Onyrica

Update// Gusts of change

Added 2024-09-06 10:37:20 +0000 UTC

Blessed September, most auspicious of months for heralding the last of the summer meltdowns and the advent of all things spooky, including - and this is the truest horror of them all - my birthday.

No less than 37 years ago, on a balmy Saturday eve west of the Autumn equinox, a compact ball of black hair and seething spite was unceremoniously catapulted into the planet, hellbent on finding a greater purpose.

Turns out that purpose would come to involve drawing copious amounts of cat people and holding people hostage to tormentously long monthly updates.

Thus I compel you - by the powers invested in me - to grab a latte and stay put, as this one’s a bit of a doozy courtesy of Patreon’s most recent decisions to lob a cannonball at its creators in the upcoming year.

Patreon changes

Sometime in August, amidst what had so far been a very productive few weeks, Patreon decided to sandbag its creators by announcing the forceful implementation of a single billing model across the board.

To explain what this means more clearly than they did: at the moment, creators on Patreon have 3 billing options:

1st of the Month billing (1oTM) - what this Patreon is currently on.
Pay per creation billing (PPC)
Subscription billing (SB)

On 1oTM, patrons will pay on the day they subscribe and then, going forward, their pledges will be collected on the first day of every month thereon. This system favors creators who need to schedule their offering (such as those who do shipping or, in my case, point and lesson allocations), as with all pledges collected on the 1st and money received on the 5th, you can easily budget and track who’s receiving what.

On PPC, patrons pay only when the creator posts something. If a patron subscribes for 5$ and a creator posts twice a month, they will pay 10$, whereas if the creator doesn’t post at all the patron won’t pay anything that month. This system favors creators who use their posts as a reward delivery method, as well as those who can’t or don’t wish to post on a regular basis.

On SB, patrons pay on the day they subscribe and then, going forward, on that same day each month afterwards. This system favours creators who consistently produce content on a rolling basis and whose rewards are inherently the posts they make on the Patreon timeline.

Each system has its own benefits and drawbacks and none of them is inherently better than the others. The problems with this forceful switch arise from having to change entire business models, built around the features of one billing system, into another.

Allegedly, Patreon is forcing all its creators into this change due to Apple’s policies demanding they have a singular billing model in order to maintain their app on the App Store. And while it is true that Apple has been known to be draconian about its terms and conditions, the truth is that Patreon’s app has been exempt from these conditions for many years and could remain so provided it adopted the same characteristics as other subscription apps - such as Netflix or Spotify - which will not let you subscribe through the app and instead will redirect you to their web portals to purchase anything.

Unfortunately, Patreon insist that this isn’t an option - though they’ve categorically refused to explain why - and so come November 2024, they will not only be forcing every creator into Subscription Billing, but they will also start charging 30% more to any pledges made through their app.

I spent much of August fighting tooth and claw against this - just like I did 3 years ago, when they first tried to pass this under our nose - including meeting with the CEO and his team to plead for my case, as well as that of many other creators who stand to lose 40-60% of their income thanks to these changes. Despite it all, it looks like the shift will be inevitable, as after many years of trying to enforce this, Patreon have finally landed with the perfect, unarguable scapegoat (Apple) to justify this terrible decision and so the question now is:

Where does this leave us?

Well, to begin with I want to clarify that these changes will only affect new/returning patrons. Anyone pledged prior to this shift will still pay out on the 1st of the month and nothing will change for them (unless they delete their pledge and return at a later date).

Additionally, I want to strongly encourage you NOT to use the app to pledge to either myself or any creator, as you will be charged 30% extra for no good reason other than to line Apple’s shareholders pockets.

In what’s probably the only silver lining to this whole debacle, Patreon have allowed creators to postpone this forced shift to November 2025 (with some conditions), so for the time being nothing will change until then. This gives me a whole year to map out how to proceed and adapt my business over to the new model.

The main issues I need to resolve before then involve handling of Starstickers, including point and reward allocation, as well as my mentorship services.

At the moment, as stated above, I handle everything in the first few days of the month. Pledges come in on the 1st and by the 4-8th of the month I’ve allocated all points, rewards and scheduled all my sessions.

