Hi I am a director & photographer … I have a lot of content but I have been having trouble trying to gain a single patron … where can I promote or how can I gain new patrons ?
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I’ve found that Directly messaging people I know both by text and social media has been the most effective way to get others to check out my patreon page. But I’ve only been at it a few months. I don’t ask them for money, I just let them know what I’m up to and pass on the link.
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In general, patrons come from wherever you’ve been promoting your work before Patreon. They’re your Facebook followers, or your YouTube subscribers, or the people on your email list.
I promote my content, convert people to followers, and remind them regularly that whatever they’re looking at is supported by patron pledges on Patreon. Whenever I host a collaborative project, a reminder that the project is made possible by patrons on Patreon is at the bottom of every email I send out. If I post a video, that same reminder goes into the description.
So, I think rather than “get patrons”, it should be “convert people who already follow me to patrons”, because for most of us, random people who have never seen our work before aren’t just going to magically appear as patrons.
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Since we’re a podcast we have a natural platform to discuss our patreon account, but some of the principles should translate universally.
We promote our patreon in every published episode’s notes with a little line: “Love what you’re hearing and want to support more great content? Check this out: patreon link”. Any content creator can do the same in a description, credits, etc.
We also mention it occasionally on our social media presence, letting people know it’s there and mentioning something cool that is only available as a thank you for supporters - we keep this sparse though to avoid overload.
We also do a special segment once a month where we publicly thank our patrons, discuss how they enable us and what we’re doing to give back. Obviously you need at least one patron to do that, but something to plan for.
Since we launched a few months ago, we’ve gained 9 patrons from our audience of roughly 2000 listeners, mostly above $10/month. Not sure this is the best strategy for all, but it meets our goals for now.