Do you have Patreon?

[thesilentpoet]

Do you have Patreon?

If yes, how do you promote it? I've posted updates via social media, and I get a lot of "likes", a lot of "that's cool you have one", but very few patrons.

What sure find way do you use to get followers/Patrons?

Comments

[beasts_of_homeworld]

note: we're going to use some slurs in a reclaimed context in this comment. when we say these words, we say them because they're things the world tries to victimise us for, and that we have defiantly made part of how we identify and things we think are good about ourselves. please feel free to skip this comment if you'd rather not hear them, though.

we don't have a patreon ourselves, and we may be unusual, but if it helps we can tell you that the reason we personally are put off from becoming patrons/followers on patreon is the walled-garden feel. it feels like we're being asked to put effort into going and finding something, and paying for it, when we don't even know what it is. let alone whether we want it.

in our experience people generally say very little about what their patreon content is like, and only really talk about it in general terms. and even if they have a free sample available it's on their patreon so we have to go seek it out (for us that's exhausting because disabilities).

for example... in relation to stories (whether narrative, poetic, or graphic)... "a sci-fi story with a superhero feel" or "magic-wielding cowboys in hell" doesn't tell us anything about whether we'd actually enjoy that story, personally. what makes us enjoy a story is getting to know the characters as individuals, racial and ability and orientation and other diversity, healthy and supportive relationships and social dynamics, people like us/people who usually get treated badly being treated well, and that kind of thing. nobody ever seems to tell people any of that when advertising a story.

which is fine if you're already in the bookstore holding the book or comic in your hand, you're already shopping for stories anyway and you can leaf through a few pages right there. but when someone comes to our house and says "go to the next town over and fill in paperwork and maybe pay money to look at this thing you might not even want to see!" we don't feel inclined to do that.

again though, this is our perspective, which is one of very disabled and rather odd creatures. it might not be the same for anyone else.

for us personally, what would help would be giving more of a hook when advertising, and/or including free excerpts or free samples in the places you advertise, as part of the ad. it means people get a chance to be drawn in by your work from where they are, instead of needing to go somewhere else first.

something that would make a good story hook for us would be a quick description of some main characters and their relationship, or even introducing us to them with a little clip of them in conversation or snippet of backstory, or the characters themselves talking to the audience. it would be especially effective if it tells us they're people we want more representation of in our life, like POC, queer, trans, disabled, fat, sex workers, nonhumans, sharing a body, autistic or otherwise neurodiverse, nonbinary, abuse survivors, polyamorous, crazy, etc. and especially if it shows us that they're going to be treated respectfully by the story, have healthy supportive relationships, be empowered and self-loving at some point, or similar.

for artwork, a sample of your art style being included in the advertisment for your patreon would probably help a lot. and similarly for craftywork, poetry that isn't storytelling, and really most things. of course, in our case it also doesn't help that patreon itself isn't very accessible for us, though.

that's how we're experiencing it and what would work for us. it might not suit you and your patreon style, and that's totally valid. it also might all be things you're already doing, we don't know. just offering in case it's useful.

[thesilentpoet]

Thank you!

This is all very helpful. I can tell you while there is items for Patrons-only, I do try to post short descriptions and teasers to get people hooked. I have plans to post public character descriptions of the main characters, just need to actually sit down to it. (I am trying to represent poly, asexuality, and genderqueerness in my characters, as well as POC. I am not any of these traits, but I know how important inclusiveness and diversity is. I myself have Anxiety, and that is tied into the PTSD for one character.)

I understand the issue of needing to seek something out, of needing to put forth the effort of time and spoons to find and fund something. I thank you for putting that forth in your comments to me. They have been most appreciated.

[beasts_of_homeworld]

yay, you're welcome! we're glad it was helpful!

that sounds like you're doing useful things already, and yeah getting to writing descriptions and stuff can take a while. that's understandable! we'd imagine you'll probably get better results the more you can include right there in your ad, wherever it is. in our experience inline teasers do tend to work especially well, because they can get someone into reading and being invested in the story already, before they've even clicked through to your patreon.

it seems to us like in a lot of social media it's often easier to just click a 'like' button or leave a comment right there than to go engage with your content, so the challenge is probably to make following your link more attractive or make it harder for them to not follow your link (for example by getting them invested in the story right there). in a like button readers have a nice easy option that doesn't require going anywhere or doing anything, so going to find your story has to be more attractive than taking the easy option. or that's what we'd guess.

