Patreon works a little bit differently than other crowdfunding platforms. Since launching in 2013, its goal has been to “help every creator in the world achieve sustainable income.” After a $15 million Series A funding round in 2014, the site has proven to be a popular choice with YouTube creators, podcasters, content creators and artists of all kinds.
Unlike most fundraising websites, you’re asking supporters to give a donation on a per-month or per-project basis. Launching your Patreon page deserves a strategy of its own.
If you’re hoping to find support for your art or creative work on Patreon, here are a few tips that will help you succeed:
1. Shoot a Killer Video
I’d recommend keeping your Patreon video under two minutes, three max. The internet has a short attention span. It’s better to compile a quality three minute pitch and leave some minor information out, than to ramble on for 5 or 6 minutes.
Make sure you:
- Share your vision. Make it tangible. Show, don’t tell. Use descriptive concrete words rather than making a vague pitch and expressing a passive “hope” to take your artistic career seriously.
- Connect emotionally with your followers. Have a creative work that everyone loves? It could be a viral video or a comic book character. Mention it! You need to establish rapport with your followers and remind them how that creation made them feel, because you’ll be asking for the funds to make more!
- Explain the benefits of giving and how Patreon works. Don’t just assume that people will know the tiers that they can give at, what they’ll get, or how the website works.
- Don’t beg. This is an opportunity for your followers to become further involved in the creative process, not for them to support you financially.
One user, Jessica Allossery, has a great video that has a lot of these important elements. You can tell that it isn’t a professionally-made video, but she comes across as very sweet and authentic. She is using her Patreon page to raise money for her YouTube videos. She currently gets $259.37 per video from 41 patrons.
2. Set Ambitious, But Realistic Goals
Unlike Kickstarter, where creators choose one funding goal for each project, Patreon lets you set smaller, incremental goals. You can start with something easy to reach, like raising enough to buy new equipment or produce your next work of art. Similar to stretch goals, these milestones give your patrons something to look forward to and a reason to keep sharing your page with their friends!
According to bestselling author and motivational coach, Tony Robins, one of the key human needs is the need to grow, both intellectually, spiritually, and creatively. Goals are a great way to show your supporters that you’re making progress and keep you motivated as an artist.
I don’t know about you, but we’re proud of some of the creators we’ve supported at CrowdCrux. Just watching how far they’ve come has been amazing, inspirational, and gives us a sense of pride.
The great thing about Patreon goals is that they are constantly evolving. Once you reach the goals you have set, you can set new goals to reach (and think of bigger and better things that your patrons will love). Keep in mind that Patreon charges a fee of 5% plus transaction fees, which are usually about 4-6%.
Actually, I discovered a ton of tricks that can help you earn recurring income from Patreon using subscription crowdfunding. This is dependable, repeat income to fuel your craft. You can really turn your passion into profit. You can learn more about the Patreon tricks I’ve discovered here.
3. Make Attractive Rewards
Another thing that separates Patreon from other crowdfunding platforms is that the most popular pledge levels are between $1 and $5. This is because it is a recurring pledge, unlike the one-time (often much higher) pledges that are common on sites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter.
Here are a few examples of easy, affordable rewards you can offer patrons of different pledge levels:
- $1 – $3: access to patron-exclusive posts, add-free content, digital subscriptions,
- $5 – $10: print pictures, content, stickers, etc. behind-the-scenes access, extra content, Google Hangouts, webinars.
- Over $10: custom content (ringtones, artwork, etc.), access to future work, live shows.
You can see how the options are endless, and how they can be customized for just about any creator. Make sure you have setting your rewards and that they are things that your audience will get excited about.
4. Write a Description That Sells
When setting up your Patreon page, you’ll be asked to write a description of your project. Keep it short and to the point, about one or two paragraphs.
Too often, we see the mistake of creators simply using the description to describe the actual product or creative work. The project description is a great marketing opportunity and will factor into the SEO of your work in the long run.
Your description should pass our attention grabbing copywriting test:
- Did you read it out loud? Are you using easy to understand language and words?
- What emotions, images, and thoughts do your words conjure up?
- What is the call to action?
- Who is the intended reader or audience? What do they already know or not know about your work?
- Did you incorporate a story into your marketing, which sells you, your work, and your values?
As your page becomes more popular, your video, content and comments will speak for itself. All of this is available for visitors to when deciding whether or not they want to support you, so make it count!
5. Study Other Creators
Let’s do a breakdown of the Jaimie Mantzel page, like Sal described in his latest podcast on easy ways to make a great Patreon campaign. Jaimie makes videos about inventions, art, philosophy, and living off-grid.
As you can see, at the time of writing, Jaimie has 463 patrons and makes $2,211 per month. Looking at Graphtreon, a statistics tool for Patreon, you can get a sense of how his number of Patrons has fluctuated and grown over time, along with his earnings per month.
I would recommend splitting up this chart by quarters or months so that you can see how a creator that you’re looking at has been doing recently or at the time of launch (seeing all of the chart at once can be misleading).
You can then draw statistics from YouTube to get a better picture of the number of people coming to his actual campaign and watching the pitch.
With 34,000 subscribers and 8,700 views and 462 patrons, he has a conversion rate of 5% in terms of views and 1.4% in terms of his subscriber base.
Let’s look at his daily views data.
It seems like the bulk of the views of his pitch video were in the first few days, likely when he announced it, but he has continued to grow his supporter base on Patreon and dollars made over time.
There is a lot more data that you can draw from, but this gives you an idea of how, at CrowdCrux, we’ll deconstruct campaigns to gain insight into their inner-workings.
Conclusion
There’s nothing better than getting paid to do what you love. Unfortunately, it is not as simple as signing up and letting the pledges roll in. You do need to work to promote your material, and yourself. You can tell some of the most successful Patreon creators have a lot of fun with their pages and have formed a community around what they are doing.
Actually, I discovered a ton of tricks that can help you earn recurring income from Patreon using subscription crowdfunding. This is dependable, repeat income to fuel your craft. You can really turn your passion into profit. You can learn more about the Patreon tricks I’ve discovered here.
