100 Patron Goal Reached!
I am very excited to announce that I have reached my goal of 100 patrons! This accomplishment is a year in the making. Patron Elyce Willburn tipped the scale when she became a $5 SLAM CLICKER patron on Saturday, May 25th. Thank you Elyce!
When I made my 100 Patron Goal I also promised to start making Patron-Only Jetlagged cartoons, meaning exclusive cartoons only available to my patrons! I will start regularly posting those in June.
This is my second goal reached since starting a Jetlagged Patreon Page over a year ago. My first goal was to get enough monthly supporters to help pay for the overhead costs of running Jetlagged’s free distribution of weekly cartoons (i.e. website maintenance, subscriber lists, social media management program, Adobe drawing programs, paper, ink, pens, coffee…). Overhead costs being met, I could stop worrying about how to pay the bills and focus more on creating great content.
Since I keep my website and social media pages ad-free, I miss out on a huge income stream that many independent artists rely on. Businesses regularly reach out to post ads to my social media pages (a couple even wanted to buy my pages!). I went down that ad-road once before, getting paid to post about products I didn’t really care about. At the time I was desperate for money. But afterwards I felt gross. I didn’t like spamming my hard-won fans. So I made a new rule for myself: figure out ways to make Jetlagged sustainable and still feel good about it.
That’s when I learned about Patreon.com. Patreon is a platform for artists like me to allow their fans like you to support the comic they love. In return you get exclusive rewards, Jetlagged gets to keep growing and we both to get be apart of Jetlagged’s mission to make flight crews laugh every day.
Patreon has been a great income stream to my overall art business. It’s something I think a lot of independent businesses could glean value from. But it’s not the only thing sustaining Jetlagged. My web shop, wholesale book orders, custom cartoon work and (hopefully) product licensing also toss a few pennies my way. However, these sources are sporadic and unpredictable. That’s why I really value my patrons, because I get a fixed amount every month, just like a real job! I know what I can afford and what I can use to reinvest back into the overall business.
So thank you again Elyce and to all my current patrons for believing in my work!
If you’d like to become a patron, please visit my Patreon Page, where you can read about the different tiers of support and the rewards I offer at each level.