How to be successful on Patreon

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You definitely don’t need 100k fans to reach the levels you want to be. I’ve seen a lot of successful people with very few fans. It’s how you sell yourself and what you offer. If you don’t know your value, if you don’t properly explain your value to potential customers/patrons/followers, then you likely won’t get that support.

If you have very little time to work on your brand, then use the time you have in a smart way. Check out all the articles Patreon has to offer. Look at other peoples’ pages in your circle who ARE successful, or at least where you’d like to be. What are they doing that you aren’t?

A quick glance at your page told me two things: trash your 1$ tier, and combine some of your other tiers. You have way too many of them. Most are duplicate amounts which make things confusing at a glance. Keep in mind most people stay on any given webpage for less than 30 seconds, if that. If you make things difficult, that makes them leave all the sooner.

Your about section lacks imagery. Adding a few might help spice it up. You also have zero posts. Why would anyone pledge to someone with zero posts? Especially when exclusive private posts are part of the rewards?

I understand the excitement of a new prospect of income, and the frustration of it not working out, but this platform takes some effort. Patreon is not going to convince people to sign up for you. Like I said, 1000% look at Patreon’s articles and other peoples’ pages. It will help you a LOT.

Pro tip: whatever perks they are, remove them asap. If you can’t give them to people who sign up, because your overall total is lacking in funds, then you’ll either have to sacrifice things yourself just to provide them, or they won’t get what they paid for. Make them goals instead, and remove what you can’t follow through on.

It’s tough, believe me I know, I still struggle with it, but hopefully we’ll all get there :slight_smile:

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22

Hey Sam, thanks for the in-depth reply! I really appreciate it! I do want to clarify one thing, though - note that I haven’t officially “launched” my Patreon page yet. I mean, it’s technically live, but I have not told anyone about it because it’s not ready to be presented yet. For example, one of the things I wanted to do was to get feedback on my perks before launching. Thank you for that. And that’s why I also have no posts yet. And I also have a video introduction I will be inserting when I’m ready to officially launch. But thanks for the tip to add images in my About section, as I like that and definitely will! I was initially worried about it being too long (people generally have low attention spans and hate to read), so I tried to make it short and sweet. But I see from yours that length isn’t an issue and you can use it to present a large amount of information.

Another thing to note is my page is unique in that I offer two different things: music and visual art. I am fine with reducing the amount of tiers, but I thought it would be a good idea to allow people to choose whether they are supporting the music or the visual art, or both.

This double focus of mine is the other reason I have been hesitant to jump into Patreon. On one hand, I think it’s great that I have more than one thing to offer, creatively. On the other hand, it may confuse people. But in creating my duel-focus page, I was trying to avoid having to manage two completely different Patreon pages; and I also wanted to allow people to support both of my creations at once if they chose to, as most people who know me know I do both. I have to figure out the best way to present both of my focuses to the world, as I am not going to drop one in favor of the other.

I would like to unpublish until I am ready to launch, but the purpose of joining the forum and asking questions was for people to be able to see my page and give suggestions, so I will leave it up for a bit until I make some crucial decisions.

Specifically, if anyone out there has a duel focus and is successsful doing it, I would love some tips! Thanks again, @sambeawesome.

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I’m wondering if instead of a ‘duel focused page’ you do a ‘you focused page’, if that makes sense? I haven’t seen too many people do this, but I’ve seen things like it here and there. It might help you compile things and have them be less confusing for new fans/potential patrons.

I’m in a similar boat, where I create a variety of different art in different mediums. Some follow me for one medium, or another, or for me, and it really splits my audience. So I’m likely not the best person to go to for advice LOL. But if you’re consistent in what you do, I think that’ll help. And if you do multiple things, making it less about what you do and more about you has helped me maintain some people cross mediums and like me enough to want to support regardless.

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Good advice, I will ponder this. Thanks!