BirdieMaps
patreon
Update [August]
🕑 Added 2023-08-08 11:52:04 +0000 UTCHey everyone the last three months were very hard for Birdiemaps. Not only dropped our growht rapidly from +15 patrons per month to 0. I recieved no comissions in that time and in addition we are now experience sudden loss in patrons. I guess it's the world events but this shouldn't be an excuse for not improving. There is always room for improvement. Even though i experience the first down moment, i do my best to keep on fighting for what i am passionate about!
Therefore i want to ask all of you directly how to improve BirdieMaps and what might went wrong in the last weeks?
Here are a couple of things i noticed:
1. Due to complains on Reddit, i drastically reduced the size of the watermark on the Watermarked images (Folk Hero) and i removed the watermark from the reddit showcase images. I probably undo the latter one.
2. I created the Foundry Modules and uploaded them to the drive folder. I fear that this might lead to the thoght: "Oh i have all the Modules and maps, i can cancel now"
3. I was not very active the whole July. Due to my vacation i carried over many comissions (mage tier+) and this lead to a delay of the community pack. And there has not been a poll for the theme pack. I really hope this might be reasonable argument.
Expansion ideas?
I was also looking on where to expand next. There is a small error with the moulinette integration, the typical problems that some of my maps are too big (>20mb). When this is fixed i'll expand on different platforms. If you have ideas , let me know.
Please leave a comment with your opinion and thoughts. :)
Another update will follow on Sunday, with some incredible news !
Comments
Thomas D.
Thanks! Okay quick question: How do you find about maps and map creators. Currently i am on Reddit, Pinterest and Instagram (which i never got into). Good idea with the free sample pack! I haven't thought about that. Oh yeah i know Todd... He was one of my first patrons :D. Not sure if he still is, but yeah i know him and his style very well.
Thomas D.
Thank you for your input. This is a great Aspect i can work on! 1. I agree, patreon is really bad for map creating and displaying the content. What i currently do is searching the module packs [ https://www.patreon.com/posts/foundry-vtt-86907205 ] You can use them without Foundry, for the legacy maps i sorted all of them by categories. This might help a little bit. For the rest i would need to design a database, which might be useful to have... I will take your advice and think further about it ! 2. Actually that is something i have planned to do soon. Thanks to a friend I now have a software that does most of the postprocessing and exporting. I wanted to ask him for an additional feature that also downscales the maps after post processing :) .
Aaron Burke
I'm a recent Patron, joining after finding a few of your maps on Reddit (notably, Village of Skull Crag) and I've been almost exclusively using them in a small-medium custom campaign I'm running/mostly improvising. I have a bunch of your maps downloaded locally, and when I sense my players heading toward a new location that I wasn't really planning on, I skim the folder names to find a few that are appropriately named and pick my favorite, then import it into my Owlbear.Rodeo setup. Given my use case, it would be fantastic if there was an easier way to search by tag. Patreon's site is kind of awful for that, and my local browsing obviously only works for map collections I've already downloaded. If there was an easy-to-use search and filter option (outside of Patreon), I know that would help me immensely. That database should also filter to my subscription tier (doesn't have to be integrated to Patreon, but that would be even better!) so I don't see the same map multiple times while subscribed to the DM tier. As a *small* ask (definitely not high priority at all if it's too much effort for you), I would also appreciate a lower resolution version of your bigger maps. Owlbear.Rodeo didn't like the file size of the Village of Skull Crag map, so I had to import it into Paint.NET and reduce its quality myself until it was happy. It still looks great at reduced quality for typical zoom levels!
Oestred
I am sorry to hear that on your growth slowing like that. I agree with the other person, somehow getting the word out about yourself. Marketing. I wonder if you made a Foundry module that was a free sampler pack if people might see that, get it, and some join your patreon. While I do only homebrew, the other person is also right that many people do modules and search for specific maps. Do you know Todd at Morvold Press patreon? Very nice guy. I see a lot of similarities in both your styles and you two are the patreons whose maps I use the most. He has been steadily growing a lot it seems over time. You might reach out to him and chat.
