Hi everyone! I just took the workshop Patreon offered on Six Weeks to Success and I’m four days into my first-ever Special Offer. I set a modest goal of gaining 8 to 10 new Patrons at my $5 tier–roughly 10% growth for me on Patron count–and I just hit that total last night.
My Patreon’s one-year birthday has just passed so I’m pretty new to all this, but I’m really happy with how my Special Offer is doing and now hoping I might hit 15-20% Patron growth in my remaining week and a half. I’d definitely like to run another one of these in the future!
My question is, for those of you who run Special Offers, what’s the sweet spot? Every six months? Every four months? Or is one a year really the best idea?
What my paradigm is… I’m currently a part time creator still carrying a “real job” but about to move across the country to join my significant other, so I’ll soon be giving freelancing a shot full-time to see if it works for me (Patreon and commission work). I currently promote on my company’s Twitch stream (three times a week, and this will continue after I move) and Facebook. My New Year’s resolution for my Patreon is to start a mailing list and get more consistent on my Instagram, and to create more short free content for my YouTube that might get me access to a slightly different audience.
Thanks for any suggestions or experience you can share!
In my experience from talking to various folks (and my own Special Offers), there isn’t really a sweet spot since each patreon page has a generally different audience and what they are interested in, can afford, etc will be different. In this case i’d suggest trying out what works for you and also polling your audience to see what they say. They are the best people to ask, since they are the ones directly supporting you.
Congrats on your successful Special Offer, that’s great news!
I ran a special offer September 2018, and another one in December 2019. I thought I’d do it more frequently, but life happened. I used this special offer program to help me focus on creating a free webinar that will build my list and help me create a sequential development process for new followers to become Patrons. I’ve created the class, and started to market it and have generated a lot of interest and several sign-ups. I’m excited and hopeful that this approach will help me build a steady stream of new students for my classes!
Congratulations @painting.big1 on your success! And your move sounds very exciting, please keep us posted on how that goes. @thelatestkate can give you advice on starting a mailing list too!
On a general level, we recommend creators run a Special Offer every 3-4 months. This means you would run 4 a year, which maps nicely to the 4 quarters in year and helps you set goals around them. We have seen creators succeed when they align them to seasons or trends that fall in each quarter. Here’s what that could look like:
Q1: February, Special Offer tied to Valentines Day
Q2: Spring clean, give patrons something you discontinued
Q3: Summer fun, a sunny twist on something you do
Q4: December, Special Offer tied to Halloween or giving back for the holidays
This may initially feel like a lot, but it helps to put yourself in your patrons shoes. Situations for people change all the time, and often they need an extra push to make that purchase decision. If you have lots of people undecided about whether to join, seeing your promotion at the right time might make all the difference!
Thanks so much Mindy! I like the holiday or season-themed special offers idea. I was thinking of running one every four months or so, and I was thinking that I wanted to vary the type of reward as well. Though this one was digital, and very simple, I still really want to do some stickers at some point.
As of today I am up to 17 new Patrons, which is over 20% new Patron growth for me. The monetary growth is 13% because I ran the offer for my $5 tier (because given the folks in my miniatures painting community, I figured that $5 a month was an easy yes for them for so much value). I would like to run an offer for a higher tier than $5…I keep thinking about how much farther I could be toward my $1000 a month goal if I had run an offer for the $10 tier instead! But then that’s also not as easy a yes. It certainly is an interesting balance to try to strike.
Either way I’m very happy with how things are going. I do love my Patreon!
As for my personal journey from part time to full time creator, it will be a “Take Two” for me… I tried to go freelance almost two decades ago but I really didn’t know what I was getting into at that time. It did allow me to seriously hone my painting skills, and also I made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot about what it would really take for me to make it work in the future. Patreon is a HUGE game-changer for me in that regard as it gives me a solid monthly to then supplement with sales and commission work, instead of relying principally on the latter which of course can be very unpredictable.
Anyhow, I am fortunate in that my relationship with my current company has allowed me to establish a positive reputation and make many friends in the community, and all of these are definitely helping me spread the word about my Patreon. So fingers crossed that they will continue to help as I jump back into the scary unknown of making a living with my art!
Hey there! I’ll echo what Mindy said and add to it a little bit. My team created this product so we’ve thought a lot about it!
I agree that the answer here is really “what works for you.” We have seen some people run special offers too frequently (usually running it every. single. week. for example). That worked for a little while and then starts to create some fatigue with your audience. Seasonal special offers are great and so are ones that aren’t seasonal but are tied to special events in your creative life: new album, new book, live show, new goal, Patreon anniversary, etc. etc.
Special Offers can also be a great way to “retire” a tier by adding the Special Offer to the higher priced tier and talking to your lower-tier patrons about it. That can happen whenever but we recommend some tier adjustments whenever you feel like you’ve hit an extended plateau in your earnings and want to give things a boost.
Thank you so much for all your replies! I’ve brainstormed a couple more digital special offers I could do for later this year and will also work on stickers.
I have been blown away by the positive response to my first Special Offer. Today is the last day and my number of Patrons grew by almost 40%!!
@mindy the biggest thing this taught me was that I really need to mention my Patreon more. Many friends or students had simply forgotten I’d started one and the special offer was enough of an impetus to get them to join.
I also got a lot more comfortable mentioning my Patreon when I looked at all the value/content I’ve put out in the last year that people could get access to, so it felt more like sharing something I was excited about. I think whatever special offer I do in the future, I will need to be just as excited about it because for me it really eliminates the awkward feeling of asking/advertising.
I had originally thought about a special offer for the $10 level but I do believe that $5 is an “easy ask” for most people in my students’ demographic and that was likely part of my success as well. So I think that for a starting offer this was good, and then maybe for a future special offer I need to figure out how to incentivize those people to push their pledge to $10.
So that’s pretty much what I took away from it (that and I need to get off my butt and make it a priority to get better at social media!!).
I love the idea of a “spring clean” of discontinued merch or other items we need to clean out. We have several large plastic totes of props and set items we don’t use, artwork that we don’t have up any more, and shirts we stopped making. All of those could make excellent (and “random”) items to offer. Super smart!
I was wondering about what kind of special offers are the most popular with people: stickers or special videos that are either exclusive to Patreon or can be posted on YouTube?
Also, even if I don’t have any patrons, can I still do special offers?
Hey @Rabbitearsblog, all great questions You can definitely run a special offer if you don’t have any patrons, in fact, we recommend that creators run a special offer when they first launch their Patreon page to entice more folks to join.
Special Offers can be anything you want; you choose what the benefit is, based on what you think will get your first fans the most excited. Maybe a celebratory “I was one of the first patrons” pin or sticker would entice your audience. Perhaps a special dedication or a personal ‘thank you’ video would go over well for the folks who want to be recognized by you. If you have fans who might go for an upper tier, you could even offer a one-on-one session with you, either through a phone call or a livestream.
Perhaps you could do a Twitter poll to see what would compel your followers to join?
