The emote form will closed end of March, not February!