My God, that really grinds my gear! I can't think of anything else than that the people who say that kind of thing just doesn't have a basic knowledge about how money and life works.
i dont i ll never go in patreon mode, but who know lol
this remeber me when someone in twitter/facebook bought tons of followers just to be indicized. well, it worked in the beginning but later... be on the top with none real following that was quite usefull, a real owngoal lol
look like so...
There's this big annoying culture that artists have to be OVERLY humble in their works and they have to sell their work for minimum. Almost like you're just LUCKY you got hired rather instead of you actually working for it. There's a difference between keeping your feet in the ground and underselling yourself.
It's a nasty habit even I haven't broken yet and it's been pretty clear in some recent animator wage scandals and pretty much the artist commission demand online.
But ok that's out of the way, I read this and am considering a Patreon too. Even if it's just a dollar or so. So from people's experience, how does the tier system work best? Is it okay to publicly publish things you promised backers be it weeks or months after showing it to them?
I wouldn't sayI have that many subscribers, compared to many others here I am quite the small fish. But I started my patreon officially about a week ago I think. I did not do any advertising yet, other than mentioning it two times. So I still need to get around doing that.
My own website is simply a backup plan, in case something happens with Tapastic. I haven't looked at the stats of the site too closely, but I doubt it is visited too often, since I am mostly active here.
Since you were looking for them, here are my links:
http://tapastic.com/series/Devils-Acres11
https://www.patreon.com/ratique38
Hey guys, thank you all for the responses! A lot of this is really encouraging and inspiring and some really concerning ahaha.
I do think I am gonna get my butt into gear after this next chapter is finished and start up a Patreon and work on conquering this fear. But with that said, that sort of leads me to my next obstacle: The pledges. I have nooo idea what to offer, so if you guys have a Patreon, could you maybe post yours so I can get some ideas of what I can offer people? I saw @ratique 's and that gave me some fun ideas, but I'd love to see some more!
Here's mine49 if you need ideas!
I have this thought at the back of my head that I might have started patreon too early because I only have a small audience and I'm not really sure if there's someone in those 100 subscribers of my webcomic who are willing to lay down even just $1 and It's hard for me to advertise these stuffs because I'm scared that people might think that I'm forcing them to pledge and I might lose audience.
I'm starting to lose hope if ever gaining something on patreon.
I think it best to give it a shot when you have a huge fan base who are genuinely interested in your comic . That cant take a lot of time but once you do, financial gain for what you love doing is in sight. So it better to keep doing what you are doing for a coupe of years at least. If things are working then go for it!
I would start Patreon as soon as possible and put it up there with your posts. You have to Patreon much in the same way you have to build a comic and supporter base on Tapastic.com The sooner the better.
I'm thinking of starting one when I reach a total of 200 subs overall.
I'm almost halfway.
I'll also do a livestream if one of my comics reaches 100.
A lot of milestone ideas in the works.
I agree with most of the commentary here about setting one up as soon as possible. As long as you have a few hours to set up your patreon, do it! A few dollars a month is better than none. I made like $10/month for a loooooong time! But lately, people who don't even read my comic have stumbled upon my patreon and supported me! You just never know.
Some tips: Look up patreons of people who do similar work to yours (and are successful) and check out their rewards and milestones to give you ideas. Don't be afraid to be flexible with your rewards; if they don't seem to be working out, change them. Ask patrons what they'd like to see from you.
1) Be sure to explain HOW patreon works somewhere on your site, since a lot of people don't really get how it works. If you can make it easy on potential patrons, they are more likely to help.
2) Be sure to explain WHAT their support does for you/ your art. Some people will support you simply because they want to support what you are already doing, but there are a lot of people who would like cool extras. Things like commissions, tutorials, access to exclusive artwork seem to do well.
(note) Choose your rewards well. Don't overextend yourself by offering monthly, polished, full-color personal commissions for people pledging $5 -- that's easily worth $30+. You want to offer cool rewards and extras, but if this is primarily for your comic, you want to make sure these extras won't cut into your actual comic-making time.
3) Break up your text with pictures to avoid the daunting wall of words. If you can, upload a video. It's not as necessary as it is for kickstarter, but it can work well. I know people who are very successful on patreon w/o a video, so don't worry yourself first off about it.
As for audience? Expand your reach! Get active on twitter, tumblr, etc.
And don't be too disheartened by someone who has fifty thousand subs on tap but gets two dollars monthly. I know people with much lower subs that get hundreds monthly thru patreon. The sub numbers on tap don't mean much in terms of patreon; you don't know what kind of outside promo those people are doing!
A final tip -- for high tier rewards, like commissions and tutorials, release that content after payments are processed. You very well may get pledge-and-drop patrons who pledge in that tier to get the reward, then pull out before the payment is processed. Sounds sad, but it's true. It happens.
Good luck!
Thank you for all the helpful advice! Do you mind if I see your Patreon? I'm sort of aiming to get mine going once my current chapter is finished so now I'm just sort of looking for other people's Patreons to get ideas and inspiration. : )
Sure -- I recently expanded it because I do some non-comic work. Mine's a constant work in progress, too! ^^;
Hey Y'all,
Patreon marketing dude here.
Firstly, wow, Riko, you seem to be really in touch with your motivations and fears. Most people don't even know why they're not starting or make all sorts of other excuses about it.
I agree with most of the sentiment about "just get started" but that is only the first step. So, the question is this: I've set up my Patreon...now what?
After seeing thousands of people kill it and thousands fail; here are some tips that will help you be succesful on Patreon (and as a creator generally).
- Ask for it. People seem to be afraid to ask for the things that they want. I would recommend that everyone watch Amanda Palmer's TED talk6 and read her book "The Art of Asking" it is so inspiring and awesome.
This means updating your tapastic banner to have a call to action to support you, mentioning your page on social media, and other
Find your audience. Where are they? Where will your content do well. Get on Tumblr, Twitter, Reddit, wherever your audience is and post engaging stuff that people will share.
Engage with people to turn them into real fans. Please please read 1,000 true fans15 It such a great concept. The number of followers on Tapastic is NOT an indicator that you should or should not start a Patreon page. If people engage with you on whatever platform, it's because they care.
note:
We HAVE found at Patreon is that if you have those same fans on multiple social sites, that it is highly probable that people will become your patron. Meaning if your 1,000 Tapastic followers follow you on twitter that is very good.
But still, don't wait. Start NOW and build your audience over time.
Haters gonna hate. Seriously, you cannot pay attention to people who are going to call you a sellout, or a beggar or anything like
that. There will ALWAYS be people like that. This is like reading the
negative book reviews, just cater to your own audience and forget
everyone else.Everything that alakotila said is dead on!
If you ever have any questions you can email me directly at graham@patreon.com I will do everything I can or connect you with the right people.
WOW this is really helpful. I wish I had a way to highlight this comment for other people in my position to read because I think this is advice that would help a lot of people. I'm gonna aim to start up my Patreon before I start chapter 3 of my comic. This is definitely a post I'm gonna come back to. I might drop you an e-mail too once things get going as I could use all the help I could get. Will definitely be checking out those links too. Thanks so much for thi response!
