Good Patreon Rewards?

[SmidgeArt]

So I have a Patreon but I'm not sure exactly what I should make the prizes as a reward for people who support me.
I've been looking around and some artists have polls and sketches
Any suggestions are appreciated!

[Random_Guy]

Don’t mind me, just gonna, you know, chill out here and totally not take notes on everyone’s suggestions.

[IndigoShirtProd]

From what I've seen, people share WIPs of artwork that's going to be posted, early access to artwork, early access to pages, monthly requests, patrons only streams, discounted commissions, early access to commission slots, discounts for merch, polls for what to draw next, access to full fleshed out tutorials, artwork critiques for patrons etc. etc.

[boogeymadam]

early pages
occassional sketches, maybe WIPs for pieces that got abandoned or you're taking a long time on,
speedpaints

for higher paying patrons you could do sketch requests. I'd limit it to stuff involving your own comic content at first, cause a small percent of people are content to pay to see the creator's OCs do mundane things like play video games cause they want to see them happy! If you get more comfortable with sketch requests you can draw people's own OCs, but maybe make it a little more expensive because that's basically a commission.

[Kiweevil]

I'm really glad you made this thread, because I'm stuck on this as well. I can't really start up a working Patreon until I know what to use as rewards lol

[potatogirl]

(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

[SeraphicMayin]

When I was figuring out my Patreon I studied like a bunch of others then realized I had to tailor it to my work specifically.

Here's the mindset to have: What thing of value can I share with patrons?

For me, my Patreon is currently based around my ongoing comic and I worked to make a significant tiered buffer long before launch of the comic or its associated Patreon revamp. I am making a page version to sell and a scrolling version for free to read.

I also don't have time to make any new extra content so I had to figure out how to get the most value out of the content I was already making.

so I have three tiers:

• Bronze: view Pages ahead of Tapas updates (it fluctuates cause I have a full time gig outside this comic- but right now they get 1-2 finished pages ahead of time and WIPes of 5 pages ahead of the update schedule)

• Silver: Bronze rewards, 3 WIP pages ahead of Bronze, free monthly PDF of a Bone's Tarot Chapter (available on Gumroad for everyone else), and a credit for support at the end of every episode.

• Gold: Bronze and Silver rewards, Read thumbnails of One whole chapter everytime Silver reached the end of their chapter previews,, access to a private discord chat with me where they can post questions, and I can review their own work they want to share or whatever.

Later I want to work on a prose project so I'll probably come up with a set of tiers just for that since Patreon is rly useful in filtering which posts are seen by whom.

[kip]

not directly a reward but i have a patreon goal for extra pages; aka if my patrons collectively reach $X a month, i’ll draw an extra page per month

[surenlicious]

For my Patreon I've offered sneak-peaks, WIPs and early access to my art, snippets for future chapters to my novel chapters and upcoming are tutorials and monthly OC portrait requests to the highest tiers. These last two tiers will of course cost a bit more, but it will be worth it too.

[pilot-obvious]

I would say don't choose a bunch of stuff that would be overwhelming to deliver. Consider things that are already a part of your process, such as sketches, WIPS, thumbnails, tests, speedpaints, etc. You can show people how you do things, techniques, methods, etc. Early releases might also be easy if you create consistently and are able to continually deliver!

If you want to offer something even more substantial, maybe sketch requests to higher tier folks. I have a friend who will do monthly stickers or buttons to ship out to patrons. Just remember not to make it more work than you can handle! I always say underpromise and overdeliver!

[ryoko]

Since Patreon is meant for ongoing support of your series, you need to come up with something that you can realistically do in addition to your normal art workload.

For myself, I have only two tiers: $1 for reading pages ahead of normal uploads on Tapas/Webtoons that is about 11 pages aheard, and a $3 level that has pages ahead as well as bonus comics, monthly illustrations or other specials, like Mermay.

Offering individual sketches may be unrealistic if you have a lot of patrons. WIPs, pages in advance or HD pages and character designs sketches are always fun for patrons to see.