October Update 2019 (Patreon)

This is the tenth month of this Patreon. x3 We're in the double digits for months now. Thank you all so much for supporting my work up to 2 digits. Hopefully one day it'll be 3 digits!
TLDR = Doing a Gaming stream, there are polls for everyone to vote for. YCH are FCFS again. Made a new patreon stretch goal. Idk the holiday. I'm actually being faster with art again. Soft Discord opening! HD art packs in the future and more.

I'M HAVING A GAMING NIGHT STREAM

I've wanted to stream more game stuff and I think playing games with you all would be a fun way to do that. My nature is not really stream worthy so it'll be an attempt! This will also tie into discord which I'll mention later.
You can all vote for the  [Gaming Stream Time]  and the  [Gaming Stream Game] that will be played! The stream will be around 1-2 hours on Oct 12th!

This Month's Holiday

Not sure actually! I know Orctober is a thing but I'm not really one to draw orcs xD. Ink-tober is something a lot of people do but I don't have the time to do that so x3. If I find the holiday or if you guys have knowledge on such things I'll update this!

*edit: It's Halloween xD

Pure Speed

I've mentioned a few times in these updates that I've felt slow and I actually figured out why. uwu I was not taking care of myself properly. Whoops
I'm a pretty physically active need-y person. I'm not really one to sit down and now both my job and my hobbies are sit down actives. I didn't really realize how much of a toll that was taking on me until I increased my exercise time and other stuff.
It takes more time out of my day but I'm more productive so I think that's good lol.

YCH Change/ New Patreon Goal

I'm changing the YCH rule back to FCFS if "random char/YCH" wins in the poll. So if there's a YCH you see that isn't taken, just poke me/comment about it and we can discuss it.
Also I've made 2 new stretch goals
$1,500 per month (I may lower it, depends on other stuff) and I will do monthly drawings of a patron's char(s) & idea via a poll.
$69,999  per month and I will stop saying I'm pure for a single moment
Clearly one of these is a joke but the other one is a solution to a problem I've had for a while: Artist freedom & Capitalism
The amount of support I get right now greatly helps me being able to produce works I would like to make. However there's also a balancing act between doing what I want to do and what will make sustainable income. Beyond the gambling issue that comes with raffles on a paid site like this, it would be far better if I could just randomly draw a sketch, icons, fully lines, etc for you guys as a nice thing to do. I'd like to do that, it's one of the reasons why I hold raffles on other sites or try to do those sorts of things in other ways here. 
However, in the system we live in, it's not hard to take advantage of that. It makes a lot more logical sense to burn $12 and test the odds of getting a commission valued at 80+ for $1-12 by having a patreon voted picture. That sort of logical way to get artwork just isn't feasible on a monthly basis. 
If you've ever taken a economics class or had the right teacher in public school, they will discuss the real coffee/cigarette cost. This works for any product/service (this includes if you want to save up for a commission, or a car, or a candy bar) but these are the two that seem to be brought up the most.
If you buy a coffee for $2 each day, at the end of the week you've spent $14. If you're making $15 an hour(🐯👍 that's good. The minimum wage in my state is $9.45), that's less than an hours work for 7 coffees. For the owner selling the coffee, if you buy a coffee 365 days out of the year, that's $730 customer. Even if you want to say the net profit (the amount the seller has after everything else has been paid for like taxes, building costs, maintenance, fees, workers, etc) is really 30% of that $2, that's still $219 per year in the owner's pocket. All they really need is to assume how many customers like that they need to make the 30% actually 30% net profit. If you only have 1 customer paying $730 but the cost of business is 10k per year, you don't have net profit. So you have to either cut costs or generate more income.
Right now commissions are my biggest income. Not taking a commission means not adding to the biggest income I have. Worse case scenario (which from talking to you all, will not happen but a version of it could cause other furry artists patreons seem to have a version of this problem) everyone drops to Pure tip, I lose my 2nd biggest income, and I have to take on more commissions while also doing basically random commission for ~$40-$80(100 patreons * $1 - fees, taxes, hours works = a lot less). That's not really the purpose I'm going for with patreon. I find value in the work I do but I also want to put value on work that's just for me and happens to be something you and other like.
I am putting my eggs in other baskets by going into other ventures like youtube (I promise I'll at least get 1 video on youtube this year, even if it's not he best, I'm just really bad about make assets to my liking) or the free icons with upgrade-able packs, etc. With $1500 per month, I would cover all my costs of living & working,  savings for anything bad that happens, and more money to invest in this or future ventures. Again, if other things work out more then I will probably lower that goal but for now, that's the idea and the reasoning behind that.

Gaming/Discord

I made a discord a while back and have been really flip floppy on it. Specifically because of all the other discords I've been in. Biggest issue is creators of the discord not really being in the discord. Which if you know me, I'm very shy and usually am more of a lurker. This makes the second biggest issue worse which is moderation. People are generally good at moderating such things themselves but you get a few bad nuggets in there and it can either be resolved or go to hell. This happens multiple times in a discord's life and you hope each time that the good ending happens in this fork of the road. 
Right now I don't think that's an issue but with more patrons it increases the chance for the nugget to appear.
So, two basic facts about this discord is happening right now
1. I will attempt to participate in the discord but you'll have to future forgive me for my nature to make me quiet/lurky nature at points.
2. If hell happens in the discord and it can't be fixed, it's being deleted.

So ya, on the day of the stream I'll give a link to the discord, set those who enter up with a their tags, you can give feed back or just enjoy the discord. Eventually later this year, I'll add it to the list of official perks. Some of these will just enhance current perks like:
- A chat to discuss ideas for polls rather than using a form
- Better search function/download for pictures
- Faster announcements if you happen to use discord
- and other stuff I probably have thought of

HD ART PACKS

I've been doing the bases and I seem to have a format that works out ok. The only problem I've come down with is how to distribute codes. I'll probably go the bad route and just give a code that anyone can use. Pirates will use this, I can't think of a good way to stop it so that may just be how things roll.

For NSFW packs, I've been thinking of making monthly packs that people can buy instead of using patreon cause some people like a single picture within the month or just hate patreon but still want to support while also getting pictures. The site I want to use, commiss.io  doesn't have coupons yet but seems like they will in the future so it may be a minute before I can give out codes.
I've been think of doing this for the sketches too, but some(in practice most) sketches are suppose to be exclusive to patreon, they wouldn't be if I made them digital packs on other sites. I've made a poll asking if [ALL sketches should become not exclusive to patreon]. Let me know what ya think!

General Happenings

- PK Emotions stills staying as sketches so I can make youtube vids. This means: 1 I can stress less about making these "correctly" right now and 2, I can find the mistakes during the video process for when I do stress about making things "correct" to my standards
- More goo, knoty boy, and raffle sketches will be happening
- I will open up a batch for sketch commissions because last time, I let everyone convert their sketch commission to a lined commission lol. So be on the look out for that because I'll probably limit it to patreon then twitter/furrynetwork.

-Base icon will be of a dragon so look forward to the stuff that goes into that.
- [Almost as pure as koor furs can vote on what Sharen will be animal wise!]

 

That should be everything for this month. If you read all that, nice. Have a great month!