Hi from Patreon Research!
We’re thinking of building great products to help you manage your business. So far on the list are:
Questions for you!!
<3 <3 <3
Jamie
I bet that @DiogoTomas, @Sarah, and @inversephase have some thoughts here. 
I most certainly do have some input!
Running down @jamie’s list:
TL;DR (and to the point): If we’re poor, we can’t afford accounting/financial help, but maybe someone has a use for it. Don’t manage/run our things. Do help us connect with people that we can work together with or those that can help to showcase or get our work out there.
With regards to whether things sound useful and how they should work, I think we’ve gotten started there, let’s just keep the conversation going.
As far as things that are being missed? To me, there’s one major thing that sticks out:
Creators, myself included, complain about roadblocks to creating. Perhaps creators with a larger fanbase and/or more patrons are worried about the business end of things, and hey, maybe they’ve approached you about that.
The thing is, for myself and other small creators, we want to turn our craft into a business, but $50, $100, $200, even $500 a month is just not the living wage our great leader talks about in the “about Patreon” video. Our patrons and our fans want us to deliver our work (their rewards) and when we hit stumbling blocks on Patreon – which is the platform we have to deliver them on and through – it gets discouraging.
I hear you loud and clear. You want to help us get back to creating. My heart goes out to you! I appreciate all of this, really and truly. You’re trying to make our lives easier. All of the things you’ve listed up above are awesome. But they’re also things that we can hire anyone to do, given that we can afford it. The thing we can’t hire people to do is improve Patreon itself. I would give up every last one of the things you listed for bugfixes and improvements in the Patreon site and backend.
I want things like making posts over on Patreon to work better. There’s a weird first-paragraph glitch, we’re only allowed 5 tags, it thinks anything-dot-anything is a URL. Embedding a bandcamp link in a post still just gives me a giant “listen on bandcamp” white-text-on-blue thing. The aspect ratio of images in the body of posts is wrong. I want download code distribution. I want better ways to reach out to others inside of Patreon. All of the hard work is done – Patreon exists, after all – and these are under-the-hood improvements that could be made quickly and easily. It would make the overall experience even better for both creators and patrons!
TL;DR for this part: Once we produce work, we want to deliver it and spread the news to our patrons easily. The faster we can do that, we will grow in kind. Let’s fix up the tour van’s engine (er, Patreon) first so it doesn’t break down, so that we can even make it to the accountant, manager, or collaborators we’re getting connected with.
Many hearts,
IP
I agree with @inversephase. These suggestions are great, but are probably a bit overkill for most and seem to be things that others can be hired out for when needed.
The biggest thing I see so far that would help on the ease of creating side is pursuing further integration with existing tools and platforms that are already being used by many. Other posts in the community address some of these so I won’t rehash it here, but as a blogger and podcaster I find myself using many of the same services and tools over and over. If I could do easier, remove a few of those “marketing” steps if you will, the creation side of things would be made much easier.
But as @inversephase has said user experience on both sides seems to be the most advantageous pursuit right now I think. Love what Patreon has and is building. Love what it offers to creators. It’s great, but everything will hinge on user experience when trying to convert fans to patrons it seems.
In all transparency I’m a newbie to Patreon compared to most so these are rather early observations. Someone much further down the line might disagree or have a greater need for the things you’re proposing @jamie. I am though so grateful for the desire to continue to grow, build, and improve what is already a great platform. And to ask the users for feedback is super.
@inversephase and @jody you said it all! Besides some improvements (such as a better search engine and the possibility to choose the site’s main language - like we have here on the patreoncommunity site 
), it would be great to work, all together (you Patreon Team with our help, creators), in ways to present Patreon, at it’s best, to the world. I don’t know if that “invite a creator and make money together” campaign worked in general - In my case, it didn’t at all. Before investing on Patreon, creators and patrons have to feel engaged and feel that Patreon could work for everybody, and I think, if we come up with a campaign of "promote some fellow creators you love on your social networks…’, it would be awesome, in ways we can’t imagine. @jamie thank you for the ideas! And sorry if I replied a little off from the initial question but this is one of the things I’ve been struggling about lately.
Hey Jamie, and thanks for the tag Ellie too, really appreciate this. 
I think these are great ideas, and especially good for people starting small now but wanting to get things in place properly right from the start. So I hope my feedback will help in some way.
- Financial services, accounting, and tax.
