About the annual membership! (Patreon)

Hey roomies, how are you all? Hope the chaos of the world isn't too heavy on you, and that you manage to give yourselves happy times<3

Now that it's been a few months since I activated the option for annual memberships for patrons, I wanted to share with you the pros and cons of it!

Pros are: those who choose it have a 10% discount, and you pay one full payment for a year. Nice!

For me, well... I thought the pros would be to improve the stability of monthly incomes: I thought that if someone made an annual payment, Patreon would separate it into 12 months payment, maintaining stability in my monthly payment and in the Patreon earnings (that is visible on the patreon page).

What it actually does is take in the annual payment, pays it all in the month it was made, and is shown in the visible patreon earnings of my page, then next month: it's gone. 

Which also means that it ruins the whole concept of "goals" on Patreon. For example: I say 1900 euros is a goal I want to reach, and I do in October because that's when many Patrons went for the annual membership since it was just activated. The earnings are top notch that month! Goals are reached! But then the next month none of those annual donations are reflected in the earnings, and all those goals are considered "unreached". 

That doesn't make sense to me. That, plus the currency that I've changed from dollars to euros, made the goals all wonky, which is why I got rid of them in the end. 

It also kinda sucks 'cause the patrons that wanted to help by getting the annual membership now don't even appear in the monthly earnings, as if they weren't contributing any more... I don't know. Maybe I'm going too far, but what I do know is that instead of contributing to a monthly stability, it does more of the opposite. 

I won't deactivate the annual membership, for now at least. And if ever I do, I'll make sure everyone knows about it beforehand, and those who have the annual membership will be able to continue doing so, and get their year of patreon content, etc.

I remember someone asking me, when first activating the annual membership option: "what helps you most? This, or that I continue my renewed monthly pledge?" And I didn't have the answer back then. Now I do ;) If you can, I do prefer the monthly pledge. But I am also happy to give those who need it the 10% discount!! Especially these days. So go for whichever suits you best as well!

And this little hiccup isn't devastating, this is more of a problem in practicality more than anything, and the support you've shown me (in both annual and monthly donations) has been AMAZING and I am forever grateful for it!! 

I just thought it was important for me to at least lay it out here and make a transparent post about it. Not that it's a very entertaining one for you :D but it's there, just in case.

love