Some questions about PATREON

Mharz 2017-02-16 12:25:57 UTC #1

Hi there! If you have a patreon, I'd like to ask some questions regarding them so I hope somebody will answer. :3

1. Regarding giving out rewards: Do you post them right after you got the payment or do you have a set schedule in a week where you post rewards? I'm honestly extremely bad at maintaining multiple accounts on various sites (I'm looking at you, tumblr, smackjeeves and comicfury) and for sure Patreon will eat some of the time that I should be using in drawing but I don't want it to eat up my entire day.

2. If a certain tier doesn't have any patrons do you still post rewards or not? My logic is if there's nobody seeing them, then what's the point of posting them? So if there's nobody pledging should you post any rewards regardless?

3. Which sites do you promote your patreon and how often do you promote them in a day? I don't want to end up being spammy and make people think that I'm only on Tap/Twitter/etc. to promote my patreon.

Also you can tweet (if you have one) your patreon link to me @avimharz and I'll RT it or just link them here and I'll share it on my twitter account. I'm also researching other creator's reward models so that I can build one that suits me so I'm doing like a some kind of survey for rewards.

Thanks for answering! <3

AnnaLandin 2017-02-16 12:52:36 UTC #2

I have my Patreon set to charge upfront, so as soon as someone signs up they get charged for it, and then they're charged again on the 1st of the following month, and then that reoccurs monthly.

Before I changed to charge upfront, and had things set only to monthly charging, I would wait until that month's payments had gone through before I send out rewards, just to confirm that the backer actually paid for things, instead of doing that thing where they sign up, get the thing and then cancel their pledge before they're charged. Happily, that's no longer a possibility!

For downloadable rewards, I tend to message them with the link to the folder where I keep those things within a few days of them signing up to be my backer. And then I do a mass-PM to the backers on the relevant tiers when I add anything new to those folders. The downloadable rewards are a handful of desktop wallpapers and a bunch of PDFs of comics; some backers have access to all of it, other backers only to certain things, so I've got them divided up in different folders.

As for content posted ON Patreon, I tend to do early comic pages on the same days I update my comic for regular readers (mon/fri, with patrons being two pages ahead), and then I do a weekly sketchpost/misc. on Wednesdays.

ETA: I also do occasional Q&A's and between-chapter sketchcomics that are Patreon-exclusive; those tend to go up on Wednesdays too.

I have backers spread out across all tiers, so this is not an issue I have to deal with at the moment.

Twitter, Tumblr and Tapastic. On Twitter and Tumblr, I tend to mention it a.) when I alert people of updates (on Tumblr, that's 1-2 times per update day, on Twitter, 3-4 times), b.) when there's a specific event in which it is relevant (#ComicBookHour, for example), and c.) maybe mention it a few times a month randomly, and usually at the beginning of each new month. Just remind people that it's there.

For context: this is what my announcement-tweets look like. An announcement of the new page, with link to main site/Tapastic, and a mention that I've got a Patreon, as well as a crop of the new page in question. I then bump or RT that tweet a couple of times throughout a 24 hour period after the update's gone up.

I also have it linked in my various profiles, and on Tapastic, my comic's headers and side-bar banners link to the Patreon-page as well - and I occasionally mention it in the author's comments.

Here's what my Patreon page looks like at the moment! I'm actually doing my first Patreon-exclusive livestream tomorrow, which is fun.

donathinfrye 2017-02-16 15:23:08 UTC #3

There are a lot of different types of rewards you can do. For me, I have a specific day of the week where I typically do all of my Patreon posting and rewards. It's Tuesday, which happens to be the same day I generally update my webcomic on other sites too. I haven't switched to charging patrons immediately, yet, but I also haven't had anyone sign up for my Patreon and then cancel their support before monthly payments go through. I imagine I'll make that switch eventually.

It's sort of up to you. Patreon tiers are just that: tiers. So, if I have a $10 patron but no $5 patrons, that $10 patron should be expecting to also receive all of the $5 rewards (unless you explicitly state otherwise on your page). But, if $10 is my highest tier and I don't have any patrons at that tier, then no, I wouldn't spend time creating rewards for nobody.

I promote my Patreon on Facebook, Twitter, Tapastic, my website, sometimes Project Wonderful, Start Faire Magazine, during events like #ComicBookHour, and at various online forums wherein I am active. I also promote my Patreon on my business card that I hand out to folks that I meet at comic shops, or the bar, etc. The bulk of my promotion is on Facebook and Twitter, as that's where I have the most engagement and the biggest following. I usually do a couple of promotion posts per month on each site, and I tend to save my biggest calls to action for towards the end of the month when my larger exclusive content posts are going out -- and Patreon is about to start charging.

You can check out my Patreon here.

Good luck with yours!

Chopythes 2017-02-16 16:40:29 UTC #4

Regarding giving out rewards: Do you post them right after
you got the payment or do you have a set schedule in a week where you
post rewards?

I've got a set schedule/week!
I post one page on Tuesday's and Thursday's (I've got two comics going on so I figured that might be the best option, might be stupid tho and clogging up the dashboard??? I dunno, I haven't figured out Patreon yet)

If a certain tier doesn't have any patrons do you still post rewards or not?
My logic is if there's nobody seeing them, then what's the point of
posting them? So if there's nobody pledging should you post any rewards
regardless?

I've only got patrons on my lower tiers, so I actually wondered this too!
Tbh, I'm still making the sketchposts each month, but I'm not posting them because of this reason. I figured: Hey! Why not save them as a buffer of some sort?? :D

Which sites do you promote your patreon and how often do you promote them in a day?

I'm using twitter for this, whenever I've posted something I go there and yell about it. I try to re-tweet it sometimes but I forget often to do so tho so. Mostly it's just about 2 times/week.

I'm still setting up my patreon page, but I work full time and I use patreon mostly as a tip jar of some sort xD (I've had it for like 2 years and only NOW begun to make something out of it xD)