Pardon My Dust

I've been thinking about this for a while, and looking at the tiers, there's going to need to be some adjustment. The lower tiers are mostly fine, but the mid and upper tiers offer things that I don't do often enough to be worth offering as bonuses, so I'm going to need to rebalance things a little. 

I'm not quite sure how to do that with the upper tiers. Seeing as the majority of you are $1 tier Patrons, however, that's weighted a little too far onto the bottom end. I get it — for one reason or another, $1 is all you're comfortable pledging. If it's a concern about me or your budget, that's fine, things won't change overmuch for you.

Having said that, there isn't really much incentive to pledge at higher tiers, is there? A couple people pledge at $3 and $7, but not anywhere near as many, and higher than that, it drops sharply off. Again, for some of you, it's a matter of your budget being too tight. I get it. I'm the king of tight budgets. For others, you just don't have any reason why you want to. $1 tier gets you what you want: early access to chapters, as and when they're finished.

Figuring out exactly how to balance the highest tiers is going to be tough. Mostly, I figure those in those tiers are doing it because they really want to help me out, and I appreciate that, but I still want to show my appreciation better. That's going to take a while.

For the lower tiers, here's how I'm going to shift things going forward. Starting when Hereafter goes public, $1 tier patrons will continue to get early access to the next chapter, at least 1 week before it goes public. $3 tier patrons will get access to an extra chapter, two weeks before it's scheduled for public release. $7 tier patrons will get to be 3 chapters ahead. Any excess chapters will be for the $13+ crowd. Unlike with Essence, where I stuck to a weekly schedule for public releases, this is going to be the schedule for Hereafter and the foreseeable future. Chapters will go public as and when the buffer for $1, $3, and $7 tiers is filled.

To rebalance the $13+ tiers, I'll also be retiring the Lucky Numbers system. That should also make the other changes work smoother, because it'll be one less thing for me to worry about and manage.

Until then, we'll continue on as normal. Chapters will continue to flow as and when they finish.

One more change: I'll be switching to charge up front. That will mean...basically nothing, for those of you who are already pledged. Nothing will change about when you're charged, how much you're charged, or anything like that. This will only impact new and returning Patrons who sign up in the future.

I know that some of these changes are going to be a bit frustrating for a lot of you. It's a bit frustrating for me, too, because it's an extra thing to manage going forward, instead of just dropping a chapter for everyone whenever it was ready. However, things really weren't balanced well for everyone, so I'm trying to rebalance things with an eye towards what I actually offer every month, instead of throwing whatever bone I can think of at everyone in the higher tiers.