Looking for Suggestions…
Have you guys heard about Patreon? It’s pretty freakin’ cool.
Patreon is a service that allows fans of creators to show them a little love by pledging a small amount of money per month. Think of it like Kickstarter, but instead of funding a project, you’re helping fund the creator. It’s proven very successful for some and I’d like to give it a shot. Heck, if every one of you agreed to donate just one dollar a month, I’d be able to quit my day job and draw comics for you guys full time!
Now don’t fret – my comic will always be free, but if you’ve ever wanted to give me a little something for making you laugh once in while, now’s your chance. Patreon allows you to donate as much as you want per month, you can even set a maximum amount to make sure you never pay more than what you’re comfortable with.
Before I set up my Patreon account, I need your help. I want to set up several pledge tiers but I’m having trouble coming up with anything good. So far all I’ve got is a tier where I’ll allow folks to watch me draw my comic live on Ustream. But it hit me last night – why not ask the readers if there’s anything they would be willing to donate a little extra for?
So what do you guys think? Any sorta extras you’d be interested in? Just think of my comic as the Blu-ray and the pledge tiers as the Special Features.
Thanks!
You know what? I’ll do a dollar a month. It’s cheap for me and hopefully everyone else will do it, too.
Also, I’m fine with just about anything.
That’s me. Fine with just about anything and I’ll fork over a dollar per month. More comics (weekends!) would be nice but you should really work at a pace you’re comfortable with, less the quality suffers.
And I don’t need to see you draw, much like I don’t need to see you think about the jokes (thirty minutes of “Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…” on a daily basis, yay). Indeed, I’ve never watched dvd extra’s in my life. I just want finished product.
OK, one suggestion: send in photo, get buggified portrait. But that’s probably going to be too expensive for me. And I’m not going to suggest the book. Not again. You should know by now I’d buy that 😛
A bugified portrait would be doable.
Also: “I’ll buy that for a dollar!”
Dammit! I wanted to say that!
Awesome! Thanks!
I like the “Tomorrows comic today” pledge level for webcomics. (Usually $3)
The sad thing is that I get these done so late, that most folks would only get it an hour before they post.
You need to write a bunch of comics in one day so that you always have a buffer. Then you can afford to take a day off too.
Take a look, maybe you’ll get some ideas.
http://www.webcomicpolice.com/2013/12/is-patreon-future-of-webcomics.html
Yes a dollar a month would be great, and I’m also fine with $5/month. But with something extra, like a mini-sticker or something. And maybe a small poster for like $10/month?
I did the sticker/poster idea. I think most Patreon users make electronic pledge rewards, but I’ll look into to sending out physical items.
If anything, I’ll sell stickers and/or posters eventually.
Hmm. I am a nerd. An (really) old nerd. The humor in these comics harken to the nerd humor of yore. Today’s nerdy comics, by and large, focus on a kind of high-brow, snide, cynical, overly complex humor. I’m not above a little sophistication, don’t get me wrong; but they miss out or abandon entirely a good old fashioned poot or booger joke. We old-school nerds eat that stuff up…??…!!!…well, we don’t…ya know…I mean, literally, [mimes chewing] or anythin – WHATEVER!
Maybe some of the incentives could appeal to us. We were all about the T-Shirt before it became hip(ster-esque). I vote: T-Shirt (but unironic)
How about at a higher level, a set of BUG Lego minifigs? or DnD figurines?
You don’t gotta give it away either. I think a lot of us are willing to kick in a buck for BUG, gratis. It’s the comic that we think we could write if we had time…which we don’t…but if we did, (we still likely wouldn’t because we only PRETEND it’s actually the time we are lacking, and not something else). Bug Martini is accessible. I enjoy that.
I can hear the conversation now:
-“I quite enjoy this little internet funny. Here is your Bug Buck good sir. Use it well.”
-“What’s that you say? For a mere $XX more I get a T-Shirt? Why yes. Yes, I will.”
-“Hold on. If I increase that contribution by $XX I also get a full set of minifigs or figurines? How can I not?”
-“There is yet another level? It appears to be quite a bump in price. Oh, my T-Shirt gets upgraded to a personalized custom comic printed on it? Say no more. I’ll take three!”
-“You mean at the top level I get a…a…[passes out]”
Sorry for the rambling. I woke up in the middle of the night in the throes of a pork rib BBQ hangover. Well, back to the white room with black water for me.
No apologies necessary. I dig the mini-figs idea. That may have to wait, though.
