I would like to know how other creators do affiliate marketing for their Patreon.
I have searched and basically come up empty - I could super easy set up a subscription parallel with Patreon to create a revenue stream outside Patreon but it would involve me keeping an eye on multiple accounts and I’m lazy so I don’t want the hassle.
For me the ideal situation would be for me to be able to give out affiliate links via an in Patreon affiliate system set up.
I’d give my affiliates a link (the affilliate) then shares the link to his friends, fans etc.
When 3’rd party signs up the affiliate receives a reward, say after the 3’rd party has been a Patron for 3 months (why 3 months? Well to eliminate potential fraud with stolen hijacked naturally) and then the affiliate receives a monthly cut transferred into his patron balance without any involvement on my part.
That way we as creators could concentrate on creating and others who are good at selling could become our ambassadors benefiting themselves and us creators at the same time, plus adding additional revenue into Patreon - a Win Win for all parties involved.
We as creators could set the affillitate cut to say 10-30% depending on how hungry we are to get more patrons.
What about it Patreon - Think your engineers are up for a small challenge that can have huge impact and revenue for you?
Interesting idea, @einarpetersen! I’m not sure what the likeliness is of getting this off the ground soon, but I’ll be sure to share with the team for future updates.
In the mean time, I know this is different from what you are suggesting but I thought it was worth a mention, we have a creator referral program!
Existing Patreon creators can refer a creator by sending a referral link from patreon.com/invite. If the newly launched creator reaches 20 patrons within their first 30 days, they are eligible to receive a cash bonus of $50 from Patreon.
Thanks, yes I am aware about the creator invite and that is a good
idea except perhaps the deadlines for how fast people need to have
attracted patrons are a bit tight.
The whole point of my suggestion however is that there are a lot more
“fans” out there of entertainment and creative endeavors than there
are creatives involved in making the content, so I am happy that you
will take the idea up with the team.
Also remember there is a huge business case in this idea for Patreon,
every new fan signing up is a percentage straight into Patreons pocket
as well so the faster you move on the idea the faster you can increase
your revenue and you only need a tiny effort, the fans will be doing
the promotion. This would again increase your visibility as other
services bolster their efforts to take over your market share.
There are a ton of affiliate tracking platforms out there some are
open source that you could integrate in your site. I believe if you
select the right one the effort could be minimal on your part.
Hope you will run with this, in theory you could probably even use
paypals subscription feature to handle the business side if you want
to minimize your programming, all through an API that you already
integrate with.
You should consider this idea seriously, because Patreon would be the one to gain the most, since your platform would get tons of free advertising if you offer all patrons links to reshare that give them something back. Creators would also benefit, of course. I tried regular ads before and no matter which strategy I choose, it’s always more expensive to acquire new subscribers than to do nothing, because conversion rates are dismal. If you offer an affiliate program, you only pay if there’s a conversion. Scale it up to Patreon’s size and you might be missing out on massive growth potential.