I’m super lucky because I approached a local accountant, explained what I was doing and they agreed to support me in kind. Both personally, and for the charity I run, though I would love to be in a financial position to pay them one day because they have been really awesome and are a relatively small business. But I do feel quite guilty because I’m not based in the UK now, but my charity is, and most of my income comes from Patreon or freelance work on things like Fiverr so is all in dollars, and messes up the tax side a lot, which is a huge headache for them! We also have to submit an annual financial report to the Charity Commission, so these things cause chaos! I personally live in the Channel Islands so we have our own tax here, and it’s illegal for us to pay VAT on UK things so this also complicates things. I know Patreon are working hard to add the Channel Islands to the list and to resolve the tax thing.
I would love to see the Channel Islands added to the list on Patreon so that myself as a patron of other creators, and for my patrons, not to be paying UK tax as this is the main stumbling block for me and other Channel Islands based folks right now.
But a product developed by Patreon, that isn’t just USA focused could be a great investment from my perspective, especially if its user friendly to my accountant in the UK and reduces her workload. Or if I could manage my personal finances in terms of Patreon then send the information over to her for the annual reports that would also help as I need to submit my earnings as a self employed person to the Channel Islands government each year so they can calculate my tax, health insurance, contributions, etc.
If what Patreon offers could be prepared for UK or Channel Islands based authorities then it is definietly something that I would consider using. If it’s purely USA based, then it won’t be of any use to me. The cost will be a huge factor too. But in principal I would definitely be interested in this service.
- Helping you run your patreon page
Yes please! I would absolutely love this. I’ll be at sea as I row around the coast of Britain between May and September next year and I would love to have someone share updates and deliver to my patrons whilst I’m rowing. I also feel quite frustrated that I’m not streamlining my page at the moment, and I would love the opportunity to work 1:1 or to have some kind of advisor or mentor, who I could sit down with, explain my goals, audience, project, etc, and then together to plan a campaign that benefits both my community and my income as a creator. This could then allow me to stop stressing about finance and trying to do half a job across multiple platforms or tasks.
Even five minutes to sit down with another Patreon creator and see what suggestions or feedback they have for my page would be gold dust.
I totally agree that the whole magic with Patreon is about the creator engaging personally with the patrons, but right now I don’t feel that I’m serving the patrons and potential patrons properly, so having someone manage the page and with social media, etc, could actually help me to be more present for my audience, and be a better use of my time and energy too, so I serve them better as a result.
I’m not in position to pay for this right now, but I would be happy to pay for this, especially if it could be like a loan or something, where you get help for your channel, which leads to an increase in income, and then once you hit a basic income you start to repay the cost of the one on one sessions or something? When I worked in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, the university had a similar set up, where you went to university for free, and then at the end of your degree and you started earning, you paid in what the tuition would have cost, so that the next student would get their tuition for free.
- Helping you choose 401k plans
Had to Google this one! Not something I’m familiar with. If it’s about putting aside funds for pensions and things, then I would definitely be interested in this, as I’d like to get to the point where Patreon becomes my primary source of income (instead of doing horrid transcriptions and things for £5 on Fiverr just to pay rent and eat). My audience is primarily teachers and teens who I teach for free on Skype in the Classroom, and I would love to do more of this and to create proper content for them, connected with my row around Britain and following the Viking routes. If I could develop my YouTube channel and connect all those teachers or schools or classes with my Patreon page, and have them support for $1 a month, I’d be in a position to be full time creating, and to have the luxury of putting some of that aside for my old age, or to support other projects, or to manage any funds better would be awesome.
- Connecting you with Brands
I was actually thinking about this one the other day, as I’ve recently joined Famebit. I think for beauty and lifestyle vloggers Famebit is great, but my audience is a tricky one, and the kinds of brands I want to work with are not currently on Famebit or are too restricted in what they want from the creator. But I’ve already been lucky to get a lot of my expedition kit for free, just for using it as part of my Guinness World Record attempt row around Britain. But I’d like to be able to work with more brands and companies, but in a more authentic way. My target audience are teachers and teens so I have an ethical/moral obligation to protect them, and I want them to watch more and more content, because the royalties from views on YouTube and Amazon are being used by my charity to provide education to kids living on rubbish dumps, and street kids who have no access to education.
