We Need Your Help (Changes To How We Do Patreon)

Hi MinuteEarth Patrons - 

We are making some changes to our MinuteEarth Patreon page. We try to make our videos as accessible as possible, and that has helped us not just build our audience, but also get sponsorships and ad revenue. But tweaks to how YouTube promotes videos, along with changes to how sponsors are choosing to spend their money, mean that our funding has become less reliable recently. Couple that with our desire to release more videos more often, and it's clear that we need to find more, and more reliable, funding. If we want to continue to make punny, illustrated videos that that hopefully change the way you think about the world, we’ll need need support from our viewers more than ever.

Our Patreon page is home base for that effort. Here’s what that means:

1. We hope you, our Patreon patrons, will help us reach our goal of $4,500 per video. We’re getting more and more efficient at making videos while sticking to our exacting standards (for both science and puns!), but it still costs us roughly $9,000 to create each one of them. We’re hoping to earn at least half of that from from a combination of new patrons and extra generosity from our current patrons like you!
2. 
From now on, most of our patrons are going to receive all the rewards. It turns out that we are better video creators than we are perk managers, and as a result, we have done a terrible job getting you some promised rewards like tutorials and hangouts. WE ARE SORRY! We are getting rid of those rewards and focusing on making great videos, which is the reason most of you started supporting us in the first place! In addition, all of you will now have access to our videos before the masses do, and all of you will be able to benefit when our awesome illustrator Ever brightens your life (or at least your computer) with a 4k wallpaper. Note: $50 patrons will still be the only patrons with their names in the endcard of our videos.

3. And we’re going to interact a lot more with you. We want you to be a bigger part of our creative process. We’re going to ask you to vote on video titles and images. You’re going to get to weigh in on making-of questions like “Is this poop joke too gross?” and “What pop culture easter-egg should we hide in this scene?” In other words, you’ll be hearing a lot more from us, and we’ll be asking for your input. 

You’re the ones who make it possible for so many people to watch MinuteEarth for free, and we truly appreciate your generosity. We're hoping that, if you can, you'll double down on your support for MinuteEarth. In the meantime, ask any question you want and we’ll answer it in the comments.

Thank you!

Team MinuteEarth

(Kate, Alex, Ever, David, Henry, Peter, Emily, Qingyang, Melissa, & Nathaniel)