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Ok, so I know it’s been a while since I mentioned this, but we’ve been meaning to amend the goals for some time. This is mainly due to the fact that our situation has changed quite dramatically. We were both working full time and I was earning enough that I could afford to put a fair amount of money towards the podcast. We were using the funds from Patreon to upgrade our recording pc and software as well as invest in new equipment like our microphones.

Since then, I was made redundant and have started my own business. It is taking a while to get off the ground and whilst I’m just about earning enough to pay the mortgage, we have cut back on literally everything else. Fortunately, by that point, we were receiving enough from Patreon that it covers the cost of our web hosting and all the regular basic costs of producing the show, with a little left over to contribute to visiting haunted locations. But we do still end up paying a fair amount from our own pockets. Which is fine, we do enjoy doing the show and we don’t expect any of our listeners to feel like they should have to pay to listen.

We do though need to make it clear that due to our situation, it is only thanks to our patrons that we can afford to keep producing the show at all. We try and make it a point to thank our patrons on every show and we really do mean it, thank you! 

With our current situation in mind, we need to amend the goals we originally set for our Patreon. In the spirit of openness, I’ll list all the original goals here so that there is a record of our original plan. We completely understand if any of you feel that changing these goals is no longer in the spirit of why you pledged and that you would no longer like to continue to do so.

Original goals:

$75 –per month. 

Cover our costs.

reached!
 

Hosting the show isn’t free. At this pledge level we can afford to open a business account, consolidate all our podcast outgoings and have a bit more upload bandwidth for releasing some little extras. It will also mean we don’t have to worry about finding the funds to continue the show.

$100 –per month

Mail time!

reached!
 

This goal will allow us to get a P.O. Box and accept mail! Letters, stories, pictures and paranormal postcards! send them in and we’ll do special mail time episodes.

$250 per month

Reached!

Help us to improve the quality of our podcasts by helping to buy acoustic treatment, hardware and software upgrades.

$500 per month

Lights, Camera, Action!

Once we reach this goal we can start investing in some camera gear and bring you some video segments as well as vlogs and possibly some live shows!

$1,000 per month

Improve our video capabilities with video editing software and pc upgrades. See more of what we do and how we do it!

$2,500 per month

Lil goes full time!

Lil can quit her day job and work full time on the podcast. This goal will also allow us to produce two podcasts per month!

$7,500 per month

Fitz can go full time!

Fitz can quit his day job and work full time on the podcast. This goal will also allow us to produce four podcasts per month!

$10,000 per month

Ghost hunting, UFO watching, Is there a sasquatch in the UK?
 

Once we reach this goal we can take the show on the road carrying out investigations, look into urban legends, stay up all night looking for UFO’s and Ghosts and best of all we’ll film it so you can watch!

$20,000 per month

New Digs! 

Reaching this goal will allow us to purpose build a studio by carrying out a loft conversion. This will also allow us to stream live video and film the podcasts being recorded.

Going forwards, we need to make some changes to these to reflect our current situation, the direction we wish to take the show and take into account the amount we actually receive from Patreon. We were both clear from the start that we wished to keep everything out in the open and so we didn’t hide the pledge amount. However, for those that aren’t aware, there are some fees associated with Patreon and so we don’t actually receive the full amount shown. For example, the current pledge amount stands at $271 a month and from that we receive $243 before tax. Once we convert that to GBP and pay the exchange rates, we receive somewhere in the region of £180 before tax.

We were perhaps a little naive about the costs involved when we started the Patreon and so even though we passed the ‘cover our costs’ goal, we were still a bit away from covering the basics even at that point. We were though happy to subsidise the show and thought little of it. It was only when we reached the second goal ‘Mail time’ at $100 that we ran into trouble. I was just being made redundant and Royal Mail increased the prices for PO Boxes. They are currently £33 a month (or $42) which would take up more than half of what we received each month at that point. 

We are still looking to do this in the future as we are really excited about seeing all your paranormal postcards, but we are going to have to defer it to a higher goal. Other than that, I’m going to keep the other ‘reached’ goals as they are as it seems churlish to remove them now. So as it stands, our goals currently stand at:

$75 –per month

Cover our costs.

reached!
 

Hosting the show isn’t free. At this pledge level we can afford to open a business account, consolidate all our podcast outgoings and have a little extra upload bandwidth for releasing some little extras. It will also mean we don’t have to worry about finding the funds to continue the show.

$250 per month

reached!

Help us to improve the quality of our podcasts by helping to buy acoustic treatment, hardware and software upgrades.

Other than ‘Mail time’, our next goal was ‘Lights, Camera, Action’ at $500, where we planned to provide more video content. This also is going to have to be deferred a bit. My current PC is dedicated to audio production and, as I use a bit of legacy hardware, it is a bit out of date by modern standards. I also use it every day as a part of my business. Sadly it is a bit sluggish when you try and render video on it, in fact in some cases it takes pretty much a full working day to render a video even after it has been edited. As I can’t really afford to take it out of action for this long at a time, I really need to build a new machine dedicated to creating video and this is well out of our budget at present.

