Patreon Launch: 6 Things I Learned [3 Minute Read]

Hey all! I am closing out my Patreon launch week and wanted to share some of my experiences. It’s always helpful when someone shares their knowledge on nebulous art biz stuff, because I sure don't know what I'm doing half the time. I wouldn’t have made a Patreon if @javi_draws hadn’t gotten the word out about Patreon’s policy changes coming up in May. I’ll try to keep this as concise as possible because I know y’all are busy. I'm also not an expert so with that in mind:

1. Manage Your Expectations 

My Stats

Twitter: 20K+ Followers
Facebook: 1K Followers
2 Instagrams: 5K Followers
Patreon: 170 Patrons!

You have nothing to lose if you make a Patreon. And if you don’t get any Patrons, it doesn’t mean you’re invalid, or that the work isn’t good. The work might not be where you want it to be yet, or you might not have found your audience yet. Or it might mean you need to spend a bit more time building a social media following. I posted my stats because despite having collectively over 26K followers on all my social media accounts, only 170 Patrons pledged to my campaign. Patreon is basically a subscription service and unless you’re Netflix, it’s hard to get people to subscribe to anything. So before we continue, manage your expectations and remember: you have nothing to lose. 

2. Be Realistic On What You Can Deliver 

It can be difficult to decide on what tiers to offer. Being realistic on what you can deliver is important to you and your Patrons. Don’t overload yourself. As a full time freelancer I decided to do digital rewards. I don’t have time to offer high tier sketch rewards or have the bandwidth to deliver physical goods every month. Since I’m already doing sketches or photo work every month, my process is something I know I can deliver. I also know that I’m doing at least a couple more conventions this year, so I’ll be able to offer some physical reward packages around convention season. These are things I’m already working on and able to offer without bending my schedule too much. I did my research by checking out Patreon pages of creators I knew had full time jobs or full time freelance schedules and tried to mirror my expectations based on their experiences.

3. Spend Time on Presentation

I made 0 new art for my Patreon. I reused pieces and presented them in a new way. Think about how you want your landing page to look and how it reflects you in an inviting way. Use attractive, consistent font choices. Cohesive images for every tier, your banner, and supplemental pictures in your overview can go a long way. For my overview page I decided to use more festive, colorful imagery to draw people in. I mixed my illustration work with Polaroid frames for that visual tie between illustration and photography. Be as transparent as possible and provide hyperlinks where relevant. It looks credible and well researched. No one likes a Patreon project that looks like Death by Power Point. 

Some great examples of overview pages:

Naomi VanDoren
Samantha Mash
Djamila Knopf
Chantal Horeis
Iris Compiet

4. What Can You Offer?

Trust your audience and gut. If you’re at the point of launching a Patreon, you probably already know what type of things your audience likes. For me, it’s been my illustrations and photography. I had never monetized my photo work before, so this was a chance to give something brand new back to the community in exchange for potential retweets and shares. I decided to turn my photography into free wallpapers. I listened to what people had to say about my work. In general, the comments tended to focus on the peaceful nature of the imagery, so I marketed the sets as calming atmospheres to help deal with the anxiety of phone usage, which I get from time to time. The first mountain wallpaper set was actually inspired by mountain photos in my therapist's office. I stared at them often when I got overly emotional about something and I found that it helped (TMI). Offering something without expecting anything in return is a great way to get people to share a tweet with a link in it. It doesn’t really feel like advertising in that way, but sharing art as usual. To further emphasize this, I shared downloadable content in thread alongside links.

The hardest part of Patreon is convincing people to sign up at all. For my Patreon launch I also offered founder's enamel pins. It comes out of my own pocket, but the hope is that you folks who signed up under the $1 tier will enjoy the content here and stick around! It's a risk that I'm willing to take. At Emerald City Comic Con, I noticed I kept buying pins that either had a plant or a cute animal on it. So guess what? I designed a pin that had both. Can't go wrong with a good old tiger and cute plants. I wouldn't recommend this sign-up method for everyone unless there are extra funds available. Have a cap for limited quantities. It’s also a great way to say thank you to your Patrons.
    
5. Be Accessible. Plan Your Future. Don’t Play All Your Cards

This really depends on what content you would like to provide to your audience. For folks that launched Patreons for specific projects, this may not apply, but there are things to still take away here. For myself, I have done Magic the Gathering work. There are creators that focus exclusively on Magic the Gathering content. My social media following did not start with Magic the Gathering, so I wanted to offer something for everyone - illustration and photography. I wanted to go as general as possible to appeal to a broader audience before going into specific projects. Eventually I would like to launch new tiers for Magic the Gathering fans, but it would be a better launch done at a different time. I'd also like to offer discord rewards in the future. Every feature added later can be treated as a mini launch or Patreon promo. Don't overwhelm your audience. Don't overwhelm yourself.

I personally feel like making Patron only posts during launch week is harmful. It doesn’t give folks an idea of what you’re offering and doesn’t feel initially inviting. Plan for this. 

 
6. Bullet Points: "Promote Your Art Not Your Patreon"

• When promoting your Patreon, direct links are not as successful (except when you're maybe first announcing it! Then it's okay). Have an image or a set of images to accompany your link.
• I did a “launch” week to promote my Patreon because I had never made one or a kickstarter before. It’s not super reasonable to expect your entire following to know you have a Patreon after a 1 day promo. I felt like a week long stint seemed long enough to get the word out and short enough for folks not to get sick of the adverts. Play it by ear, don’t be afraid to promote for more than a couple days.
• Retweet promo posts at different hours of the day. I had insomnia and would retweet the same post 2-3 times a day knowing some folks wouldn’t see the same thing twice because they’d probably be sleeping / be in different time zones. 
• Use clean graphics and fonts where applicable, be consistent.
• Have a dummy account to make sure promos display properly. Here is my test account as an example. Displays do affect retweet viability. 
• General trends I noticed: 
• Facebook: Hates words and Death by Power Point. Likes vanity posts and splashy imagery that takes up space. Hates links in post, posts do better with links in comments. 
• Twitter: Likes free stuff and splashy imagery. 
• Instagram: Responds better to pretty art and information in the caption, or pretty art with clean, readable font over graphic.   
  

Hope this is helpful to anyone planning on launching this month!  

Jenn   

Caveat:  if you don't feel like making a Patreon or are afraid of missing the boat, don't feel pressured. If you'd rather expend all that energy into your craft, 100% do it. It will pay off in some form either way. I think this applies to all social media-ing in general.