Pateron (Warning Long Topic Story)

• Is Patreon Panhandling/Charity?

I don't think so. Comparing it to the PBS telethons makes sense in a mechanical way, but unfortunately, telethons are very annoying. When I think of the PBS donation drive I think of all the programs stopping while these people implore us to send them money.
Patreon doesn't have to be like that. You're not stopping your work to beg, you're providing an avenue for people who want to support you and people who love what you do and want a chance to get more involved. I've found that my readership was actually excited when I started a patreon, for the chance to get extra stuff and to interact with me more directly.
For me, Patreon is awesome, because while I'm gonna make as much merchandise as I can, my webcomic doesn't lend itself well to merchandising -- it's kind of niche interest. If I wanted to make regular money off of my work, I'd have to regularly pause the work I want to do in order to focus on merch that could sell. To me, patreon frees me from being beholden to what sells, and allows me to focus on the work I want to make and still be supported by the people who love it.

Also worth noting, you can set up patreon to pay you "per project" instead of per month -- I follow one guy2 who just couldn't shake the feeling that he didn't want to be "asking for money," so he set up his patreon to say very firmly that he doesn't get paid unless he creates content, so that his supporters can see what they're paying for.

• Is Patreon A Fad?

Well..... I can't say. How long do fads last? When Patreon first started up, I was very excited -- it's like Patrons Of The Arts back in Renaissance times, which, heck!! that turned out great for art in ye olden times!! -- but I waited more than two years to see if there would be any unforeseen problems or backlash or if the company would crumble. It hasn't yet!

But this game is always changing. Part of being an online artist is that you have to be able to adapt, constantly, and take advantage of new opportunities. When I was in college for comics, we were taught that putting ads on your page is the way to go to make a living at it, but now most creators I know are finding that has become unsustainable -- they've had to figure out how to move to either merchandise or patreon. Eventually, Patreon and Kickstarter might fall aside as something else takes their place -- that's how this gig works; we'll just have to be ready to adapt and keeping our eyes open for new opportunities as we go.

I think the thing is that Patreon is a response to the changing climate of art. Art is undervalued in general and piracy is becoming more and more common, and it's difficult to make a living by holding a digital project out of reach and asking people to pay for it, because someone can always grab it and torrent it. You can either fight to continue to operate that way, or you can look for a new model. Patreon, for now at least, is that new model -- instead of begging people to please not take your stuff for free and to pay you, you make your stuff available to everyone and give those that love it the option to pay you back. It's like a universal pay-what-you-want store.

I can understand where your mom is coming from, because there hasn't really been something like Patreon before, so it's hard to know what to make of it. And I also understand that sometimes a thing would be fine to do, but if your parents think it's unwise, you give their thoughts a little more weight. But this is how I look at it! Patreon isn't degrading myself as an artist -- on the contrary, it gives me the ability to be truer to the work I want to make! It isn't devaluing my work -- on the contrary, it's me believing that the webcomic I release for free has greater value than a free advertisement, and recognising that people actively want to support that work. There are other ways to make a living in comics (kickstarters, focusing on printed work, merchandise), and I know it's not for everyone, but I think it is a good thing! : )

You can run Patreon like more of a tip jar/donation box, but most of the artists I know/support aren't doing it that way. People who pledge get content, often quite substantial, in return for their money. They're buying access to exclusive art, livestreams, tutorials, early pages, commissions, all sorts of things.

It's not a conventional/traditional model of business, and it may not be as stable as a steady job, but it's definitely not a charity and I don't think the artists who use it are 'degrading themselves' in any way.

Watch the Amanda Palmer TED talk. I watched it and it made me way more understanding of why Patreon works, it's a different mindset of how artists and fans interact. Seriously watch it, and you might even watch it with your mom and discuss it afterwards.

I'm a big fan of crowdfunding in general. I've a lot more experience with running Kickstarters than Patreons, but I launched a Patreon for my comic at the top of this month and am very pleased with how it's gone so far. I plan to start promoting it a lot more next month, but it's been a great way to connect to fans, and the potential to grow an audience and earnings over time is really appealing to me. It's a lot less intense than running a Kickstarter, and Patreon makes it really easy to share digital rewards for backers. You can also design it in a lot of different ways (even as a tip jar, as @shazzbaa mentioned), so that you don't over commit and slow down your production pipeline.

It might not grow enough to make you capable of supporting yourself entirely through Patreon, at least not for a long time, but it will certainly go a long way towards soaking up overhead costs for art materials, advertising, website hosting, prints so that you can submit your work to publishers, and other things of that nature. I highly recommend it.

ahhh she had 2 business in the 80 and 90's? I can see her POV and as a tried and tested business strategy it DOES seems like 'begging' in a sense but as @gateofselidor said, artist (like myself) are using it as a 'subscription service' This type of business setup is going global right now, Adobe, Spotify, Microsoft, Netflix etc
The biggest target audience nowadays mainly consists of millennials (18 to 34) who aren't impressed by hard selling but favor more organic 'experiences' and products. Patreon at the moment is sitting nicely in this niche at the mo, will it always? Who knows, it could evolve or died out but then again all business strategies do with each passing generation

I can definitely see where you're coming from with these thoughts. When I first discovered what Patreon was, I did a little investigating and it's definitely something that comic artists should look further in to getting in to. I actually set up a Patreon page for my comic but I haven't gotten around to really promoting or building it a lot. I do plan on using it sometime down the road to place premium content on.

