June 2019 General News #1 (Patreon)

'ey everyone. A news update for June. First, I'll start off with the positive news. 

Week 1 recap

During the first week of my relaunch, I created one full-color high resolution work, four exclusive previews and sketches, of which one was a patron request from the $60 tier, and one was a commission WIP. The exclusives were posted in my Discord server for $3+ patrons, but I will also collect them into a post here in my Patreon feed as well. I'm thinking every two weeks or so. That would mean the first compilation of exclusives will be posted later this week. Hopefully this is good enough for anyone who can't, or has chosen not to, use Discord. Feel free to post your thoughts here or via a message to me.

As for the overall quota so far, does that meet with your expectations? Of course, I still have three colored works to do this month, and two sketch requests, so those will be coming up.

Additionally, my support has grown by roughly $40 since the start of the month. Thanks to both returning and new patrons! You are very awesome! ^w^

Unexpected Expenses

Now, onto some less positive news. It seems my Patreon income needs to have VAT (the EU tax on goods and services) applied when I work as a light entrepeneur in Finland. Patreon already remits and handles VAT for its dealing with EU patrons, so I assumed the VAT part would be covered for, but when I'm operating under a company as a light entrepeneur, the Finnish VAT needs to be applied to all income and bills I send to commission clients and the like, when I'm receiving those funds. Finnish VAT is pretty high also, at 24%, so this is a big extra expense I didn't think was applicable to Patreon income.

I'm still in process of making sure it really has to be this way, but I'm preparing for the fact it does. I may have to consider looking into establishing my own company afterall, as I believe I might be able to avoid the VAT in some cases that way. Though then I'd have to still pay for accounting services, so it all comes down to which is cheaper in the long run; paying the VAT, or paying for the accounting. Running my own company does add a bit more paperwork and responsibilities too, so... I dunno.

Note that this isn't Patreon's fault in any way, but I'm hoping that they'll be ok with excluding VAT from pledges charged from EU patrons, since I have to pay VAT anyways. I will look into this as well.

Either way, VAT sucks. For the time being I've taken this into consideration in my finances, and adjusted the goals I've set on Patreon by about 15-25%, depending on how each rounds up or down. As an example, the previous goal of $600 is now $700. For June I'll still do content according to the $600 goal, but from July onward I'll be going with the new goals. Of course, if my support is at like $680 at the start of next month, I'll still go by the quota from the $700 goal if possible, because I really appreciate your support.

Reward Clarifications/Changes

You may have noticed that I posted the dialog variant and 'no tears' variant of the most recent work for everyone starting from tier $1, despite alternatives being listed as a $5 reward. I was thinking that moving basic variants like these to lower tiers would be fair, to incentivize new patrons to pledge at least the lowest tiers, while giving the $5+ patrons other special exclusives, such as nude/clothed variants and the like (for example, the commission I'm working on will have special alternatives available to $5+ tiers). However, with the above mentioned VAT expenses, I'm only moving the basic alternatives to tier $3, not $1.

So, from now on:

Tier $3 gets:
* Access to basic variants of most works

Tier $5 gets:
* Access to special variants of some works

I'll update the reward tiers on my Patreon page with these, soon.

Closing words

VAT sucks!