I already have a few webcomics I sponsor on Patreon and would jump at the chance to throw money at you. But I don’t know what you could offer as “extras”.
There’s a few that I get some extra sketches for and they’re cool. Some I get some progression sketches of the comics, sometimes they’re interesting, but I often don’t actually look at them.
And some I get some sped up videos of the drawings. I don’t think I’ve ever looked at one 😛
One thing I do like is the Penny Arcade TV shows where they go through the ideas for the comic; but that might just be the two of them playing off each other that’s the fun bit.
I would like getting a personal sketch each month, but I imagine that would be fairly pricy 😛
The personal sketch idea is something I’m seriously thinking about.
I look forward to it! 😀
You know if give you $4/ month that makes my Patreon a round $10/month 😉
If there was an extra panel every week — just a goof, like the SMBC extra panels — I’d buy that for a dollar a month.
Maybe limited edition prints of bug indicating the level you subscribed at. Things like hosting services, snack master, etc.
PDFs of the book that you will complete some day 😛
Definitely. E-books seem to be all the rage on Patreon.
After a person donates certain amount, he or she can send you a photo and you make it a bug, one time character in a strip.
One could be taking suggestions for a theme week and then voting on the best. I mean, I know you do a lot of butt/fart jokes, but I could really use a whole week of them.
I’ll happily fork over a buck a month to support my favorite web comic.
yea, i don’t have much to give but considering i come here everyday I think the creator should get a little something. I wouldn’t notice a dollar or 2 a month and hopefully everyone would chip in.
Thanks!
A signed print of the comic of one’s choice would be cool. Maybe at the $5-$10/month level, presumably after a period of time (1 year?) that makes sense for you.
How about at a certain level you do a Bug portrait of a suggested notable, or pick one of several suggestions– you do such good work with Hitler, Jackie Chan, the samurai, and others. That should be easier, or more distinctive, than trying to do a donor themselves.
I’d like to see those tie-fighters you draw on the reverse side of the comic for one of the tiers.
Bug gets me through a lot of work days on the RSS feed, and I have linked a lot of strips to friends when your crazy aligns with theirs.
So the thing that crossed my mind and I would pay for would be a personalised strip.
Not sure how possible that would be, but I thought I would give a suggestion. If you put the person in it then I suppose it could also act as the tier above the Bug portrait.
I would donate $1 per month. I don’t want to buy an ebook or a physical book, but I do enjoy your comic very much. I donate to a few others using Patreon as well, I think it’s a great idea.
Will there be a “win a hot date with nerdy cartoonist” level of patronage? I may need a prom date.
But no, seriously, I want a car window decal. Could you just market some merchandise already? I’d be in on the whole Patreon thing. Not familiar with it, but can it be done as an annual lump sum kind of thing?
I also love Patreon for allowing me to use my “fun budget” effectively.
As to rewards, personally I’d love high res desktop wallpapers. I don’t need “stuff” but I do use a wallpaper rotator and seeing things I like brightens my day. And it doesn’t need to be complicated. Stuff like the Saturday Sketches you posted back on 7/28/12 is cool to me…
Maybe you could offer more wallpapers for more contribution? Dunno about that part.
I’d love to support this. Dinosaur Comics has a tier with monthly hangouts for patrons, which would be cool.
Well ideally you would be able to set this up in such a manner that it would not require a lot of extra work for you to implement. Digital items like wallpaper, icons, sketches, etc all might be things you could put together without really eating up a lot of your comic making time.
Do you keep a lot of your originals? You could always try setting up a raffle for a random comic original on a higher tier. Or, if you felt like doing originals, maybe a raffle for ACEOs of Bug doing various things like derpy dance Bug; pop culture Bug; or whatever it is you felt like doing at the time.
As an aside, I see a fair amount of people using this place as a means to sell pdf books. Might be worth looking into
https://gumroad.com/
Originals are already for sale. Check the “Buy!” link directly underneath the cartoons. Price is a little out of my league atm :'(
I would like to see exclusive posters or prints or buttons for people who are donating when a certain reward tier is met. I already have a couple people on the paetron 5 bucks a month plan, I’d be glad to add you to my roster!
You obviously need a tire to suggest new tires.
I think it’s a good idea – and the personal comic/bugified portrait sounds great too.
Count me in. >.>
Shut up and take my money.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing a pledgers-only stream of you working with some personal commentary thrown in. It’s another popular “perk” for Patreon.
I do plan to offer folks who pledge a certain amount access to my Ustream where I’ll be drawing live and chatting with everyone there.
