I had hoped to postpone this a little longer until, say, closer to the launch of Frilly Pink, but I think this needs to come out now. Ship in a Bottle, and by extension its creator, is broke. We’re not making enough money from either donations or affiliate ads and signups to keep going at the current rate. Which is a shame, because you’ve all been so supportive of our series and art team over the past 5 years. But the simple fact is, I can’t keep an artist of Prettio’s quality, (nor, by extension, such an amazing colorist as Saint-Tail) if there’s no income. Prettio is paid on a per-page basis, and since there is no income from the site, I have run out of money to pay her. My own debt is far too high to keep leveraging this site in the hopes that it return to the “Glory Days” of 2010 when we were raking in a few hundred a month is donations or say, 2011-2012 when Glance was artist and we were pulling down another $170+ in affiliate earnings. Now, I make ZERO. The $5 here and the $20 there does not cover the almost $200/month in expenses this place was costing me.
So… does this mean…? Yes, it means I’ve had to let Prettio go because there’s not a dollar in the coffers to offer her. That also means that there will be no Chapter 6 until I get my financial situation under control. Without some help, this may be years. Unless you guys are really THAT hot to see me draw it. In which case you might see 2-3 pages per YEAR at the rate I was producing. *sigh*
This is bad. It’s VERY bad, because next month I am taking a further risk and launching a new paysite featuring my art, Glance’s art, and the stylings of one Ebenezer Splooge, plus a whole host of art by people who are no strangers to this site. So I have to shut down my one successful comic on the eve of my great triumph. As it stands, Prettio has already put out her shingle to drum up business and keep herself going. And I am kinda out of script. But Chapter 6 was going to be the big one. A year long finale to this series, and a very satisfying one at that. But now, that future is hanging in the balance. I’ll post up the last page of Chapter 5 this coming Friday and the cover to Issue 6 the following week, but if donations and affiliate signups don’t take a serious upward and permanent spike, Ship in a Bottle is doomed.
*sigh*
~Mace
Accepting Bitcoin / litecoin donations might be a good idea.
Also take a look at http://www.patreon.com
(although I can’t seem to find anything about adult content policy on that site)
“(f) will not be obscene or contain child pornography or be harmful to minors”
Code for “no porn”. Also, I don’t think Prettio will take Bitcoin. She’s pretty adamant about taking Euros. The problem is I have to PAY an artist in real money in order to maintain this level of excellence. Otherwise, we’ll just have to content ourselves with my less-than-incredible once-or-twice-yearly sporadic updates.
Prettio can create an account with BIPS.me or BitPay.com.
Either one of those would allow her to invoice you in Euros while allowing you to pay the invoice with donated Bitcoins. She’d never have to touch the Bitcoins herself – the Euro payments would just show up in her bank account. Both of those services charge lower fees than PayPal.
There are fairly easy solutions to all the problems you’ve mentioned so far.
Yo, we did the Patreon thing. Hope this message gets to you. Peace
Well, this certainly is a bummer.
Have you considered moving your NSFW strips into a collective like Slipshine or what have you? I know it wouldn’t be the same, but at least it would take the weight of hosting off your back. (Not that I actually know anything about how those collectives work, so mayhaps I should just shut up.)
Well, for the benefit of the rest of the class who also don’t know: the issue isn’t hosting. It’s paying the artist. As far as the adult paysites… well, unfortunately you don’t go to them. they look for you. And as the legends whispered on the wind go, I am persona non grata in the world of Josh L. 😉 So even if I were on the radar, he’d never talk to me, anyway. ^^;
Thanks for being a fan, though. It means a lot. 🙂
I wish I could help, this series is brilliant…….. If I can I will.
Donations on the right, subscription services on the left. If we can get enough of one, the other, or both, Ship in a Bottle will set sail again.
The problem is I am….. Unable to, not that I am not willing or that I just cannot do so….. I am unable to. Sigh……. Seriously, wish I could and I know that sounds like an excuse, which it is, but sadly……. If I can help in another way I will try.
If I were certain I could then I’d honestly, on my own, leverage this web comic. If nothing else then until Chapter 6 was done.
Sorry to hear of this news Mace :\ and just when I got home from vacation too! *could’ve seen it earlier but just got home now so yeah*
Hope Frilly Pink works out and you eventually get to run SiaB proper again 🙂
Well, you don’t have to give everything, but a small amount can be useful. We have donation incentives set up, and Prettio *IS* in the process of making up the $50 tier. The subject of said tier is gong to end up seemingly very apropos when you see it, though… ;_;
You need recurring donations or continual merchandise sales to make your model viable.
PayPal offers recurring subscriptions, so that’s one route you could take. However, PayPal overhead is very high. Asking people to donate $2-$3 per month is very expensive due to fees.
Another route you could take is Bitcoin. Since it is so new, the first project of any given type to accept them tends to get a lot of attention. So if you announced that you’re accepting them for this page and announced it on the /r/bitcoin you’d get a lot of new exposure.
Accepting one-off donations is easy, you just need to display a donation address on your site. The software for facilitating recurring donations is a bit less developed, but AFAIK redonate.net and bips.me both have solutions for that, both of which charge considerably less in fees than PayPal.
Can’t do subscriptions. PayPal is a ticking time-bomb because of how their regulations work. that said, we do still take basic donations and there are rewards for the whole class if we can hit some additional tiers. If you click that headshot of Peppermint that says “Donate?” at the right and then click the same image AGAIN at the landing page, behold! Donations are accepted. I only just now got it working, though. There were… issues.