Patreon — Setting You and Your Fans Up for Success

Ya Gotta Do the Work

As creators, it is hard for us to ask for money, let alone find the time to work through perks, goals and configuration options on yet another platform. But putting up a next-to-unconfigured Patreon is going to send a clear signal to your fan base: that you anything but committed to this.

As a fan, being asked to contribute our hard earned dollars, we pay attention when someone hasn’t put the work in. Many of us have given our support only to have a creator disappear from the platform. So we are wary of certain signs.

At the same time, we are excited to get an opportunity to support and connect with a creator at a deeper level. That’s what Patreon is all about.

When we first launched our Patreon, it was a mess. We didn’t have goals set, our perks were pitiful and we put very little time into the platform. And as a result, only a handful of our strongest supporters contributed to us.

The Checklist

We are going to get into all the tips and tricks we’ve learned. But first, I want to share a high-level checklist we go through when we start setting up a new Patreon account.

• Find other creators you admire on Patreon
• Become a financial supporter of one or more of the above creators on Patreon
• Make a list of what they do that you admire
• Take a few weeks to see how often these creators post and how they engage with their community. Take notes.
• Start writing and configuring your Patreon (see tips below)
• Create a calendar or schedule for your posts to your Patreon community.

Wait. Why am I talking about posts? Isn’t this article supposed to be about configuring a Patreon account? No, this article is how to launch and grow a vibrant Patreon community that supports you. And that comes down to hard work every week or even every day.

If you aren’t thinking about a significant investment of time into this platform, creating a Patreon account is likely not worth the effort.

Setting Giving Tier Amounts

One of the funnest things to configure is how much people can pledge to your show and the different perks that come with each dollar amount. These are called tiers in Patreon. The minimum giving tier is $1.

There are a bunch of big-name players verging on celebrities who often set $5 or $10 as the minimum giving tier allowed. If you happen to have hundreds of thousands, or better yet, millions of fans, then this is a perfectly acceptable strategy.

For the rest of us, the majority of our support comes from $1 and $2 supporters. You read that right. The majority of the money raised for audio drama creators comes from the $1 and $2 giving levels.

So choosing to not have a $1 giving tier is akin to shooting your Patreon account in the head before you even launch. Harsh? So is not having a $1 tier.

The next mistake to avoid is jumping straight from $1 to $5 or $10. I see this a lot.

I highly recommend that most podcasts consider having both a $1 and a $2 starting tier. I get that $1 and $2 are small amounts. Let’s assume, for a moment, that most people will start with a $1 give. But the perks you so carefully designed and listed on the next tier up are SUPER tantalizing, so they are really torn and trying to decide. Do they stick with the $1 which is what they have promised themselves because they give to so many creators… or do they raise it by a tiny additional dollar and get the perk they want?

You are asking them to double how much they give. That’s a major ask. McDonalds is happy getting you to Super Size something for the additional $.13 they make. So shows that have a $1 and then a $3 or $5 tier, may be setting themselves up for far less revenue growth than the person who has a $1, $2, and $5 tier.

In a nutshell, I recommend most shows begin with a $1, $2 and $5 tier. Additional, higher level tiers are totally okay. But at the bottom, this is a great way to build your fan base on Patreon.

Note that this is just my starting recommendation. Certain cases may change this for a show. But be sure you understand the platform if you are going to vary from what seems to work great for so many creators.

Setting The Perks for Each Tier

Tiers and Perks are tied together. Each giving tier has a box of copy where you can outline the perk this level grants the supporter.

I can’t tell you the number of times I see a creator come out of the gate promoting their Patreon account with next to no perks at each tier. Not cool.

I get it. Perks are hard to create. There are so many factors to consider. How much do you offer to patrons? How do you not punish those who can’t afford to give as much? Are you going to be able to produce/deliver the perk?

I can’t outline a one-size-fits-all solution, but I can provide some ideas and guidance. And some ideas on some great perks to consider. All of that is below. And you are welcome to look at our perks and borrow any and all for your own Patreon account!

Here’s the first bit of advice. Don’t launch your Patreon if you haven’t filled out some real perks. Take some time to sit with it. Ask other creators or look at what others are offering.

Do’s:

• Consider a Discord server for your show with special rooms for your patrons.
• Be extra clear on what is included in each tier.
• Prioritize perks you can deliver digitally as compared to hard goods that you have to create and ship.

Dont’s:

• Don’t put transcripts behind a pay wall — don’t make access to transcripts a perk reward. This means that people who require transcripts to access your show are suddenly made to pay when others don’t have to. This is akin to charging people with a disability an extra fee to enter your home or business. Not cool.
• Don’t promise too much. This is hard. But be honest with yourself. What is realistic to deliver?
• Don’t promise things that you then can’t afford to deliver for the amount pledged. If a perk is going to require three months of support before you can afford to send that fan a pin or badge, then just make this clear in your perk description.

Here are some great things to consider putting into your tiers as perks:

• Behind the scenes updates
• Deleted scenes or bloopers
• Access to your show’s discord chat server
• Shoutouts on social media
• Getting your name read on the air!
• Annotated scripts (these are not transcripts, but rather scripts where you have added in notes from the crew on what changed or how things came to be.)
• Early access! (we love this one… it’s pretty easy to deploy in Patreon and it allows you to give your fans access to new episodes a few days before the rest of the world.)
• Ability to promote their own show or venture — you give a shout out to something your fan is working on or creating
• Hard goods (t-shirts, stamps, badges, etc.) But see the warning below.
• Discounts on merchandise (great to offer if you have a TeePublic or other storefront)
• Special minisodes you create just for your fans (many creators then release these to the rest of the world after a month or more has passed.)
• Just about anything else you can think of!

Beware The Hidden Costs of Perks

Anything that involves shipping of a hard good means you have to pay to create the item and then pay to ship it to your patron. This can get quite costly. So be sure to factor this into the giving tier it is tied to as a perk.

Hard goods tend to be in the more expensive perk tiers. And it’s not uncommon to require a fan to be in a tier for a month or more to ensure they have contributed more than it’s going to cost you to send the item. But just be aware this is going to be a pain to track on your part. So use these types of perks sparingly.

Mistakes Happen

You will make mistakes. Here you can learn from one of ours. :)

We felt really confident that we would be able to invite $10 and higher suporters attendance (remotely) to a live recording of our new show, The End of Time and Other Bothers. After all, it takes place in our home with great wi-fi access and our digital mixer promotes options for us to send live audio as we record to YouTube Live or what have you.

Only we haven’t been able to make this work reliably. So now we have a perk in a tier that we aren’t able to deliver on.

And even if we can solve the technical hurdles, new episodes are recorded many weeks out from when they air. Sometimes an episode won’t air for many months from the date of recording. So is access to an out-of-synch episode really a valid perk we want to offer?

All of this was not known when we re-launched our Patreon account. So we are exploring what we can offer in exchange. But our first step is to reach out to each of the individuals giving at this level to explore what would be of value to them and get their input.