How to use Patreon?

Klaustasya 2018-11-06 11:37:50 UTC #1

For me it's a bit early to start thinking about patreon but i already have an account (empty as the desert) i've tried looking around about how to use it but couldn't understand much. I'd live to fill mine with some content but i have absolutely 0 ideas about where to start.
How do rewards work? What are rewards in the first place? What's adviced to post there? How to make it appealing?

MK_Wizard 2018-11-06 12:38:21 UTC #2

You give a reward according to how much a person gives. I would start at $1, $2 and then $5 dollars with the following;

For $1, access to Discord and Reddit.
For $2, early access to this week's pages plus everything under
For $5, early access to next week's pages plus everything under

Does this help?

Klaustasya 2018-11-06 13:45:29 UTC #3

But how do you use patreon when you don't have any patron yet?

Jenny-Toons 2018-11-06 14:15:45 UTC #4

Usually, a lot of people use Patreon to post work that's not available to the public yet.

You'll see a lot of creators make pages of buffer advance; however, instead of letting those pages sit until their scheduled release, some creators post them in advance on Patreon (but it's for people who've paid for reward tiers).

Readers now have the option to read pages that are posted on the usual schedule OR pay for a reward tier and read ahead of everyone else.

Creators will also post sketches, behind the scenes notes, exclusive concepts, and might even draw requests (under a reward tier, of course).

qwerty 2018-11-06 15:03:40 UTC #5

I'll just leave this guy's page here to point out that rewards are not strictly necessary to be successful -

One kind of reward that seems common is just giving patrons credit / showing their names as supporters of new episodes -

As someone who doesn't use Patreon, that's all I've got.

shazzbaa 2018-11-06 15:58:04 UTC #6

I'd advise looking at other patreon pages of folks who do the kind of thing you do and see what their page looks like and what kind of rewards they're offering!

Here's some comics patreons of varying levels of fame, if you want a place to start:
Ava's Demon
Runewriters (that's me!)
Helvetica
Paranatural
Grassblades/Anna Landin's patreon
Lackadaisy
Oops! Comic Adventure
Shingworks Patreon (Mare Internum, The Meek)

When you're ready to start posting stuff, you can set up tiers -- the "if you subscribe for $1 a month, you get access to these rewards" things -- and once you do that, then every time you make a post, there'll be a spot on the righthand side where you can decide what level tier gets to see the post -- you can mark it public, for everyone, or you can say only patrons can see it, or you can make it for a specific tier -- "only $5 patrons can see this". To everyone else, the post won't show up at all.

Generally, people aren't gonna just stumble across you on patreon. You have to tell your existing readers that you have a patreon and what you're offering and ask them to check it out. Instead of, sticking rewards up there and hiding them and seeing if that'll entice people, I'd go ahead and set up the page to look nice, set up all your reward tiers, maybe post the first couple of rewards, and then tell your readers what they can get by pledging --- then start posting rewards once you have patrons!!

I set up my early rewards so that I wouldn't have to do a lot of extra stuff in case I only got a few patrons -- so like, my $1 reward at the time was just all the process images for the making of the pages. I don't have to make anything extra for that, I just have to collect it in a nice neat format. So if I only got one patron, I wouldn't be doing a lot of extra work for $1. If you have a buffer, access to early pages is another good one that's enticing, but not a lot of extra work.

(Unsure if this answers your questions so if you have others, or if I worded something in a confusing way, please feel free to ask and I'll be happy to clarify!)

MK_Wizard 2018-11-06 16:01:49 UTC #7

You spread the word that you have one. You can post pictures, blogs and such while also setting access to who can see what according to reward tiers. You don't have to have any patrons to use it, but having stuff there entices people to see what you've got.

Klaustasya 2018-11-06 16:06:16 UTC #8

Thank you for your useful answer!
My only question is....what can i offer as reward if i don't have too much time or i'm still not so good with programs (so showing of my processes) or art?