Patreon Tier Changes Beginning in July

Hey there, AniFam! Just wanted to give everyone a heads-up that we'll be switching up our Patreon tiers a bit at the start of July.

What's changing?

The main changes are that we’ve bumped the monthly recommendations up to the $3 tier and expanded the polls and feedback to more than just podcasts.

The new tiers will be as follows:

• $1/month:
  • Behind-the-scenes newsletters (like this one you’re reading right now!)
  • Polls: Vote to help determine future site content and store products
• $3/month:
  • Staff Picks: Monthly recommendations on anime, manga, and more
  • Direct Feedback: Suggest topics and titles for AniFem discussion, provide input on future Patreon perks, request merch products, and so on (to be voted on by all patrons)
• $5/month:
  • Discord: Access to our AniFem private server
  • Monthly Podcasts: Bonus 30-minute audio and transcript

(We’re also considering offering yearly subscriptions with some additional perks or discounts included, but we’re still working out the details, so put a pin in that for the time being.)

Why the changes?

We knew when we added the new perks at the beginning of the year that we'd take a small loss at first since we needed to pay writers, editors, and transcribers to produce the bonus content, but we were hoping the new perks would encourage enough new or boosted patrons that it would offset the costs.

Unfortunately, things haven't shaken out like that. Things are tough out there for folks, so despite both adding new perks and launching the online store, we've actually lost more funds than we've gained in the last 6 months. So, we need to recalibrate a little.

The previous $3 perks weren’t attracting many new subscribers, and since recommendations/reviews are one of the biggest requests we get from readers, we’re hoping that bumping the staff picks to this level will encourage boosted subscriptions while still remaining affordable for our audience.

We understand this may come as a disappointment to some of our $1 tier patrons, and your frustration is valid. We really, truly appreciate all your support, and we struggled a lot over this decision because we didn't want to take anything away from our current patrons. 

However, we also need to be able to pay our staff and contributors fair wages for their work. It was a tough decision, but this option gives us the opportunity to break even again without having to cut any of our published content, so we're going to try it out for a while and see how it goes.

We'll have more detail about the state of the site in a public update in July, but we wanted to give y'all a heads-up in case you wanted to adjust your tier or voice any questions or concerns before these changes go into effect.

Thanks as always for your support, AniFam!