Confusing Patreon page?

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Hi!
I’ve already introduced myself - so I keep it short. I’m a Swedish indie game developer working on a
2D Metroidvania stylish game called KnifeBoy… Like Super Mario for grownups…
Anyway, I woke up this morning and found a new comment on my Page saying "How you use patreon it’s confusing"
I tired to check this members profile and I also replied to him and asked “Why do you find it confusing? I can improve it if you can give me some feedback”…

My Patreon KnifeBoy

I didn’t get any reply and would love to know why its confusing?
Is there a right or wrong reason to be on Patreon?
I’m creating a game and I’m providing exclusive updates and early access to a Demo (in march) to my lovely Supporters.
If they support $1 for 10 months they get a free copy + names in the credits.
I personally think its a good deal and quite straight on. So what am I doing wrong?
I’m about to launch a trailer next week which looks epic (considering its a 2D Game :wink: thihi) and I’m finally ready to invite my Facebook friends and spread the Trailer in hopes of more backers… My goal is to raise around $1000 so I can afford to outsource some work to a freelancer in town… Is this the confusing part?

Because of this message “How you use patreon it’s confusing” I’m not sure anymore…
How can I improve? Whats wrong?

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Hej, hej!
I checked your page and I think you shouldn’t lose self-confidence over such a comment! It’s pretty straight-forward, the rewards are top-notch in my opinion: nicely paced for the money investment and really attractive. I watched your presentation video and I think it’s good. The only point I think might be a bit confusing is that you mention making comics first, which first got me to wonder a second “is this for a game or a webcomic” for a short while. I got the explanation after, but maybe if you instead said something like:

“I’ve been a comic artist since [year xxxx], but I now wish to expand my universe into a game as well. To reassure my readers: no, I’m not going to stop making comics! But making a game is a lot more work, and I’d like to be able to hire help to speed up the process, which is why I’ve started this Patreon. Additionally, this is also a good opportunity for my readers to support me and my comics.”

Maybe it would be a little bit clearer.
For the part about the New World Order, maybe you could show on the screen an organigramme with the names of the three organizations, and maybe their logo/symbol if they have one. It’s not mandatory, really, but I guess it can be a nice addition to the video.
I would also put the link to your site right under the video as well.

One last thing to remember is that some people are really… really dumb. You can put a huge button that says “click here to do the thing” and they’ll still ask “how do I do the thing? where is button? what is life?”
All we can do with those is to gently take their hand and take them on a personal little tour. I think that it’s just what some people just want: a bit of dedicated attention. Usually they’re very grateful for it. Sometimes it encourages them to try more on their own, sometimes not :smiley:

About your rewards, while $15 might seem like way enough to pay off a poster, I’d suggest you to make it into a community goal (ie: “and if we reach xxx$/month, you get a poster”). Posters tend to be difficult and hard/costly to ship because you need a cardboard tube to roll them in an protect them, and those are expensive as hell, take a lot of storage space, and cost a lot more for shipping (even though Sweden does have very cheap shipping prices compared to other countries).
I’d personally suggest you to print stickers, keychains/acrylic charms or buttons, as they are a lot easier to ship.

Finally, your story sounds like it’s set right now, in our world! xD With only a sliiight exaggeration :wink: It does make me think of my first webcomic series, so I’m going to check it out! – I saw you posted on Tapastic as well, but I’d recommend you to post page per page instead of in bunk, due to how the site algorithms work. It’s hard to get seen if you just post as a one-shot, ongoing series are a lot more likely to get seen. If you don’t want to log in there too often, you can schedule posts though :sunglasses:

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Hi!
Thank you so much for the feedback!
Yes, that presentation video is dated. I’m uploading a Trailer to replace it instead next week since its all about the game at the moment. the poster idea is good too.
Haha, yes, the story is… somewhat set in our world :stuck_out_tongue: The story changed allot since I started writing on it and its my first comic I ever made so… If you decide to read it, please bare that in mind :S
Regarding taptastic. thanks for the advice! Second comic book is out in Jan so I will try your advice and see if it get more following. :slight_smile:

Again ,thanks for taking your time to read my post and given such a great answer!

