Cutting down on story reward tier - thoughts?

Hey all! Sorry updates have been a bit slow - it's a good thing I'm only taking two classes this semester, 'cause these two are shaping up to be a bit more complex than I was expecting |3

But anyway, I've started thinking a bit about maybe cutting down on the number of slots for my top reward tier, where y'all get a full story commission every few months. It's been fun while I've had it going, but also as it's gone, I've started to grow a bit... uneasy, I guess, about pretty much having that required commitment. There's also the issue of a few of you often having no idea what you want for your story when your slot comes up, and then that's a wasted slot when I could be putting out a product.

For the months where I have some of your slots overlap, my regular queue pretty much stagnates (or grows!) for the duration of that month, since I've stated that Patreon stories claim priority over my other stuff, so long as I'm not currently working on something. That sucks a bit too. Then there's the whole money thing: y'all are paying at a hefty discount (about 30%) for a guaranteed, priority commission slot. Charging higher or spreading it out even further would just make it a slog, though.

At the heart of it all I think it's just not something I'm gonna wanna do anymore. Thing is, though, that's almost half of my total Patreon income, and I'm not gonna pretend to hope that all of you are the type who'll pledge that much for no personal reward - I do have a few patrons that go above and beyond with some sizable pledge amounts for no reward, but those are definitely the exception. I've always viewed Patreon as a system for creators to give little incentives and bonuses to show thanks for support instead of a delayed commission/contract system, and here I am doing the precise opposite.

I'm also still wanting to branch out and expand the content in my gallery - if you've been watching my stuff lately, you'll've seen that I've been trying to pick up and write more nonmale content - and not having that required commitment will allow me to get back into doing more regular personal stories and things where I can actually do that. (Looking at my files, the last time I wrote a story with Lukas that was for myself rather than a trade or commish or anything was in June 2017.)

Do you think this would be better to slowly taper off, or to just cut off all at once? I'm really worried about the monetary loss, since right now Patreon and commissions are my only income! I guess if you're willing to take that step and drop off the reward tier, send me a message and let me know - and again, you don't have to drop your pledge amount, but I'm certainly not expecting you to continue pledging at that level.