I’m going to drop my $1 reward tier, but I’m unsure as to whether to replace it with a $2 tier or leave my current $3 tier as the lowest level.
Thoughts? Advice? Experience?
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By my lights, I think the biggest difference is between $0 (no support) and $1. I don’t believe there are many of your fans who would support you at $2, who wouldn’t support you at $3 (but you’re getting 50% more for every one of those contributions.)
I’ve had $3 as my lowest tier since I started in 2015. And, IMHO, I think it’s the lowest tier any creator should have on Patreon.
My 2 cents, anyway. 
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Do you have any patrons who are already subscribed to your $1 tier? If so, you might want to warn them ahead of time that you are changing up your tier. They might get very upset if you changed your tier without warning them first.
Just my two cents. 
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@Rabbitearsblog oh yes, I always let them know ahead of time when I plan any changes.
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That’s good!
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@mcoorlim: I definitely agree it’s always good to include your current patrons in on anything you’re planning and to get their feedback.
But, for what it’s worth, the pledges of current patrons don’t change when you go from a $1 Tier to a $3 Tier. Their pledges will stay the same. You might already know that, but in the Patreon Workshops, it’s a question that often comes up.
And then you have a choice – continue offering what are now $3 Tiers to your “legacy” $1 patrons (since they were early supporters of your work) or make the case why you need to make the change, and invite them to up their pledge.
Part of it depends how you handle the change.
You can unpublish the $1 level, which will make it unavailable to new patrons. By my lights, this is the best option since it keeps your tiers less cluttered. As I understand it, your current $1 Tier member will remain on the same $1 Tier and you’ll still be able to send rewards to that tier (or not)—it just won’t be available to new Patrons. Is that right, @laurab?
You can set a limit on the number of folks who can be in that $1 tier, and have that limit equal the current patrons. That requires the least explanation I suppose, but then if a legacy patron leaves, a $1 slot opens up. I don’t think that’s what’s you’d want, but I guess some people do it.
What you don’t want to do is delete the $1 pledge level. As I understand it, that puts your current $1 pledges into some kind of no-reward limbo. No good for anyone.
There has been at least one specific workshop about making the change from $1 that Patreon put out. I’m not seeing it on the workshop page, but it’s almost always addressed in their videos for best practices. If you haven’t already, maybe take a look at https://www.crowdcast.io/e/l6r4k00m
Hope this helps.
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You can set a tier limit to less than the amount of people in the tier. I have legacy/grandfathered tiers and they are set to 1 person while there are still more then that on the tier. This ensures that no new slots become available when someone leaves.
Also yes unpublushing a tier makes it not show up on your patreon page so no one can pledge to it.
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Echoing what others said, but we had a live workshop specifically on how to retire your $1 tier - you can watch it here as a replay: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/himtgddk
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Thank you, @mindy! For some reason I couldn’t find that link.
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No worries! you can find some of the replays here and we’re working on improving that page too
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Huh. I looked on that page and couldn’t find it. And I still can’t find it. I must need more coffee!
It’d be awesome if there were a single page with all the previous webcasts, perhaps organized by topic. You could replace the ones you’ve updated, but I think having access to all that previous content would be of great benefit. That might be the very improvement you are working on. 
Yes indeed! that one is not showing on that page currently but we want to do exactly what you describe to make that page easier to navigate as we continue to do more workshops
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Great suggestions from Alex here. I am also going to do a quick plug of the Special Offers feature. You can run an offer to motivate your $1 tier patrons to move to the next highest tier, before retiring the $1 tier.
Hope this helps.
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