I most certainly do have some input!
Running down @jamie’s list:
- Financial services. I absolutely could use an accountant, but I’m not making enough for it to matter, also not enough to pay one. So, yes I want it but not sure I would want Patreon doing it. My theoretical accountant would need access to more than just my Patreon earnings.
- Helping me run my Patreon page… I find this to be disingenuous. People want to hear directly from creators. That’s what Patreon is about, isn’t it? To be able to connect more directly with our fans?
- Like #2, I think this kind of goes against that connection-with-fanbase thing, but also, I think at this point it isn’t Patreon’s job to manage our social media, there are people that exist as social media managers for that. Maybe Patreon could help us help ourselves by recommending someone that is good at it, or perhaps have a liaison on-staff available to help social media managers, but I don’t think Patreon staff should manage our stuff.
- Wow, 401k, I think only large creators are thinking of this. Wish that were even in my outlook/planning.
- Connecting us with brands: In my line of work / to me, this means helping me find brands that would like to use my music, ie. helping us to achieve placement in ads/commercials, shows, or even in youtube videos. I would absolutely be interested in this.
- Connecting us with graphic designers: I see this as something similar to #5, where for example, I (in the case of a musician) am being hooked up with people that could do stuff like logo design or album covers or stuff like that. Being piss poor at video production myself, I also think a useful connection would be VFX/animator types, or filmmakers, that could help us do cool stuff like music videos. So yeah, I would find this useful also.
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