It's time to do something I've never really tried before, and though I admit I'm not crazy about the idea I've come up with, the name of the game is adapting and overcoming.
For the next three months, I'm going to try a dramatic change with my commission pricing, especially on the lower end (standard and quickie, namely.) This is all a trial run, but it carries more implications than simply lowering the price of one or two things.
That being said, that's the big rub: standard and quickie commission prices will be dropping -significantly- for the next month, and if it goes well, for the rest of the summer. If -that- goes well, it'll probably stay that way permanently, but with lots of bills to pay and an unexpected, added bill from my car being struck in a parking lot over the weekend, I dare to say this needs to go well.
Here's the brief, by the numbers rundown of what's changing, and what we need to accomplish over the next three months.
New Prices and Turnaround Times
Standard: Dropping from $32/1k to $25/1k words. To offset this drop in price, standard commissions will have no guaranteed completion time until you reach Gold Level of the Premier Club, and that number will start at 15 weeks.
Quickie: Dropping from $37/1k to $35/1k words. To offset this drop in price, turnaround time for quickie commissions is being lowered to 10 weeks, and dropping accordingly with higher Premier Club levels.
Rush, Super Rush, Next Day and Same Day: All going up slightly in price.
What this creates is a price scale where the next level up is always $10 more. $25 for Standard, $35 for Quickie, and so on.
Availability
In order to give Standard Level commissions a bit more sincere value, there will be exactly 50,000 of them available per month, for the next three months. If you don't get in on them, you'll have to wait to the next month, or, you can always purchase a story at a higher level for a faster turnaround time.
Over the next three months, if we sell all 100k words in a month, I'll give away a trio of 50% off story vouchers, and I'll unlock a bonus 20k block of words; 10k of this will be standard.
Financial Goals for the Blitz
I need $3500 a month from commissions, full stop.
That sounds like a crazy number to a lot of people, I'm sure, but it's actually not that far off from what we're doing right now. What we need is that extra boost over the next three months to get caught up again, recoup some funds, and make it a little easier to handle getting through to the fall months.
If we hit that $3500 a month goal on a rolling average from May to the end of July, I'll keep this new pricing scale as a permanent fixture and consider this experiment a success. Note that this number does not factor in flat-rate YCH prompts, novel funding, Patreon, or Subscribestar.
Is there a sale in May?
Given that I just dropped my standard and quickie stories in price significantly, I was going to say no, but I love a good breeding story, so I will grant a "Mayternity" sale this month. Any story that features good, old-fashioned breeding (I will be a bit strict and say that it must be an M/F or I/F couple, or at least a couple where pregnancy is possible,) will receive a 1% off discount this month, in addition to the lower prices.
That's about all there is to cover. I do appreciate everyone taking the time to read this, everyone supporting my work, and everyone spreading the word around for me as much as they can.
With that, May commissions are open! Let's get this first round of the Blitz underway!
