Tag: Patreon

Figuring it out, little by little

Jen
JFries leaves banner 12.31.19

Hello, all. It’s been a while, as usual.

I have been off wandering in the weeds again, trying to figure out how to organize all the new tools and features I’ve been picking up in building my little corner of the online world. I have progress to report.

Behold!

It’s an org chart.

A Jen-style org chart – over-thought, drawn free-hand, complete with smudges and the ghosts of erasures, a big ol’ patch where I messed up in ink, and pencil notes indicating more to come. Terrible photo, I admit, due to having no scanner at the moment and the weather here being so stormy, I can’t get good light even with lamps. Oh, well, it’s a working draft, still in progress. The original is hanging over my desk now.

The point is that it’s all finally starting to make sense. Take a tour with me:

The Studio: This is where I work the magic, all by myself. This is my workspace, home base, refuge, and one-person think tank. Everything flows from here.

The Website: The official online hub for all things Jen Fries Arts. Whatever happens in the Studio ends up here eventually, and everything else revolves around this site. If you’re looking for anything to do with my work, this is the place. Over the next few days, I’ll be adding some tabs, updating some buttons, and sprucing the joint up.

Community: Free, public, via Patreon. The new social media arm of Jen Fries Arts. This the place to find frequent updates on WIPs and the Arting Life, engage in discussions, participate in challenges and prompts, and purchase digital downloads, starting this month. And we can do it all without the intrusive, passive-aggressive shenanigans of the social media platforms.

Patrons: Paid, exclusive, via Patreon. Friends of the Studio who opt to support me with a $5 monthly pledge receive exclusive content and benefits as well as my heartfelt gratitude and appreciation. Patrons will enjoy free downloads, discounts on purchases, backstage looks into my creative processes, discussion threads on art and writing, invitations to events, and more as we go along.

Newsletter: Free, private, via Email. The newsletter is being transformed into a monthly digest of Studio News and Community content for those who prefer to keep things mellow, far from the social media hurly-burly.

Buy: All the legit venues where my work is sold will be listed and linked on this site. Artrepreneur for original artworks. Patreon for digital images and files (coming soon). My email for commissions, licensing, or offline sales. And more to come, including art prints, books, and other stuff currently simmering in my head or in development.

Offline: I’m a real person living in the real world where I do real things. Watch this site for exhibitions, pop-ups, and in-person events. Check out my public, professional network. Someday, there may even be some courses and workshops.

Check out Patreon features here. Sign up for the Newsletter here. Visit my Artrepreneur shop here.

And this not all I’ve been doing.

October will see new artworks and poems.

An Alchemy of Dragons is very much alive. Chapter 4 is getting reposted in two parts for more screen-friendly reading length, with additional illustrations. Chapter 5 is written and waiting for its illustrations. Our second protagonist has arrived at last. Chapter 6 is scheduled for this month as well.

And I’ll be exploring the season with some witchy, autumnal moods. Be on the lookout for moons, dreams, and magical stuff.

Happy Autumn!

– Jen

Studio News: New Features Now and Soon

Jen

Okay, so I’ve mentioned that I recently launched a Patreon for my studio, and today I have an announcement about new and exciting features on that platform!

As of today, anyone may join my community on Patreon for free, with the option to upgrade to a Friend of the Studio paid membership at any time for just $5.00 per month.

And in the near future, it will be possible for anyone to purchase digital downloads of select artworks and writings via Patreon, even without a paid membership.

Now, this is all brand-spanking new at Patreon, and I’m not entirely sure how it’s going to go. My hope is that these changes will fill certain key gaps in my creative set-up. For example:

Outreach:

Social media is not my scene. I’m sorry, I loathe all the platforms so much. I just cannot with the You-Twit-Face nonsense, and the hopeful competitors desperately winging it, and none of it makes any damn sense except that the algorithm thinks you’re posting the wrong stuff and not enough of it. Ugh.

Don’t get me wrong. Half of the very exclusive club of my beloved followers are on Facebook. But I’m pretty certain most of them know me offline and/or found me on that site from this site. I’m sure as hell not getting any visibility from FB itself because I don’t play to the algorithm.

Patreon doesn’t use an algorithm to dictate who gets seen and who doesn’t. I will rise or fall through my own outreach efforts. Sounds kinda like some old-school internet stuff. I like it.

Community:

This is another, ironic way social media fails me, because if you don’t feed the platforms the way they like, the algorithms will make it very hard for even a hand-built community to work, let alone grow.

WordPress, my gracious web hosts whom I adore, do offer chat and forum plug-ins, but I would need to purchase a higher service tier to add them to Jen Fries Arts, and I can’t afford it right now.

Patreon is charging nothing – a whopping $0.00 – for tools to build a community with people who like my work. And as a platform, it’s not full of extraneous junk, bots, and trolls. It is directed towards fans of the creative arts, so I am hoping it will be a lot less daunting and a lot more constructive to do outreach there than on social media.

A Helping Hand for Writer Jen:

Artrepreneur hosts my online shop for original artworks. It’s fantastic. I love it. You guys need to check it out.

But it’s just for the artwork side of the studio, especially, the physical pieces of art. (I will offer giclee prints once I (a) find a domestic, unionized, green printer I can afford and (b) learn how to prep images properly.)

I have had no similar outlet for my writing to connect with an audience, to promote my projects, and to earn some income. Patreon offers that, so the writing projects such as An Alchemy of Dragons will be prominent there.

Downloads:

It is surprisingly tricky to sell downloadable art and writing online – like, technically challenging. You end up with a lot of half-assed not-quite-right tools cobbled together with cyber-spit and string.

