Ok, not really perils. But it’s been interesting. I restarted my patreon and thought if I just consistently delivered new material every week on a regular metronome like consistency I’d slowly build an audience, and I did, but actually that building has now turned to a trickle. For a few months there I was gaining 50+ people a month, and then January and February that just slowed down significantly.
(The drawing by the way is from when my youngest was doing his amazing comic Monkey Arms, I hope he’ll get back to it one day, right now he’s all about music and mates, but he’s 17 so that’s expected)
I’ve enough followers there now – 373 that it does feel like there’s a solid reason to post there, but like every platform the number of people following you doesn’t directly translate in to likes or actually any active choices. Most posts get about 7-8 likes, some outliers 15.
I’ve a few paid followers, certainly a decent number (about 37) but most oare paying $1 (and once you subtract the costs that’s literally pennies) in all I think I’m theoretically making $110 per month. But it’s just stacking up in patreon, waiting for me to do something with it.
I could have tried to make more, and maybe once this book is finished, I’ll restructure it so that the paid amounts start at $5. I had hoped that at $1 I’d convert most people to paying, but that’s not how that has panned out (if everyone paid $1 I’d be making $370 per month, still not a lot, but actually enough to pay for two pages of work per month…)
If I end up doing a second book on the platform, I’ll maybe up the monies and see if I can up the frequency of pages.
Could be I scare away everyone donating $1, but maybe if everyone was paying $5 I’d do alright.
(BUT WHY WHY? So I can basically fund myself doing comics I’m writing and drawing!)
On the writing front, I’m approaching TerranOmega like “what if I’m writing twelve issues of this”, so I’ve all the stories but some are requiring a bit more thought than others. And in the middle of watching an imax concert (21 pilots, with my son who is a huge fan) I decide the story for #5-#6 needed to start at the end. Grab you right at the worse moment and let the story unfold.
Yesterday I didn’t post! Shock! Did you miss me? No time and by the time I realised I was gonna break my streak I was lying in bed (ipad in hand, wordpress dashboard opened up, ready to start typing awkwardly) and thought – no … what if I take one day off deliberately. Not that I missed it, but that I decided “this day intentionally left blank”. Giving it an intentionality made it easier to stop worrying about it and think “well, I’ll post tomorrow, so it’ll not be because I had no time, rather becuase I just decided a blank was ok”. So there.
Yesterday in Social Media
John Cullen a marvellous artist posted a fun comic strip
Any way that’s all I’ve got time for, now run free horse! RUN FREE!