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You’re very welcome! It’s nice to see more and more creators from Sweden around too :slight_smile: (I’m not Swedish though that should change in the future but I live in the area of Nyköping)
And yes, the real world is a great source of inspiration xD I also started my first webcomic (Singmire Haze) as something a bit satiric though set in a supposedly perfect society :smirk:

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Ah cool!
Are you a student or did you move to Sweden recently?
I’m from a small village in Lapland but Im living in Tokyo at the moment :slight_smile:
Never been to Nyköping but… Your comic looks great!
Any chance for a Knifeboy “fan-art” drawing in the future? :wink:

Btw!
I backed you and as I picked $1 reward i had to fill out my address… Not sure why?
Is there anything you will send to your $1 supporters? I didn’t have time to read everthing and I literally don’t know my address here in Tokyo, so I decided to just support you instead.
Im defiantly in the minority when it comes to “I hate to fill out my address, username, passwords, etc” but in case there are others like me out there - you might want to un-tick that address option if it has no purpose, (the $1 Perk)… It could turn some people off - Sorry Im horrible at writing, but I hope it make sense! Keep up the good work!

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Wah, Tokyo, that’s fancy! Do you work or study there? I actually learned Japanese before, and was pretty good at it, but I forgot most of it by lack of practice! As for myself I tend to say I’m “very European” as I was born and grown up in France, studied and lived in Belgium for 9 years, and now live in Sweden because love led me here :heart:

And yes, the address is actually useful for something! It’s for the postcard milestone reward that all patrons can get over time. I must admit that it has proven very useful to ask it beforehand like this for at least one of my patrons who disappeared from the Internet at some point, wasn’t answering mails, messages or anything – I thought she might be dead but decided to send the postcard anyway with some words of “I’m kind of worried by your silence but I hope it just means you’re having other things going on in life and that it’s good, take care” :disappointed_relieved:
In the end it turned out she was thankfully still alive but had a down period, and the postcard was a little cheer^^

And for the fanart, maybe yes! I can’t promise in a near future because my wrist got a little strained so I try to reduce my amount of work if I can * says I who just impulsively revamped a page *. Reducing work isn’t easy >__>

(and you make sense, don’t worry!)

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Its great here.
I work here now. :slight_smile:I came as a student 3 years ago.
Yea, I used to speak german but lost everything for the same reason :stuck_out_tongue: I hope my Japanese will stick around!

I see! thats a good idea to send out stickers if I reach a certain amount of income. I have to look into it!
Hehe, no worries! Lets talk about it down the road. No hurry here. Knifeboy is most likley a year and a half away from completetion. Unless I find a freelancer ^^

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Hi again!
I re-uploaded my book. one page at the time and I changed the dialog and deleted the old one. I think…
The menus are super weird and Not sure if Im doing it right.
“Add episode” means new page right?
also, do you know if there is any way to upload all pages and put a timer on them so they release automatically so I dont have to log in every day and upload them manually?

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“Episodes” are what pages are called, because some series don’t rely on a traditional “page” format :slight_smile:
And if you want to plan the release of episodes over time, you can click “Publish Later” instead of “Publish Now” and pick the day of release on the calendar and specify the hour if that matters. It’s quite practical^^

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Cheers!
I managed to do it… A little bit wacky system. I mean, i had to upload one episode at the time. Would be easier if I could upload all episodes at once and place them on a calendar so they all release those days.
Btw, How do you do this “patreon only” image? I did one and I thought it would look similar to your page when you have a hand-drawn picture with the “patreon only” text. But when I upload my content, I get this ugly-standard-grey “Patreons only” image provided by patreon… Do you upload your “patreon only” as a post, and then you hide the content in a link inside that post? Is that how you do it? Sorry… does any of this make any sense? LOL

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In my opinion, the most problematic is that episode order cannot be changed after they have been published, which can be annoying if you suddenly want to add a prologue or whatever. The order is hard-coded, so this means it won’t be fixed unless the team plans a major site overhaul some day in a very distant future :confused:

As for the patron-only image, I create them separately entirely, and post them as “picture” post. Then I just put the link to the page hosted on Google Drive in the post’s description. Because my pages are hosted on Google Drive I can use my patrons’ email addresses to give them access, and prevent anyone else from viewing the content of the links. Every month I just copy the list of addresses and paste it in the relevant folders, depending on who gets to access what. It’s a bit of extra maintenance, but hosting on Google Drive also allows me to control whether patrons can download content or not, and to also give access to NSFW rewards without putting them on Patreon (this way I don’t need to tag my account as NSFW).