Have you heard of Patreon? You’ve probably heard of Kickstarter. Well, Patreon is a crowdfunding platform, but in a different way than Kickstarter. Kickstarter and IndieGoGo are mostly about one time projects (like a game or *cough* artbook). Patreon is about helping to support artists over the long term.
Instead of a one time large payment for a project, Patreon is about getting smaller regular payments to help fund an artist every month. Just like Kickstarter there are rewards for your patronage, but usually they are digital rewards like exclusive content or behind the scenes access.
We went into doing webcomics knowing full well it’s a long road before they ever start paying off in any financial way. Advertising used to be the main way of supporting oneself doing webcomics, but now many are turning to Patreon. We’ve started thinking about creating a DPI Studios Patreon page and we’d love to get a little feedback about reward ideas. We’d actually love any feedback really, you’re a very quiet bunch.
So far, we’ve brainstormed the usual rewards. For a couple bucks a month you’d get access to work in progress shots and character sheets (possibly getting the comic a day early). Then higher tiers would get access to a Patreon supporter forum or Slack channel, live streaming work sessions. And what I think is maybe the coolest idea for reward tiers $10 and up, a half back coupon to the DPI Studios store. For $10 you’d get access to everything else, but also every month you’d get a $5 coupon you could use online or when you see us at a con.
Let us know what you think about those ideas or if you have any to share leave a comment.