as far as representation goes, there are always going to be people looking for it and struggling to find it. so if you advertise that part of your content specifically, especially if you can find ways to advertise in places where some folks of that community spend their free time, you're likely to draw in that crowd at least. so you're on to a winner with that one, because it's an audience who are under-served and more motivated to seek out content like yours than the average casual reader. you just need to connect to them and let them know you have what they're looking for.

tumblr tags can sometimes be a handy way to get things seen by the community you're hoping to offer representation to, without needing to do too much searching for people yourself. even if you don't usually use tumblr, if you get something into an appropriate tag and people like it, other folks will pick it up and start spreading the word to where it needs to go for you. just be aware if you do use them that some tags are only for members of that community to post in (like ActuallyAutistic, for example).

overall, it sounds like you're doing good things! we hope you see some more good results, too.

as a side note, representation for asexuality is awesome. so are all the other things you mentioned, obviously, but we realised many people don't include ace under 'queer' (many of us are asexual and identify as queer, so we do) so that could've been one we effectively hadn't mentioned already.

we'd be interested in your stories based on what you've said here, so the remaining barrier for us now is just the accessibility of patreon itself (and the availability of funds too, we guess), which you probably can't do anything about. but if you drop us a link we'll take a look and see if we can make patreon work for us. (our main difficulty with patreon is that they either don't have a dark low-contrast theme, or if they do we can't find it. because it's not clearly marked and we'd have to navigate the glaring white pages in order to learn that it's there, and nothing's been worth the effort and the pain for us yet. we haven't been there in a while though, they could've changed the site.)

thankyou for the understanding, too. and we really appreciate you recognising and honouring our spoons paid into commenting here. it actually is a pretty big effort for us personally, but we enjoy it too and we wanted to share. you acknowledging it though makes us more inclined to feel like we'd enjoy your stories, too, because it shows us you're cognizant of that kind of thing, and likely to treat such things respectfully if they come up in your writing.

in summary, keep being awesome. *grin* <3

[thesilentpoet]

Link is Patreon.com/srmaclin

Quite a bit is currently Patron-only, but I am working on publishing more open content, like those character outlines I previously mentioned. So if you're not seeing anything just yet, it will be coming.

I am also not sure on the resolution for Patreon's site; I am going to try to cross-post some items here, especially surrounding things like the monthly creative jam. So if this site is easier for you, it may then be an alternative.

I also understand funds are a problem for many. I would love to support many on Patreon myself, and cannot. I was not necessarily asking here to entice today, but more how to entice moving forward.

I also always forget I have a Tumblr. I'll need to brush it off.

Thank you again for taking the time again to respond. 😊

[beasts_of_homeworld]

thanks for the link! we're happy to wait for you to get some more things ready and out there. we're very slow creatures anyway, sometimes it feels like we just blink and a year has passed for humans, haha! take your time.

dreamwidth is definitely easier for us at least! this site is our internet-home for many reasons, chief among them being that it's actually almost the perfect environment for us while almost every other website is a hostile and painful place for us to be.

yeah, we knew you weren't looking to find new patrons with this post, just seeking advice and tips and such. but we thought we'd let you know that we found this conversation effective in enticing us, anyway! that could help give you more info on enticing other readers, maybe. ^_^ (happy face)

we don't Tumbl any more ourselves, because it's too tiring for us, but it can be a great place to get the word out about things and get an audience.

you're welcome - thanks for listening and welcoming our input! <3 (heart)

[james]

For myself, my patrons are friends who are willing to support me for $1 a month. But from posts made by other people who have very successful patreons and watching the experiences of others -- and this coincides with the above comment -- the best way to get patrons is to already have fans who love your content.

Musicians and authors who are already providing their stuff elsewhere say 'hey come support me and get extra stuff' rather than saying 'this is the only place to get my stuff.' That way people already know if they like your works and know what they're getting and they understand that being your patron isn't about "buying" content, it's about supporting an artist so they can make their art. The content and rewards are really just bonus extras as a thank you (even paid content is really a "thank you for supporting me".)

I know a comic artist who gets thousands of reblogs on tumblr and she has only managed to get 46 patrons; there are many reasons why people don't become patrons, but I think of it like the same ratio of hits to kudos that posting elsewhere is. If 100 people read your work and ten of them leave a "well done' comment, that's perfectly normal and considered the usual amount of responses.