Going forward, however, many pledges will no longer be processed on the 1st and instead will only go through on the specific date they pledged on. To give you an example of how this will disrupt the system:

Say I have 10 students on the mentorship tier - 5 of them pay out on the 1st, but the rest pay throughout different days across the month. Assuming I schedule all mentorship slots at the start of the month, I would have to wait until those student’s pledges get processed later on to allocate them a slot - at which point I might not actually have any availability left.

Similarly, this problem also occurs when allocating points and opening rewards, as where that all occurs at the start of the month now, there would be many people who aren’t eligible for that until their pledge has been processed later on.

I appreciate the complexity of what I’m saying here, so for the sake of conciseness: switching into Subscription Billing will inevitably create a logistical and administrative shitstorm for me.

In so far, the main (and realistically, only) solution I’ve come up with is shifting all my delivery and allocation dates to the end of the month - when I’ll know for certain whose pledges have been collected. That said, this is less than ideal, as it means that I have less wiggle room to deal with administration than I would at the start of the month and that anyone whose pledge went through on the 1st will have to wait a whole month to cash their rewards in.

To put it bluntly: this sucks. Wholesale, unabashedly sucks and there’s not going to be a clean or easy fix to switching things up 7 years into doing this a certain way.

So for the time being, all I can ask for is your patience and understanding as I work towards finding a way to make this work for everyone. And in case you slipped into a case of the existential ennui while reading this, here’s a handy TL;DR:

In November 2025 I will be forced into switching from 1st of the Month Billing to Subscription Billing
This will NOT AFFECT anyone who’s currently pledged at that point
Changes to the current scheduling and allocation of rewards will have to happen from November 2025
And most importantly, DO NOT PLEDGE FROM ANY APPS as you will get charged an extra 30% for no damn good reason. Always and only use the website to support your creators.

If you got this far, please consider this my endorsement to have a stiff drink no matter what time it is. Bottoms up.

StarStickers

All successful rewards from last month have now been allocated. This month’s illustrated rewards will remain closed as to give me some breathing room. Further openings will be announced in next month’s update.

In the meantime, remember you can still purchase prints and merch with your points - as well as tokens.

And what are tokens you ask?

Tokens - found under the “Discounts and Tokens” section of Starstickers, allow you to purchase bolt-ons to an existing reward or commission.

For example, say you’ve booked a “Lineart Half Body” and you purchase an “Outfit Design token”. This will guarantee that you get a custom, completely original outfit design drawn for your character, which will be entirely yours to keep.

Or you booked a “Mystery Box” alongside a “NSFW token”, which although still a surprise, will guarantee that your piece leans further into the side of spicy.

Ultimately tokens are a good way to spend points if you’re capped as well as to guarantee a specific or surprise outcome to a piece you’ve booked, so I encourage you to play around with them if you’ve got nothing else to splurge on.

Merchandise

Please note that all pending merchandise rewards will be shipped shortly. Unfortunately, after my PC blew up, I had to redo all my print settings - which took an unpretty amount of time. Thankfully, now that’s done I can resume my eternal feud with the printer to make sure you all receive your parcels asap this month.

Additionally, I’m producing my first ever foiled prints - namely for this Y’shtola piece and the upcoming Shadowheart artwork. While there’s still some work to be done in making sure they look as perfect as I hope they will, please look forward to the inclusion of these as special, limited rewards into StarStickers soon.

In closing

Well that was one way to break my “short and sweet” streak of under-700 word updates.

I’ll be honest - stuff like this is hard to write. Not just because of the time it takes to convey what brand of 4D chess I’m playing with behind the scenes, but because at the end of the day all I want for my patrons is to feel rewarded and never bamboozled by circumstances beyond my control.

While the situation isn’t ideal, I hope that this attempt to exert clarity has helped to convey how much thought I’m putting into everything I do - even if the ultimate takeaway was “Lawd, TMI lady… just get on with it.”

And so I will. From now until when this change comes into effect next year, I’m going to keep plowing on, getting as much done as I possibly can and being as overtly transparent as I can manage. And for all those of you who stay the course and ferry me on to figuring things out, I want to issue my eternal thanks.

Now, with that all (temporarily) out of the way, it’s time to shimmy on and get cracking before my age catches up to me.

Not that my knees got the memo…

With love from the geriatric ward,

Ony

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