I don’t really want to be doing intros or outros promoting brands geared to my kids, but I think there are other genuine ways to incorporate those brands. For example, I’m building my own boat, so I need a hammer and saw, wood, boat paint, cups of tea to drink whilst building the boat, and I’ll obviously be wearing clothes for the videos (I could especially use a technical sailing clothing brand right now!), or using things like TubeBuddy or Patreon, or a camera to film. These products could genuinely be included in my content and those companies could then share the footage. During my row I’m stopping off at schools, and doing a city based tour for schools and the general public in December next year. This involves an augmented reality museum of my expedition kit, boat build workshop, and all the Viking finds and places around the British coast. This would be an awesome opportunity for a company to have their service or product included in the augmented reality museum, to be seen by the general public during the tour, but that museum could also be taken to their business event or their clients to showcase what they have been involved with in terms of supporting the expedition and education. That same app will be accessible to anyone who downloads it for their VR/AR device, and it will be used in museums worldwide after the event.
Plus companies would be able to use photos of me using their products or services over the next eighteen months or more, and its more than just having kit or money, its about a long term relationship with that company, where you can go and meet their team, give them interactions just for them during the expedition, or that they can weave you in to their own social media campaign, alongside the message they want to deliver, or meeting their corporate responsibility for example.
If I had funds right now, I would certainly employ someone whose sole job it was to connect my expedition and charity with brands in a genuine way, and also to have those brands become a part of the Patreon community because that’s an incredible opportunity to engage directly with your fans. For example, if a company gave me technical sailing/rowing clothing to wear for my expedition, my audience would be really interested to go on a visit to where those products are made and to find out more about the design behind them, or how the fabric was chosen for its material properties, and then to actually see it being made, and me wearing it for the first time. That has educational value about the real world, about material science, and about business, marketing, etc, but gives the company chance to show their values to young people who will grow up knowing their brand.
If Patreon could offer something like this, maybe with a manager whose sole job it was to link up brands with creators, that would be amazing!! So I’m all for that. I think the important thing for me as a creator, is that I’m small with a niche audience, not millions of subscribers, but its about brands coming onboard now and all of us growing together in a really authentic way, that the brand becomes a part of our community and family as we go on this expedition together.
- Connecting you with graphic designers
DEFINITELY something I would be really keen to see develop. At the moment I have to trawl through Fiverr or Upwork to find people to help me with things that I’m not able or don’t have time or interest to do. It would be especially good if those graphic designers were other Creators on Patreon so we could end up supporting each other. Not just for graphic design, but for things like music composition, or for doing fun collaborations. Even if it was just a case of saying ‘hey guys, if you like my new YouTube banner it was created by person x, if you like it then please go and check out their page on Patreon’. Like a skill trade. I wonder how many creators also offer their services to others in a Fiverr type way? If we could all support each more, then that would be a whole new area, especially if people could offer their services on a dashboard or something, maybe patrons would also be interested in buying specific skillssets from the creators, but don’t know they exist or offer those services? I think Tim Schmoyer incorporates this in his rewards really well, as I benefit from the content he makes but also know he has services you can hire. Likewise Evynn Hollens offered a singing lesson reward to her patrons, so not only do fans get to support her content but they can also hire her, even if its a limited few who get that opportunity.
Slightly off on a tangent, but I’d definitely like Patreon to become a one stop shop, and maybe we could use funds from our Patreon pledges to cover specific things or services like graphic design?
Thanks so much for putting this out there Jamie, its great to get the conversation started, and being involved in the development of Patreon and being asked for feedback is the thing I love most about this platform.
The only further thing that I personally would love, is the opportunity to have some kind of Patreon Page manager or mentor who can help you with your channel from day 1, and to maximise it at each stage of the journey and as it grows. That would be worth offering for free I think, because the more money that each Creator can bring in, the more commission Patreon is going to get in the long run, and the more likely we will be to hire or buy extra services from you, so that we can do the thing we love most…creating stuff that our audiences enjoy.
@jamie @Sarah I was actually thinking about the idea of a Patreon mentor/success/onboarding type person the other day. I know several services I uses have people like this to help you move along, navigate, and discern what steps to take next. A “Creator Success Team” or something along those lines would be tremendous to have!
I’d also like a boat, but that’s another story…
Creator Success Team…that’s a cool name!
We have a small team that does this called Creator Care. Since the team is only two people, they are currently working with creators meeting a certain threshold in monthly patronage. But hopefully this is something that we can grow to support smaller creators as well.
That said, the Community Happiness Support team is great at offering guidance if you write to them through the Help Center.
WOW there is so much good stuff here. Sorry - I’m recovering from a cold. I’m reading everything now! <3
This would be so helpful.