Need Your Input - Potential changes around here!

Hi everyone! With the new year coming up I'm thinking of making some changes around here but I'm not too sure how to progress, so I'd like to do a poll or two for yall to vote on and hopefully help me decide!

Nothing will change right away because we're only a few days away from the next billing cycle, but I may figure this stuff out over January.

Here's the first thing I need to decide: how to approach tiers that have postage

Royal Mail has been raising their shipping prices all year. I can't really blame em with the pandemic and all, but usually they only do one price raise and it's usually only a few pennies. It's definitely made a difference this year though, as right now it costs me a few hundred to get everything all sent out. 

To top it all off deliveries seem to have been slower too - again, can't blame em, pandemic and all, but the overall takeaway from this is that I'm paying these guys more and they're struggling to get the stuff to ya!

Normally I'd just add a shipping cost or raise my prices to account for this, but that's not exactly an easy feat on patreon.

So! Here's the first question: Cutie prints seem okay for now, but what shall I do with the Mail Order/Custom Cuties tiers?

1. Keep pricing same, but make them pencil sketches - Essentially this removes a phase from my workload and allows me to get them done faster, in which case I will feel less crunch! This is also the easiest one for y'all because you don't have to do anything, you'll keep receiving the cuties just in a pencil form rather than the usual ink you may have gotten used to.

2. Close tiers, re-open with a price raise - I did this once a couple years back and it went well, but it's a bit of a kerfuffle. Essentially I close everything down in a staggered way with ample notice, and if you want to rejoin the tier at the higher price you can. I think a price increase of around $10 will help to cover shipping costs and inflation. This way I can keep them around the same quality they are now, but we have to do a bit of shufflin around to get there.

3. Close tiers, re-open as digital commissions - essentially you'll be on here to get a guaranteed commission for me each month. The price of the tiers will reflect this - my comms are usually around £50-70 ($70-100 USD). There's absolutely no postage with this one, but I'll open plenty of slots for people to get in. I will likely also offer a slightly cheaper variant, some sort of digital sketch tier or perhaps icons, so there'll be an option for those who want something but don't have as much cash to shell out!

4. something else? - if you got any ideas, don't hesitate to throw em at me! seen anything another artist has done that you like and think I could do? anything you'd like to see from me? let me know!

none of these are guaranteed to happen btw! just stuff that's bumpin around in my head that I would love to hear your input on.