thefirebrandsfm
patreon
Addressing Why I don't Paywall Everything
🕑 Added 2021-06-05 10:31:47 +0000 UTCI've seen some exit surveys of patrons who complain they joined my patreon for X animation only for me to post it a few weeks later for free on Twitter. "Why should I pay for something others get for free?" So I decided to address it.
First and foremost, my content exists only because of your support on Patreon. Each animation takes me many hours of work. There's models to be edited, fixed, and improved, ideas to be thought upon, scenebuilds to create, and positions to create. I don't want every animation to look the same, but there's only a number of sexual positions I can use without featuring the same one after I've lost how many, probably more than a thousand, animations already.
There's many ideas that get scrapped after seeing they don't look as good in 3D as in my head. There's a lot of hours put behind the scenes that I haven't shared with you. The things the public may consider boring, like spending 3 hours on adjusting how good the sweat looks on the model. Or spending two days searching on the internet for, creating, or importing different furniture 3D models to use in the background. Backgrounds take a lot of time and since creating it isn't inherently sexual, I don't really share that process with you, as I think it might be not so interesting. However, backgrounds and lighting play a huge part in making the animation look good and really helps immersing yourself into it.
I'm not going to go into detail about how everything costs money and why I need your support - I'm pretty sure you know that you need a really powerful computer to render complex graphics, especially with Blender, and PCs improve each year, 3D models and Blender addons cost, bla bla bla. =)
But here's why some of my content ends up on Twitter for free. The main reason is, I never wanted to paywall anything but on the other hand, I want to reward you for supporting me and feeding me. For helping me do this as a full-time job and still be able to live as an artist. I give you a month or two of exclusive early access in return for those $4 or $8 you are pledging. I pack my content into archives so you can easily collect it with several clicks and have it downloaded instead of grabbing each animation, one by one, with compressed quality over different websites. Not all of my content ends up on twitter anyway, so you still get a lot of exclusives. Usually that includes extra render variants, sometimes extra camera angles or outfits. 90% of the WIPs don't end up on Twitter. Not only that, but whenever you join my page, you have access to all of my works back to 2015 when I started doing this as a hobby. You'll never find these works on my Twitter.
The second big reason I post my work on twitter is advertising. I hate ads. And I've decided I don't want to get paid to advertise products on my page. However, in order for people to find my Patreon page and be able to support me, I need to advertise my page somewhere. That usually happens on some of my tweets, with animations that I hope many people would reach and enjoy watching. If I could just work on animations and not bother telling people about my page, trust me, I'd prefer to! =)
So in short:
You still get a lot of perks and exclusives for supporting me. Namely: polls to decide future content, exclusive renders and a few months of early access, everything in highest, uncompressed resolution, archived downloads with no watermark for easy colletcion, over 5-6 years of my work during which I have done this as a full-time job with no hiatus, vacations or breaks.
Why I need to post my work on twitter some time after it hits patreon: it's the only way to help more people find my page. I'm not greedy, and I don't want a huge amount of supporters, but understandably many can't support me forever, so they need to pause or leave which leads to the need for finding a constant flow of new supporters. =)
I think this is all, and I hope it wasn't boring or annoying for you to read. Have a nice weekend and expect some more Tracer content tomorrow!~ ♥
Comments
The Firebrand
Interesting that you found my watermarked animation in a compilation because those guys usually rip off the non-watermarked variant or just COVER IT UP with their own, haha. I've had reposts with my watermark covered up with someone else's. Even on those compilators' patreon page. As for traffic. Following your logic I should charge $25+ (which is probably fair for a one-time download) but I don't think the majority hop in to grab it. and leave. There's also people who stick around for a year or three so I think my prices are fair (or maybe even cheap -- globally the average pledge on patreon is around $10).
Alkpaz
You forgot to mention "cloud" costs. With Mega (for example) you have to share your transfer allocation in what you download with the people downloading your material. 1TB of transfer is enough for the average person, but if you have a Patreon and open it up to more and more people, you will need more and that costs more money. Personally, I think every creator of SFM or animation should charge 1 USD per 1GB of data available. So if you have 20GB of animations your lowest tier should cost 20 USD. I have no problem with that cost, and it works better for some creators who only have a few GBs but don't see the cost/benefit from the "get-go". The only problem is that enough of you creators have to be on the same page regarding this, and sadly there are some creators offering 40+GB of material for 1 USD, so people tend to gawk at anything over say 5 USD. I tend to download everything and move on. I've paid many creators but I leave because I get everything offered up-front. I can tell you some creators charge way more than 1USD/GB on Subscribestar. Their costs (tiers) over there are sometimes 10x the amount offered by creators here on Patreon. BTW, I don't use Twitter, but I saw your watermark on a compilation video, that is how I find out who to support (erm, rather get the original animations from the source itself and not some low quality pirated version) That is another issue, watermark your stuff. It helps people, like myself, find out who created the animation when they are watching compilation videos. I often run into great videos I don't know who created because they are not watermarked. That, itself, is a cost in itself.
Cedo
I agree with you, showing some of your work on twitter gives a foretaste for people. Without it I won't be here :-)
Phaenomen
It's kinda sad that you need to make a whole post to explain something like that, it should not be so hard to understand that you need people to see some of your work to make them interrested in your patreon, that's just how everything work. When you sell something, you NEED to advertise it at some point. And as for the people complaning that you post some stuff for free, they either never look at your patreon, or just want to cause you trouble, because there is still a lot of stuff that remains patreon exclusive. Don't trouble yourself with these people, you are doing a great job, and a lot of people are happy to support you and allow you to live from it, or at least make some money out of it. I hope you can continue like this as much as you'd like, have a nice week end too !
hades6
What you say and perfectly logical, I am happy with your work after I am not a fan of bbc and you create variants for everyone ca I appreciate thank you