I don't consider it a tall to be a platform where artists can beg fans for money. The way I see it is there are plenty of comic fans out there who are happy to help support the comics and the artists they love most, Patreon makes that sort of easy. It kind of sounds like your mom has slight bias against Patreon for some reason. Maybe she genuinely doesn't like the idea of an artist getting free/quick cash but who would seriously be opposed to that anyway? There's nothing wrong with getting paid doing what you love to do by fans who also love what you do! :3

And as far as Patreon being a fad, I think it's pretty much here to stay in the online art sphere, at least until there's a better way for artists and comic creators to make decent money.

I can understand where your mother is coming from on this, but here's the thing - most of us (you included, I'm sure) are posting our comics for free, where everyone can read them, as has been the model of webcomics since well before Patreon. Giving people a way to voluntarily help you out by pitching in a bit of money for something you're already doing isn't a bad idea.

Also, it has nothing to do with talent. Art is severely undervalued today, so even the most talented among us can have a hard time earning a steady income from our art - Patreon gives us a way to earn a bit of money, and that's nothing to be sneezed at. I'm not sure how your mother thinks you ought to earn money with your art-skills; in a world that has become used to digital piracy and cheap entertainment, nobody is going to go out of their way to throw money at you for your work unless you give them an easy way to do so.

And most Patreon campaigns are centered around providing early access to upcoming pages, posting sketches and extra content, and maybe do exclusive livestreams of your stuff. There's nothing degrading about it.

(also, I'm of the opinion that we as artists really need to get over the idea that it's somehow dirty or dishonest to ask for money for our art; it's a special skill, it's time-consuming to produce, why shouldn't it be okay to earn money on it?)

As for Patreon being a fad.... I don't think it is - it's been around long enough to prove itself as a platform, IMHO. Is it eventually going to die and be replaced by something else? Of course it is; that's the natural lifecycle of the internet and of businesses in general, unless they grow and change with the times. We're all still adapting to and finding new ways of earning money for our work in a more and more digitalised world - I'm sure there will be Patreon competitors and completely different avenues of earning money, but for now, Patreon seems like a pretty reliable bet.

It's not the only way, and in fact probably shouldn't be - building a solid base of supporters on Patreon is slow and challenging work - but it can be a nice way to earn a bit of extra cash, the same way the Ad Revenue on Tapastic is a nice way to earn a couple of extra dollars a month. If you want to have a more reliable way to earn money on your art skills, look around for paying jobs in the business. Concept art, animation, illustration work, etc., etc. There are a lot of ways and a lot of places to apply your skills that aren't Patreon.

There is another side to the story. As a hobbyist artist who is working in a completely different field to earn my income (which I also love, so the world is well made), I would like to be able to do help 'real' artists make a living of their trade. But have you seen how much a 'real' painting costs? I can't afford to spend hundreds of insert currency here to buy a painting even if I'm absolutely in love with the work.

I'll request the odd comission every now and then, but even that isn't something I can afford to do every month. Pledging a couple of dollars to my favorite artists, though? Can do. So not only it isn't charity, but it's a way for patrons to feel valued in their support- at least that's how it works for me. On the flip side, I do feel like a lot of people are opening patreons for everything and nothing. But that's another debate entirely.

I don't think of pateron as asking for charity at all. Art and webcomics consume massive amounts of time and work unfortunately that doesn't mean it pays the bills what pateron offers is a way for an artist to have more free time and less stress about money so they can focus on their product and produce more productively and hopefully at a higher quality. Like the other comments above I do think you should consider exclusive content for pateron supporters and that it is what you make it.

Yep, yep, yep. Lots of great input here.

Exclusive content is really the key to most comic Patreons. Think of Patreon as a subscription service, and people who subscribe at various levels get bonus content made exclusively for them. You're doing extra work for that money -- the work of running and maintaining your Patreon page and fans, the work of creating subscription-only art/content, etc.

You can go the tip jar route if you don't have the time to create a larger Patreon campaign, where donations are just donations and you don't offer any content in return. Honestly, though, Paypal is a more effective way to do that in terms of overhead and ease-of-use. And the tip jar method might be more along the lines of what your mother's imagining Patreon to be all about, but it doesn't have to be. Your campaign will definitely be more successful if you think of it and design it as a subscription service.

For me Patreon represents a huge shift in how employment works...Instead of being beholden to one company or another, one can generate their own revenue and work on gaining 'promotions' in the form of more and bigger pledges. It's a very powerful thing because creators have this tool to fund their own projects where they don't have to cave to stockholders.

It's very open ended so a creator can tip jar or make it into a primo content subscription generator.

What I'm curious about is whether there's any fallout from people pledging to creators, whether they can legally claim to own the work and its direction. The amounts are just so small, though, and patrons don't collude, so I dunno, it's new territory all around.