What about access to a sponsor only blog where you could posts random sketches and doodles you might do throughout the day. I enjoy seeing those on Twitter and like seeing sketches that are non bug related. Also, early access to any merch you might sell, or even just a name on a sponsor page on the site because everyone digs seeing their name somewhere.
Love the idea of contributing to your support, but — do you have an alternative to Patreon for those of us who don’t do autopayments online? F’instance, would lump-sum handwritten checks be a problem for you? I’d happily send you $12 or more a year. Provide an address (preferably a p.o. box to protect your privacy) and I’ll put a check in tomorrow’s mail.
I’m not too keen on accepting cash or checks by mail. But thanks!
Dang! But, I understand. I did think it might be tricky. Sorry about not being able to help — at least right now.
i’d like to be talked down from a tall building, or a piggy back ride, or a klondike bar, OR for you to just record your non-geeks of steel outings with matt.
I think signed reprints of someones favorite strip would be cool.
Forgive me if someone already suggested this (I didn’t read through ALL of the comments) … what about giving high-pledge donors ORIGINAL ARTWORK from one strip a month? (like $10 or more)
I don’t think you have to give anything back. We’ve been enjoying your comics for years now – for free. I wouldn’t mind pledging a buck or so a month. If every loyal follower did that it’d add up, I guess!
IF that was to happen and IF you’d then get more time on your hands dedicated to Bug, then it would be cool to see some kind of “behind the scenes”-work. But I feel like that should be out of joy and dedication and not out of constrictions and promises.
Also (and I don’t know if this is too much to ask) if you’d lower the price on buying the original comics, I know that my wall would be a bit more buggy than it already is. And that’s not only because I have a cockroach problem..
Thanks! I’ll have to consider making price adjustments.
I would gladly repay you for all the laughter you have brought to my mundane days.
Thanks!
Yeah, I’m late to the party, but I brought beers!
I Patreon-age Keith Knight, and one the things I like getting is the “behind-the-scenes” commentary. He’ll give a sentence or two about the incident that inspired the strip, or maybe what he was thinking about while drawing it.
I always enjoy getting some insight into the creator’s thought process (Pastis does this sort of Director’s Commentary on some of his books, too).
You could even vary how much commentary somebody gets based on how much they contribute:
$500 All five strips, plus a French kiss
The other advantage to this is it doesn’t take away from your drawing time (of course, maybe it’s faster for you to draw something that to try and think up something to say about each strip).
Anyway, good luck with the Patreon thing!
Perhaps badges? Badges are awesome. They’re the only piece of clothing you can kill someone with (aside from ties, but it depends on the material).
I suppose prints/anthologies/collections could support someone who draws daily. In one year, aprox, 261-ish pages are released (104 weekends out of a 364 day year) and that would certainly be enough to fill a print.
Good luck; I’m pretty late to the comic, but I’ve been enjoying the archive.
Why patreon and not flattr ?
While I enjoy your work, I’m not registering on patreon because there’s way too much pushing facebook in my face on their website even before I have the option to register.
But I’ll share tier ideas:
– If you have ads, remove them (I can’t tell if you have ads as I use and adblocker for obvious privacy reasons)
– if you participate in turning the internet into a surveillance/spying tool, remove the facebook and similar buttons
– if you give away your readers privacy to google without their knowledge, remove google analytics (try an alternative such as piwik or openweb analytics)
In other words caring for your readers’ privacy and fight against internet surveillance is a tier I could get behind
Publishing comics on the weekend would be nice.
A way to get all the archives comics to download for local viewing (I had to run a wget script to achieve this).
A behind the scene feature.
Well there’s the usual things like buttons, stickers, posters, t-shirts, maybe like postcards or portraits of the more frequent Bug cast members. For a higher tier you could combine all those things into one like those ‘loot-crate’ things (heard of them, really want to get one) like a Bug treasure horde. For a higher tier a buggified portrait of the patreon or a character of the patreon’s choice, maybe a special comic feature, or a patreon could suggest the theme of the week (would LOVE to see one with magical girls lol). I am also interested in the ‘behind-the-scenes’ thing where you could share commentary on what inspired you for your favorite and/or more difficult comics.
Being a Patreon supporter of a few other projects including comics, I’d love to support your comic as well. It’s a no-brainer really as Bug Martini is one of my all-time favorite webcomics. 😀 So I’ll keep a lookout for when your Patreon is up!
Also, after reading your About page I’m pretty much convinced that you’re my male clone. We even have the same birth date.