Regarding Future Exclusive Polls - I Want Your Opinions! (Patreon)

As I've been doing exclusives for coming up on 5 years now, I've made tweaks here and there to refine my process and make my offerings worth the price. Recently, I've been contemplating how I run polls for exclusives.

I started doing polls a couple of years ago when I realized that my initial method of setting up threads in Discord to deliberate with supporters directly often led to the same few social individuals and friends having a huge sway on everything, and while I greatly appreciated their input, I often felt like it made it difficult for people who weren't as social or weren't that interested in discussions to have any say in the matter. So, I started doing polls to fix that, with ideas drawn from suggestions by you guys. At the time, it felt like an easy way to include more people, and it definitely was an improvement over discussion threads.

Lately though, I've noticed some problems with polls: Popular or trendy characters often sweep. Characters with a genuine interest to many will come up repeatedly but lose to the slightly more popular ones. There's a large time investment waiting for votes to come in, time that I can't work on exclusives because the decision isn't set.

Plus, voting is still a conscious effort from all of you. I get that needing to repeatedly make decisions over and over again can be a hassle. It's hard to keep interest when none of the characters are what you like on the surface, or the majority of votes are for options you aren't into. All of you have unique and differing tastes. And then, that group of differing tastes ultimately converges somewhere in the middle, an average of sorts, and that's an average that gets harder to stray from as more people join. It takes some extra effort to ensure I don't have the exact same sizes time after time when the same size option wins a majority of the time.

So, I'll ask you guys: Should I ditch the polls?

Were I to stop doing the polls, I would still draw from your suggestions, I would just be the one to make the final decision. This would mean I could take care to include more niche characters or even my own OCs who otherwise may not do well in polls but that I know some want to see. I can be more varied with the sizes and scenarios to cater to those who like the really really big or the more moderate sizes. In times where I hit on something that's really well-liked, I can do more sequels and larger-scale ideas that I can build upon for a while rather than needing to move on after each pic is finished despite potential for more. Doing things this way wouldn't reduce the amount of exclusives either. In fact, it very well could let me do more since I wouldn't need to wait on votes to come in.

I've presented my arguments, but ultimately, I will leave the choice up to you guys. I understand that, despite my issues, the polls aren't bad and some people really like them, which is why I would appreciate any additional comments if you have them as well! You're the ones who are choosing to be so generous as to support me here, and I'm immensely thankful for that. I want to make sure the decision is one that benefits you. Thank you~