Update: Birthday Giveaway Drawing and Member Pass changes (Patreon)

Hi Menagerie Members!

Wanted to provide a quick update on the Birthday Giveaway drawing. I performed the random drawing on Friday evening and an unfortunate thing happened. The winner was a member that had cancelled just 4 days before the drawing. Due to how Patreon exports member data, members that cancel can remain on the list until the end of the month apparently. To make matters worse, M3D has lost almost 60 Patreon members since I announced the giveaway (more on this below). In response I went ahead and drew a second name for the A1 mini. That name as well was a member that had cancelled on Patreon earlier this month… At this point I took a pause and decided that it would be better to wait until the end of the March to perform the drawings at which point the member data would be more accurate containing only truly active paying members. This is out of fairness to the entire M3D community. So for anyone that has cancelled recently, this is an opportunity for you to rejoin for a chance to win an A1 Mini or an Amazon gift card!

Warning: Lengthy Post Ahead…

At the risk of oversharing, I'll admit that it’s been a little difficult to watch the sharp decrease in M3D members during the past couple of months. I’ve always tried to keep our Member Pass costs as low, offering commercial plan options for All Access and Lifetime Access (uncommon if not completely unique), and performed regular reward opportunities to give back to the community. To date: (3) A1 minis, (6) Amazon gift cards and several spools of filament.

With this in mind I went about reading Exit Surveys to see what previous members had to say… A few of the responses stuck out for me:

- Designs are not enough like Zou3D that you’re copying

- Creator is not as active as expected

- Not enough designs to justify the $$

These are just the (3) that surprised me, the vast majority were “My financial situation has changed” which I’m going to hopefully help to address below. To clarify on the above three responses:

1. I take great pride in specifically being different from other designers, for better or worse. Also, I have never copied any designer’s work either likeness or file. My hope is to provide unique designs that stand out from other designers and I will continue to do so regardless of how many members we have.

2. The last couple of months I have been working a lot to improve the overall workflow for releases and to ensure I am including things like 3MF and separate body/eye files with new releases. I’ve also been working to handle a number of issues reported on previous designs. This is not meant to be an excuse as much as a promise to be more frequent in posting updates on what’s being worked on throughout the month.

3. I’m going to offer a possible resolution to this below in the Member Pass changes. That said, new Patreon members have access to the Starter Pack as well as at least (3) months worth of release content. Currently the Menagerie is 100+ designs and steadily growing. I’m fairly confident of the value for the cost however I’d appreciate any and all feedback on this.

All that in mind, I’ve always felt there was ambiguity around the standard method designer's use for licensing designs for printed Commercial sale. Mainly the lack of differentiation between license and exclusive design access. In an attempt to better define these benefits, starting soon, a new Member Pass will become available, Curated Commercial. The Curated Commercial Member Pass will be less expensive than the Merchant Member Pass and provide Commercial-Use without the exclusive design release benefits. Curated Commercial members will still receive the Starter Pack and all other benefits except access to new monthly releases. This is aimed at providing members that want to take a break from printing new releases and would still like to legitimately sell their printed models from the releases that occurred while they were a Merchant Member or that they've purchased individually on one of our platforms. There will be no change to existing Member Pass options. 

The new M3D Member Pass options are listed below. I know that my approach to having several membership options is different than most other designers. The intent is not to make membership more complicated, rather for membership to be more flexible and intentional to everyone's specific needs. This solution was crafted after speaking directly with several individuals that had previously cancelled their Merchant Member Pass and agreed that a slimmed down Member Pass for legitimate Commercial-Use would be beneficial.

I would greatly value all of your thoughts and feedback on this change!  

New M3D Member Pass options

Member Pass: Personal-Use - Monthly Releases - $5 per month

Curated Commercial Pass: Commercial-Use - No Releases - $5 per month

Merchant Member Pass: Commercial-Use - Monthly Releases - $7 per month

Many thanks for everyone that made it this far without falling asleep and more so for all of you that are a part of our amazing community! I'm really excited for some of the upcoming releases and hope that you all will enjoy them!

Jonathan - M3D