Patreon is now enabling me to sell art and writing in digital formats with, we hope, very few headaches. I’ve wanted to do this with some of my works for a long time but couldn’t get it set up right, with proper security, etc., on my own website. Artrepreneur doesn’t handle this kind of thing at all. So I’m eager to get started with this.

Be on the lookout for printable cards and booklets, images to use on your screens, etc.

I am building some redundancy into my system with Patreon. Its interface is very similar to social media and this very blog. There will be exclusive content on Patreon for paying Friends of the Studio, but most of the public content there will mirror or just link back to Jen Fries Arts, to reduce duplication of labor.

If you already follow this website, you don’t need also to join the Community on Patreon, unless you would like to sign up for a paid membership. But if you wish to sign up there for free to help me get the ball rolling, you might want to tweak your email notifications from this website. Patreon will automatically send you email notifications of new posts, and I don’t want you to get double notifications.

In any event, Patreon is a new addition to the JFA system, and I hope it will be fun and useful!

Visit my Patreon here or via the button at the bottom of the page, and see what you think.

-Jen

I want to hear from you

Jen

I have posted my very first online poll. It’s on my shiny, new, barely scuffed Patreon, and I would like very much if you would check it out. If I’ve done it right, you should be able to vote for free, without setting up a new account or becoming a patron. You can see it here: Jen’s Patreon – Public Poll.

It’s kind of a focus-group thing. An Alchemy of Dragons is my biggest current project and the one I’ll be talking about the most on Patreon – and increasingly here, too, fair warning. So to help me get organized, I’m tapping all you fans of writing, fantasy, and world-building to let me know which parts of the process you’re most curious or enthusiastic about. The options are:

  • World Building
  • Character Design
  • Magic System
  • Art and Illustration

Choose as many as you like.

Becoming a patron, aka a Friend of the Studio, is entirely optional.

Some content will be reserved for patrons only, such as video projects, podcasts, tutorials, etc. Those kinds of projects are high on my future plans list, but they cost quite a lot to make in both money and time, so I really can’t do them on spec, as it were. They will need to be paid for. And there will be other thank-you perks for people who like my work enough to want to support my studio with a monthly pledge.

But I’m about selling finished work – art, books, poems, etc. That’s how I would ideally like to earn my living. So this site will always be a place where people can keep up with me and enjoy what I do and have the option to make a purchase.

But if you would like to become a Friend of the Studio by supporting me, you can sign up for a monthly subscription via Patreon, or make a one-time donation via Paypal, using the buttons in the website footer.

For now, though, please check out what should be a free poll, especially if you are a fan of An Alchemy of Dragons.

I’m back! Miss me? Remember me?

Jen

As my long-time subscribers know, when I run into a creative problem, I tend to retreat into my burrow and gnaw on it – and gnaw and gnaw like a determined squirrel – until it’s dealt with. Then I come back and tell you a bunch of new stuff and resume posting.

Well, I’ve just finished another round of gnawing, and I am now emerging from the burrow.

The tough nut this time was Chapter 5 of An Alchemy of Dragons, appropriately enough. In Tarot, 5 is the number of struggle, complications, and finding one’s way, all of which describes the part of the story where Protagonist 1 finally meets Protagonist 2, and the perfectionist author has to obsess over every single freaking word and comma and every possible plot permutation over and over again.

I finally cracked it. Vistas have opened before me. The plot is improved all down the line. Necessary world-building edits for continuity are identified. Research has been done and decisions made about how to handle things that will come up later.

Plus, a lot of new writing and art projects were spawned in the process. Ideas a-poppin’ all over.

While I was at it … I launched a Patreon!

Now, don’t get nervous. Yes, I’m asking for money. I’ve been asking for money. There are donation buttons all over the website. Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed them. I have an online shop at Artrepreneur with its very own link in the navigation tabs. I know you’ve been avoiding it.

All I’ve done is add another support option. Jen Fries Arts is not going to change.

So why a Patreon, then?

Because Patreon will provide a secure system for subscribers who wish to become monthly supporters, and it will, I hope, help me manage my time and work flow and offer projects that would be hard to do on the WordPress website, as it’s currently set up.

Patreon demands consistent engagement by me, the creator, which should address that whole burrow-retreat problem. No more only hearing from me after you’ve started thinking I must have died. With Patreon, I’ll be getting paid to produce work on a real schedule, so I’d better do it.

Also, Patreon provides tools and a platform for things I really want to do in future, such as invitational social events, interactive online projects, discussion groups, and so forth.

Supporting my studio is completely optional, but it is deeply appreciated. 

I will always strive to make my money by selling my creative works, but we all know how the world is today. Sales lag desperately behind basic living costs. A creator can easily go utterly broke before their career can catch up with their rent. If I want to keep doing what I’m good at, I need to monetize it.

I refuse to put ads on my site and turn Jen Fries Arts into just another corporate marketing page. The only alternative is to encourage people who like what I do to pay for it, whether by purchasing the finished works or by patronage.

In an upcoming post, I’ll explain the details of the options I’ve set up. Please watch for that. It will be added to the About section, as well.

Click here to check out my Patreon now: Jen’s Patreon.

More upcoming posts will include a statement regarding generative AI because all the cool kids are doing it, and my big-picture plans for the Alchemy project, which is getting pretty ambitious.

In additional studio news, I have a new artwork on display in the summer show at the Brickbottom Gallery in scenic Somerville, MA. The exhibition is called “Carnival,” and it is running now through July 29th. Click here for gallery details. I will post notes about the new piece soon. The snakes are part of it.

So that’s the update. I’m back, sleeves rolled up, getting down to business, and I’m really glad to see you all again.

Happy Summer!

– Jen