Hi Neal!

These are suggestions and comments on your patreon from a loving fan of your content. I mean no insult and if this email sounds condescending, I really don't mean it to. I'd really appreciate the chance to have a conversation with you about this via voice.


Okay, so I mentioned a little while ago about a few Patreon ideas. You said that I should toss you an email about it, so - here you go.

First of all, I want to mention that I am somewhat invested in you as a streamer, I fully acknowledge that this is kinda weird, as I'm not in your chat often, and you probably have no idea who I am. For a little bit of background I've followed you since like, week 10 or so of the original Rollplay on various different accounts, and have rooted for your success as a streamer since, I've subbed to you around twice and I've probably watched anywhere from 100-500 hours of your content. I say this just to make clear that I'm not just making these suggestions without any idea of what your channel is about or without having watched any of your content.

So, let's go through it. It should go without saying that all of this is my opinion, and obviously not necessarily fact. I don't have a Twitch stream, and I'm not a 'professional Patreon organizer'. I'm just a nerd with too much time on his hands who really likes a lot of your stuff.

The first thing we need to do is establish a few things, the first one is why people pledge on Patreon, the second is the identity of your channel and the way your viewers look at you, and the third is how you can best capitalize on that. I'm going to do a lot of talking about money here, I acknowledge that streaming isn't just about money, nor am I making the assumption that you view your viewers as human pay checks, it's just easier to get through this thing if we look at it that way.

Alright, so. Why do people pledge on Patreon?
There are a couple of main reasons for this. The first one is to support a creator whose content they enjoy thoroughly. The second one is to gain more perks or more content from this creator. A minor third reason is to be able to interact with their favourite creator more. This is why you sometimes see things like: "A personal skype call with me once a month!" in the higher tier patreon rewards. These are to capitalize on the viewer’s feeling that they know the creator as a person. I'm going to proceed under the assumption that these three things are true.

Next, what exactly is your channel, and how do your viewers see you?
In my view, your channel is at its core a D&D channel.
It’s not that all your channel is good for is D&D, not at all. However the majority of discussion and topics around your channel are D&D related, the most popular content on your YouTube channel is D&D related, with the most popular video on your YouTube channel being week 1 of Dicing with Death, and we first see a non D&D piece of content as the 6th video down, which is Love Bytes. Your Twitch Streams are most viewed when you play D&D, and 95% of the discussion on your channels discord is related to D&D as well.
So, how does your image in the eyes of your viewers play into this?
Your viewers see you as an expert DM. Someone who is able to keep games running for incredibly long periods of time, who is able to make their games varied and interesting. You’ve also gained a reputation as an intelligent, kind person who hasn’t had any sort of major drama and has a good relationship with his chat. (#Koibots anyone?)
Cool. So we’ve got what I view to be the core of your content and Patreon as a general concept down. How do you best capitalize on this? Ideally, you want to play into the image that your viewers have on you, as well as use your Patreon to benefit your content.
Let’s go through your Patreon tier by tier, and I’ll note down things I see as a missed opportunity.
$5 Tier – Goblin Grunt
This is the lowest tier you currently have available. It costs the same amount of money as a Twitch subscription, and the perk of this tier is the listing of the Patrons name on your Twitch page.
$10 Tier – Goblin Scout
This tier has the same benefit as the previous one, getting your name listed as a supporter on your Twitch page, but you get access to a super-secret discord chat as well.
$25 Tier – Goblin Warrior
This tier gives you the same benefits as the previous ones, but you also gain access to the exclusive posts on your Patreon page featuring unreleased sneak peek content!
$100 Tier – Goblin Shaman
The same rewards as the previous tiers, you also get an invitation to the weekly Shenanigans cast.
$250 Tier – Goblin Subchief
This is the second highest tier you have available which gives you all the benefits of the previous tiers along with the Patrons name listed under producer credits on videos.
$1000 Tier – RegalGoblin
The patron gets all the benefits of the previous tiers, as well as being allowed to collaborate with you!