To replace those and to reflect some of the additional costs that we find ourselves paying, I am adding the following goals:

$350

Thirsty Beast!

The KOFYmobile is a thirsty beast. It’s the size and shape of a garden shed and about as aerodynamic! Help us afford the fuel to visit more haunted locations to talk about on the show.

$500

Old stuff is expensive!

Paying admission to haunted locations, ghost hunts, paranormal investigations and haunted museums is expensive. Warwick Castle alone was around £50 for the two of us, just for admission with around £30-£40 in fuel costs to get us there and back, so even though we try and keep the costs down as much as possible by taking sandwiches and our trusty, giant flask of coffee, it can easily cost us £80-90 and above to take a day trip to a haunted location. Help us to go on more paranormal adventures to share with you on the show.

I’m going to add ‘Mail time’ back in here as we should now be able to afford the monthly costs of the PO Box.

$600

Mail Time!

This goal will allow us to get a P.O. Box and accept mail! We are really excited to receive your letters, stories, pictures and paranormal postcards! We’ll share these on the show and our facebook group.

And then back to the KOFYmobile again as not only is it thirsty, it is also expensive to keep on the road. The poor thing is nearly 20 years old!

$750

Rust Bucket!

The KOFYmobile is nearly 20 years old and needs a fair amount of work to keep on the road. Help us keep the KOFYmobile ticking and getting us to lots of fantastic haunted locations that we will share with you on the show.

Now we are starting to get back into the region where we can start upgrading things again. I know that looking at it, for $1000 a month you’d expect that we could get a new pc every month for that money. Do remember that we don’t receive the full $1000 a month and we are still paying out for everything above as well. It might still take us a couple of months at this level to afford to buy the equipment and start producing content, but at this point we’re bringing the ‘Lights, Camera, Action’ goal back in.

$1000 per month

Lights, Camera, Action!

Once we reach this goal we can start investing in some camera gear and bring you some video segments as well as improve our video capabilities with video editing software and pc upgrades. See more of what we do and how we do it!

We’re getting into the bigger jumps in costs now and time is the major factor in being able to produce more and better content. Previously the big goals were for Lil and I to quit our day jobs and work full time on the show. Due to me being made redundant and starting my business, this has changed somewhat. However it is not insurmountable. We’ll still keep the goal for Lil to work full time on the show and so ‘Lil goes full time’ will be the next goal. 

$2,500 per month

Lil goes full time!

Lil can quit her day job and work full time on the podcast. This goal will also allow us to produce more content.

I did change the wording on it slightly to ‘more content’ rather than ‘two shows a month’. This is mainly due to the fact that we don’t get enough stories in to do more than one show a month as it stands. We are planning, at the moment, that any additional content will be bonus shows, of a style similar to the main show but not necessarily on the exact same format, more blogs and more Patron content.

Of course the next goal was for me to go full time, and again, increase the frequency of shows. I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to move forward with this now in light of running my own business. I’m leaving the goal in for now and as to whether we hire someone to help with our show or I employ people to assist with my business to free myself more time for the show, I’ll have to decide nearer the time (if we ever get this far!) 

$7,500 per month

Fitz can go full time!

Fitz can work full time on the podcast and we can produce even more content!

The next of the original goals was going to see us travel around the UK, and other places, looking for the odd and mysterious. We’re in a bit of a bind on that front at the moment as one of our cats is diabetic and so we need to give him injections twice a day. This really limits the amount of travel we can do and we are pretty much on day trips only for the foreseeable future. This being the case, I’m going to change this goal to hiring a PA/Researcher to help with the back end parts of the show and bump the travelling goal a little later, to a point where we can afford for someone with vetinary training to come and give the cat his injections whilst we are away. We will also move the creation of a dedicated studio forwards.

At the moment we work from a tiny box room, which is far from perfect acoustically and doesn’t lend itself to filming anything we do. It is also like working in an oven in summer and plagued by noise in winter as the central heating pings and clicks. We do though have a completely unused attic space that could be converted into a dedicated studio space. It will take several months to save up, plan, get permission and actually build the space but this is a huge goal for us and will make creating content so much easier and comfortable.

$10,000 per month

Bookworm!

We will hire someone to assist with all the research and back office tasks to free us both up to produce more content for you.

$15,000 per month

Live from the Studio!
 

Once we reach this goal we can convert our unused attic space into a dedicated KOFY studio. It will give us more room and a better space to record both the podcast, bonus shows and video content, as well as look into live streams and chats.

$20,000 per month

Paranormal Explorers!
 

Once we reach this goal we can take the show on the road carrying out investigations, look into urban legends in the UK and elsewhere. Let us know your favourite haunted locations and we’ll do our best to visit and investigate them.

It would certainly be a dream to reach this level of funding and I don’t think there is much point creating goals past this point at present. It is also our best guess at how things could progress and not set in stone. If you have any suggestions on what you think we should be aiming for then do let us know.

Fitz

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