Plans, Changes and Looking Forward.

The hateful task of self promotion and marketing!

2025 has started with a few changes to how I promote, sell and fund my work. I set myself up on Ko-fi and have now made that the home of my official store, closing the previous store that was costing me a great deal. More than it was recouping in sales. Ko-fi can also serve the same purpose that my Patreon serves, and in a way that allows me to receive more of the income from my supporters' subscriptions.

After having made these changes, I find myself considering a few things and looking at what other changes I can/have to make to how I promote and market what I do and engage with my audience, as well as what changes are required having made this move to Ko-fi. I 100% believe the move to Ko-fi is the right thing to do, but it does impose some small limitations. Namely the content I can share on there. The work I create is of a mature nature, and although it technically is permitted on Ko-fi as their guidelines permit things such as artistic nudity as long as my account is tagged "NSFW," Ko-fi's automatic moderation struggles to discern between artistic nudity and outright pornography, which is not permitted. So updates and images I have shared there have been removed automatically as the automated systems flagged them as being against guidelines. I raised this with Ko-fi, and they acknowledged the limitations of their autodelete rules, which they are constantly reviewing. So, the reality of the situation is updates that I can share on Patreon, I cannot share on Ko-fi at this time, and this was a major consideration of the move to using their platform.

So all this has gotten me deep into thinking about the future and how I make the best use of these platforms, as well as my other platforms, such as my website. I've kept my Patreon open and I am running both that and Ko-fi in unison, allowing the existing subscribers to make the choice if they want to move over. I'll then share the same updates and content on both platforms. But do I impose the limitations Ko-fi puts on my content on my Patreon updates as well to ensure there is parity? Or do I still share content on Patreon that I can't share on Ko-fi, acknowledging the subscribers there may be missing out? It won't be a problem to keep the updates and exclusives SFW, but it would be preferable to keep my updates business as usual allowing me to share all relevant content I would like to share as exclusives to subscribers. For example, I recently shared the first nine pages of FLUX: Chapter Ten on Patreon, and attempted to do the same on Ko-fi, but, because of nudity, the images were automatically removed. Ko-fi have advised I could circumvent the auto-moderation by censoring the images (black bars, that kind of thing) but I would much prefer to share the content unedited where possible. I also have to consider future projects beyond FLUX, and being able to market them through Ko-fi. Some that may be more explicit than FLUX.

Once again, I find myself looking at how I can make better use of my website and how it could be the answer to this. I could create member only areas that only Ko-fi and Patreon subs have access to. Alternatively, I could give subscribers access to an exclusive Discord server where I share content that Ko-fi would otherwise filter and remove.

New projects.

Although there is still some way to go with FLUX, I feel I want to start on some new projects that have been rattling around inside my head. Once FLUX #10 is done will be the perfect time to look at these.

With these new projects, there are some for which I am considering a new approach to how I release them. Again, down to the above considerations, the subject matter and content may make some projects I'm considering not viable with Ko-fi. So I may look at releasing such projects solely through my website, free to read online. It may not generate any revenue for me, but could generate more traffic and engagement.

New Website?

With all the considerations above, perhaps a new website is in order. The current site is built in Blogger, which imposes some limitations to the customisations and layout. However the management of it is straight forward and easy, which is why I've been reluctant to move away from it. But if I want to create things like areas only accessible to certain users, as well as other features, then perhaps a new build is necessary.

Final thoughts...

I've got a lot to consider and it is hard to know what is best. But I've been doing things the same way for some years now, and I think now if the perfect time to shake things up a little!