Thank Gauze It's Friday!

Thank you all so much for joining me last week on the livestream, those are always so fun!  For those of you that may have missed it, you can still watch the replay of the livestream here: https://youtu.be/JOHCNiQiOnI

The observant among you may have noticed that I was wearing a new annular brooch - I hope you enjoyed the sneaky preview of the "Internet Apprentice" brooch, that I will be releasing soon as a Patreon reward exclusive.  It is high time I freshened things up around here on Patreon, and a new tier set seems like a marvelous opportunity for introducing new rewards :D

As a heads up for all current patrons:

The $1 tier will be unpublished. It is not actually going away, and if you are currently in this tier, you will continue to have early video access as a early adopter perk.   Patrons who don't want to or can't afford to pledge more don't need to change their pledge amount. To put it simply, the $1 tier will be unpublished so potential patrons are encouraged to join the higher tiers.  Part of the reason for this change is that while the fixed fee varies due to patron payment method and shared patronage, it can be as high as 30 cents per transaction.  Patreon recommends keeping creator's lowest tier priced above $1.00 to avoid a high processing fee effective rate.  This has been the case for a few years now, but I am only just now finally following that advice because...

I want to give back.  Starting with January, I will donate a dollar for every patron we have every month to a different charity (i.e. if we have 100 patrons at the start of a month, we would donate $100).  I am finally in a position to give back, and gosh darn it, let's make it happen.  I will need to lean on you all for recommendations - please comment or message me with the names of awesome charities that need some love!

Adding Discord!  I have had a few requests asking if I would consider adding a discord channel for patrons, and now is the time!  Discord is an easy to use platform for everyone to chat and hangout, and is integrated with Patreon to make access very easy.  The main page here on Patreon isn't the most conducive to group chat, so Discord will help fix that. This will be added to the $5 and up tiers.

Exclusive "Internet Apprentice" Brooch!  I am so darn excited about this new annular brooch!  This will be replacing the mystery mailing reward: I had a lot of fun deciding what to mail each month for new patrons, but I have been suffering a bit of decision fatigue and need to simplify some things in my life.  This way you all also know exactly what will be sent to you.  Less fun, but more certainty. This will be a $25 (and up) tier reward.

New Top Tier! I have had such a fun year deciding what goodies to put in the mail for my amazing top tier folks!  I had to cap it at 5 members because I was having difficulty finding enough cool different things to put in there every couple months.  It turns out that I don't make nearly as many small 'for fun' projects as I used to, now that I have lots of filming and video editing to fill my time!  The experience really helped stretch a different type of creative muscle than I am used to and I am so happy I did it, but it's time for a change. 

To summarize:

• What would you want to see as a top tier reward? 
• What charities do you recommend? 
• Do you have any concerns or questions about the proposed tier changes?

Please comment or send me a message about any and all of this!  

Feeling a bit shy about giving input?  Here's a Google Forms link for those of you that would rather leave anonymous feedback: https://forms.gle/kMi1DMEtv6kd8awLA

Nothing has changed yet.  Everyone will still get their current rewards associated with their tier that they've already paid for.  I don't have an exact start date for these changes yet, but I'll hopefully have an update next Friday!