The first thing that sticks out to me when I look at these rewards is that the patron gets almost nothing for actually contributing. Sure, their names are mentioned and they get access to a secret discord chat when they patron more than $10, but they don’t actually receive all that much. To illustrate this point, let’s look at the two things a patron can possibly receive from contributing to your patreon.
An invitation to the Shenanigans Cast.
This is a phenomenal reward. It plays into the image your viewers have of you as a phenomenal GM (which I personally agree with), it provides you content to both stream on Twitch and upload to your Youtube channel, which provides more viewership to you, and it deepens the interaction between you and your viewership. It’s a really great reward.


Access to the Sneak Peek content.
This reward is not so great. Let’s look at the release schedule of your Sneak Peak content. We’ll go back a little while, but hopefully enough to illustrate my point. I’m writing this email on the 29th of March in 2017.
October 13th, 2017 – Sneak Peak: Poetry & Lore
This is the first piece of Sneak Peek content, and it was posted 5 months ago. If I was a $25 patron, which I now am! And I take advantage of the Super-Secret Discord Chat, that means I’ve paid $25 - $10 = $15. Your Patreon charges monthly, so: $15 x 5 = $75 in the last 5 months for one piece of content.
September 27th, 2016 – Sneak Peak: The next DwD character.
This is the second piece of Sneak Peak content I run into when scrolling back, and it’s the next Dicing with Death character. Now, I can’t fairly comment on this as I’m not currently a $25 patron, so in interest of complete fairness, so let me go ahead and pledge to your Patreon for $25 to be able to be completely fair!
Okay, so I just pledged and clicked the Dropbox link. It’s been removed. I cannot access it.
The other posts here are very short pieces, you’ve got a little bit about the regalgoblins website design, and you’ve got some comments on the way your games are going and the potential developments in them.
I feel like we can both agree though that the content here is fairly sparse. Just for the Patreon perks, there isn’t much of a reason to go for this $25 pledge unless I just wanted to support you that extra amount. There’s a good argument to just have your Patreon be this! Just for people who want to go the extra mile, but it’s not the way you maximize your revenue.
I don’t want to go much further before this, because this email is already long enough and I’d prefer not to spend several hours going down your page. I’d love to have an actual voice conversation about this though whenever you have some time just so there’s an actual back and forth.

Like I mentioned, the $100 tier is really well done. But you’re missing a lot of monetisation opportunities in the earlier stages. Why do you not have a $1 tier? I recognize that this is less money going to you than on a Twitch subscription – but a $1 patron is far more likely to move up to the higher tiers on Patreon than a Twitch subscriber is.
Furthermore, why is the Secret Discord Chat a $10 perk? I’m in there now, you just invited me. It’s incredibly dead. Before I was in here, the last post was made on the 8th of February. The one before that was on the 7th of August last year. That’s 1 and 6 months between posts respectively. Upping this to a $5 tier would make it more active, and make more people pledge to you because $5 is less than $10, obviously.
This is all ignoring the fact that there are even more Patreon ideas that we could name. I don’t want this email to get even longer, so I’ll just quickly list some of them off. This is just off the top of my head.
Advice on viewer’s campaigns! This could be turned into a Youtube show!
A general GMing advice show with patron questions being given priority!
A less extreme version of your highest perk! Patron names are bastardized and used as singular NPC names in your campaigns.
Lovebytes priority questions!

I really fucking love your content Neal. I think you’re a really great guy and you’re one of the only streamers I’ve ever subbed to. I’ve never pledged more than $5 to anyones patreon, except now yours. Please don’t take this as me just hating on you, I just want to see you succeed and I think that some of these ideas might help. Again, a voice conversation would be super helpful, and I’m really afraid that this email sounds incredibly hostile. Please don’t take it that way!

Thanks for all the hours of entertainment.

Jan Zegers ß that’s my real name.