PATREON – OCTOBER

Comic update

An advantage to Twitter 4-image limit per Tweet was that when my comic panels are separated into Tweets, creating a thread, I was able to see the difference in engagement on different parts of the story.

From my last update, I noticed that scenes with the protagonist as a cat interacting with the other main character would receive the most engagement, from likes to quote retweets talking about the cat. With that in mind, I didn’t make dramatic changes to the story, but made sure to feature more domestic moments that I would’ve otherwise taken out for the sake of progressing the plot faster. People didn’t seem to mind a slow plot and would be willing to indulge in small details of their lives more.

Speedpaint/commentary video

I had made and released another animation inspired by another artist and song that I liked, which was received very well on Twitter and have growing views on YouTube. It was a simple walk cycle and took less time than the first animation, though there was still an interest in my process.

As my internship had begun, I was occupied with trying to settle into a new routine at work and devoting most of my time to it, which didn’t give me enough time to work on the video (I had recorded it in September before my internship but didn’t get to edit it until late October). I ended up uploading the video in early November instead, knowing now that I didn’t have to create an alternate speedpaint video as most people preferred the format with me talking in it. I made sure to keep things light-hearted and more on the fun side, talking about the few blunders I had, being candid with the things I still struggled with, and indulging into what I liked about the song, as my Patreon was also a fan space in a way.

The payout

I was very thankful to have friends with far more experience running a Patreon who could offer me advice from more complicated things like setting up an account for the money to go to to small details like how to embed links into a post or how to get more engagement.

The payout this month went up to an incredible $68.80! Though it wasn’t a living wage, it was far more than I would’ve expected to earn and as my internship was unpaid, it was great to have a sort of salary this way too.

I also made sure to manage my expectations for next month as it would likely not be a huge increase and may be quite stagnant for a while as the payment option had been sorted out and my audience may not grow significantly every month.