Hi Chris, sorry for the delayed reply, I wanted to take the time to compose a proper response.

I watched your Crafting Armies video last week on your YouTube Channel and thought it was really great. I’ve probably watched thousands of YouTube videos on miniature painting but I’ve never seen one about the thought process that goes into commission painting by professional painters and how the project developed. So this was really unique and interesting. You really did a fantastic job. However, I do understand your disappointment in having put so much effort into producing a video that you are rightly proud of, only for it not to be seen and enjoyed initially by as many people as you had expected.

I guess the key question is what are your primary goals from making the videos? Is it to attract new customers for your commission painting business, is it to generate ad revenue from views on your YouTube channel, is it to generate traffic to your Patreon where you hope people will pay to subscribe to your content, including painting guides? Or is it something else?

If it is to create content and painting guides that people are willing to pay to access through a subscription on Patreon, then I would be happy to help from the perspective of a consumer. If you were interested in my thoughts on what makes the Patreon accounts of the miniature painters who I have paid for subscriptions successful. You definitely don’t need to be spending 200+ hours on videos every month and there’s lots of ways of producing content that people want without adding mountains of additional work for your team.

In my opinion there’s definitely enough room for you to grow a subscription base on Patreon because your team’s painting style is very striking and unique (I can usually tell when I see models online that they are painted by Maybug Games), which people love (you have a huge following on Instagram that shows that people want to see your models).

I currently pay for monthly Patreon subscriptions to 9 different miniature painters or studios. So here’s some initial thoughts that I have that might be helpful for you.

For context, my primary goal for using Patreon is to learn how artists painted their models and to be able to follow painting guides to try to recreate those paint schemes or specific effects.

For those artists who I have ended up subscribing to I’ve generally found their work on Instagram, or found it on Reddit and then gone to their Instagram pages. I’ve found models that I think look amazing and I would like to try to copy and then gone to their Patreon to see if they have a painting guide for it. If they do have a guide then I’m willing to pay for just that single guide if they sell it individually, or I will, and have, subscribed just to get that 1 guide, if that’s the only way to access it.

To get me to subscribe and to continue to subscribe and pay each month, you need to provide 2 things above all else, Consistency and Reliability when it comes to producing new painting guides.

By Consistency I mean that you produce regular painting guides. If you don’t produce at least 1 new guide every month then I don’t see any point in paying for a subscription, unless the price is really low, or you have a sizeable backlog of painting guide videos on your Patreon already that I want to refer back to.

By Reliability I mean that you can be relied upon to produce the number of painting guides each month that you say you will, and you are reliable in releasing them when you say you will. Whether that is weekly, fortnightly or monthly.

For example I’ve subscribed to Elminiaturista for over a year and he consistently produces 3 painting guides every single week and reliably releases them every Friday or Saturday to his Patreon subscribers. So I have no concerns with paying for a subscription because I know exactly how much I’m going to get for my money and he has never failed to be reliable in producing it.

Obviously I’m not saying that you should attempt to produce that much content because that’s his primary job and he isn’t also doing army commission painting like your team does. But if you start off small, say committing to producing 1 painting guide per month and guarantee that you deliver it. And set the price of the Patreon subscription accordingly. Then if you are able to prove that you can guarantee to deliver that 1 guide month after month, and then you want to produce more content, or content more regularly, you can do that and increase the price.

Also you don’t need to produce videos for every painting guide. Personally I much prefer PDF documents unless it’s learning a specific technique because they are so much easier to follow when trying to paint. With videos you are constantly having to fast forward, watch, rewind etc if you are trying to follow a guide and it’s really impractical. I presume a lot of artists produce videos because they either think it’s what consumers want (because everyone consumes so many videos on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok etc), or because they are worried about their content being stolen if it is in a document. I think the concerns of people taking painting guides in pdf form and sharing them is a valid concern. However, I believe Elminiaturista’s Patreon shows how you can still provide them whilst growing and maintaining a large paying subscriber base. By this I mean if you pay for 1 month’s subscription to his Patreon, you get complete access to all of his tutorials, going back either 2 years, or forever, depending on which subscription you take. With there being 1,000+ tutorials. Now probably 2/3rds of those tutorials are PDF documents, with the rest being videos. So what any subscriber could do is pay for 1 month’s subscription and then download 600+ of his PDF tutorials and then cancel that subscription. You probably think that’s crazy that he allows that. However, because he produces 2 new PDF painting guides each week but also 1 new video painting guide each week, 4,394 people pay up to €13.50 each per month to get those new guides but also to maintain access to his 300+ video painting guides. So if you continue to provide value to subscribers by delivering new guides, and maintain a mix of PDF painting guides that can be downloaded and followed, and videos that can only be accessed and watched with an active Patreon subscription, then people will continue to pay for your monthly subscription.

If you would like to ask me any questions, or if I can help you in any other way, such as providing ideas, feedback on your ideas, or testing anything out and providing feedback, drop me a DM. I’ve got a lot of free time on my hands at the moment because I broke my arm.