There is a website similar to Patreon that I cannot for the life of me remember the name of, but it is designed for authors to release chapters of the book in a serial fashion, and donors donate/pay money every month to get access to read. That model might work better for you, if you want your content to be your main book, but again you'd have the same issue -- you need to convince the people who are already your fans and enjoying your work, to become donors.

[thesilentpoet]

I keep forgetting I have a Tumblr as I never use it. I'll need to post there.

I realize I am an unknown. I have some poetry and short stories published, and once upon a time, I was more active here. Something I am trying to get back to too. Of the Patrons I do have,two are friends, and one my mom. Which I suppose is pretty good, but I do sometimes feel like I am taking to myself over there.

[clare_dragonfly]

"But from posts made by other people who have very successful patreons and watching the experiences of others -- and this coincides with the above comment -- the best way to get patrons is to already have fans who love your content."

This is certainly my experience, both as a patron and as a creator. Most of my patrons, those I know where they came from, were fans of my work (specifically, my ongoing serial novel, Chatoyant College) long before I even had a Patreon. Most of the Patreons I support are for creators I was a fan of before I knew of Patreon. There are a couple I discovered via Patreon.

So my best method of promotion, as far as I can tell (because I only have a few patrons) has been reposting Chatoyant College on Wattpad...

[kay_brooke]

I also don't have a Patreon of my own, though I do have an account and support a couple writers through it. I'm very picky about who I support, partially for many of the same reasons beasts_of_homeworld wrote above. The writers I support are people who are long-term LJ/DW friends whose writing I'm already familiar with and which I know will be something I enjoy. I'm willing to pay a few bucks a month for that.

And this is totally personal to me, but I'm also turned off a bit by the automatic monthly payment thing. It sort of feels like I don't get the freedom to spend my money how I want? Like, if someone had some e-books on offer for a few dollars each, and some of the stories sounded interesting to me and some not so much, I would probably buy the ones I was interested in and ignore the others. But with Patreon I feel like I'm being forced into buying all the content, whether I like it or not. So if an author spends a couple months focusing on a project I'm not interested in, I basically just gave them $X for nothing, because that money is going to come out of my account regardless. And yes, I could unsubscribe and then subscribe again, but that's a hassle. This might be less an issue with Patreons that only have one type of content and you know what you're getting every month, but I've seen a lot of writers who skip around among several different stories/worlds, some of which I just don't care to read about.

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

If you're a cherry-picker, Patreon isn't a great idea. However, if you like or love pretty much everything by a certain creator -- and I have a number of fans like this -- then it's an easy way to make sure you keep supporting them. Otherwise you have to remember to send something regularly, and some people find that difficult or tedious.

Re: Well...

[kay_brooke]

Well, yes, other people are different from me. I thought I made it pretty clear in my comment that these were some possible reasons that I, personally, might not support a Patreon author. I was not speaking in generalities.

[thesilentpoet]

I definitely get the automatic-payment thing! It is very much a gesture of trust. You're paying for something and trust the writer or artist to produce content you enjoy.

I am going to try to make a point to post a few more things public, starting with some character development, if you are interested in taking a simple look. Bits and pieces of what has become this novel was posted here a long time ago, but I disappeared for three-ish years, and I realize the trust here needs to be re-earned.

Thank you for your comments!

No ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I don't. I haven't had the time to set one up. It'd be nice if I could find new patrons there, but I wouldn't want my current ones to switch to that model since Patreon takes a cut of the funds.

Re: No ...

[thesilentpoet]

I like it as you said, it is easier to get the content out there. But I also realize a community there needs to build trust. I'm stumbling back into this community after a three-ish year absence, it will take time to build again.

[ellenmillion]

I have a patreon, and I've noodled with it a bit to get the rewards to something I feel like I can do without much effort on my part. As far as promoting it, it's honestly mostly a convenience for people who would already be supporting me because of what I offer elsewhere.

There are no sure things in terms of promotion. I would suggest that quality free material is going to get you further than anything else, with a nice discrete 'if you enjoyed this, keep me creating more/get access to more!' type of link to your Patreon. If people love what you did, they'll share that, even if they can't support you personally... and maybe the person they recommend it to is in a better position financially.

Some social media does vastly better with an image - on Facebook and even Twitter, if you have some sort of grabby graphic with whatever content you're posting, it's more likely to be shared and catch eyes.