Improving the creator page for fans

Updates
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Hi creators! I’m working on finding ways to help you convert your fans to patrons. I’ve been exploring ways to simplify the creator page and highlight the things that are most important to your fans.

I’d love to get your feedback on the following questions:

  • How do you want to communicate to fans the types of benefits that you offer, so that they understand what they get when they pledge?
    • Is the current post feed with public and locked posts effective?
  • Would you want to share patron testimonials with fans?
    • If you do, how would you gather them and decide which ones to show?
  • If you had a magic wand, how would you explain your Patreon and membership to your fans who are not yet patrons?
    • Would it be different than how you explain it to your patrons?

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts! Stay tuned for design explorations.
Kristine

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  • How do you want to communicate to fans the types of benefits that you offer? * Is the current post feed with public and locked posts effective?

I only post a few different things:

  1. Posts showing my illustrations (gallery posts public to all, phone wallpapers patrons-only)

  2. Posts asking for animal suggestions (patrons-only)

  3. Polls (patrons-only)

I can’t think of any other way I’d prefer to communicate any of this type of content to my fans/ or patrons.

  • Would you want to share patron testimonials with fans? * If you do, how would you gather them and decide which ones to show?

Oof, that’s nervewracking, but I could see how that would be useful. I’d probably the same incentive I do with my Amazon reviews of my book-- if you submit answers to a couple questions (I’d probably use a Google doc form)
i.e. “Why did you decide to subscribe to my patreon?,”
“What’s one thing you like about being a patron?”
I will send you a postcard! I’d… probably? Ask patrons who have been around for a few months, at least.

  • If you had a magic wand, how would you explain your Patreon and membership to your fans on the creator page? * Would it be different than how you explain it to your patrons?

I’d probably have the tiers formatted horizontally across the page rather than vertically oriented on the far right, with some sort of text that states that it’s a monthly subscription (and one you can cancel at any time). Beneath that would be a few illustrations, text of my personal goals with my work, and an explanation of where the funds currently go, similar to how my current page is.

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Communicating Benefits

This may be a bit left-field, but personally I’d love the ability to hook our reward tiers into our website in a column or as a dropdown menu somehow. A number of our charity’s supporters don’t understand or aren’t aware of Patreon, and we’d love to streamline the process where those visiting our website could click on a “claim this reward” button for each tier and be brought immediately to the join/pledge process. We love how there’s Patreon integration with Wordpress which we’re hoping to take advantage of sometime soon, but I think expanding that kind of functionality and giving us more off-platform options to bring fans into Patreon subscriptions with fewer clicks would help.

The stream integration was nice, though we’re a bit bummed the nicer option requires a third party video platform subscription.

I also can’t think of other ways for communicating or sharing content and benefits, other than maybe some extra features for 501c3 nonprofits to explain to donors that “Hey! We’re an actual, real-life, registered charity, and your subscriptions are deductible!” Currently the only place this exists is by digging through the FAQ about taxes. We can add it to our page and tier descriptions manually, but it’d be nice if we had some kind of page badge or alt-text image badge that got tacked on next to subscription buttons that told folks we’re a charity. I know this should be possible, since you have EINs on file to check and toggle charities using Patreon possibly.

Testimonials

I think this would be helpful because it gives the public an opportunity to leave their positive impressions and helpful commentary for people that may be unsure about supporting a creator. Our charity often tries to get 1:1 feedback for a variety of things from donors, volunteers and the like but it can be challenging to take the time to go through everyone and try to get feedback, especially when some would rather submit a form versus chat directly with me. If Patreon had a testimony feature for users (i.e., getting an email, or a chat-box style prompt on the bottom right when logged in saying “Hey! Would you like to leave a testimony for [Creator]? Type in the field below and hit submit!”) that would probably help creators with testimony and just general feedback too a lot. I think anonymous testimonials could be useful too, if that were an option, since there are supporters that want to say nice things but don’t want their name tied to it. If they anonymize, you could have it just display what tier they are, sort of like how on Glassdoor anonymous reviews are “Former position-here at Company.” You could have “Tier-name Subscriber” instead.

Magic Wand of Explaining

This is a challenging question. I don’t think I would want our charity to have a different was of explaining Patreon and membership to our supporters. We’d want the message to be understandable and unchanging across the board.

Funny enough, I recently had a call with my mom, and she loves what our nonprofit does but doesn’t quite understand it since it’s a lot of visual & performing arts, video games and technology stuff, with platforms to support us or get involved like Patreon and Discord. She said “if you could just type up a paragraph that I could understand in a way I could share with my friends…” I think I’d wave the magic wand to find a way to explain what Patreon is while making it simple for them to sign up and support us to people who aren’t as tech-savvy but still want to support us.

I also strongly second the idea of horizontal/scrollable/swipable tiers versus the vertical layout. On mobile, you have to scroll so far down to see posts we almost expect 0 of our donors to check anything but email updates and the web version right now.

I hope some of this is helpful at least! :slight_smile: (Edits, fixing for formatting, whoops!)

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As an 18+ creator with a solid following of fans that binge my content and want more of it, I’ve found that so long as I very loudly and clearly shout “You get MORE and you get the NSFW stuff!” that’s essentially all I have to do. I do this by pairing plugs for my Patreon with free stuff I post publicly.

One way on the Patreon side of things that could help me make my pitch is coming up with a cool way to show off how many posts of a certain type I have, likely by highlighting a specific tag. For example, my public stuff is all SFW, and the thing that most people miss when casually cruising my content is that there are literally hundreds of NSFW posts on my Patreon, and it’s tagged as such. I’ve found plenty of success just talking about this fact, but maybe there’s a way to innovate and create some dynamic ways of pitching to fans.

Additionally, I find that the public and locked posts work incredibly well. I constantly see “User pledged at $3…User edited their pledge to $5…$10…$20” in my inbox and that is absolutely thanks to them scrolling through content and finding the locked posts. It’s a huge win for me.

I would love to share patron testimonials! If I wanted to gather them, I’d use a Google Form and likely include it at the end of a survey, asking them to share two or three sentences about why they enjoy my content on Patreon. I’d choose which to show based on how well it was written and how it ties into the foundation of my Patreon pitch in general.

My Patreon is the one stop shop for all of my content, featuring the entire archive of hundreds of audios SFW and NSFW alike, as well as exclusive Patreon-only monthly releases and other goodies!

I don’t feel like there’s any need in my particular case to frame any part of my explanation any differently between Fans and Patrons. I know Patreon is weighing the value of having the “non-patron landing page” that has a different feel from the home page when they become a patron, but for me there’s not really any value in differentiating between the two.

I think in general, a creator needs to find a concise, laser focused explanation that serves as their pitch, and in my opinion if you then have to give them a meandering explanation of how their Patreon works they’re complicating the entire “post-sale” experience. In my experience, people don’t like to read, especially after they’ve already given you their money. They want the content. Explanations after the fact by creators are usually due to Patreon’s limitations in browsability and functionality, not due to new patrons needing some sort of deeper understanding of what the creator is doing on Patreon.

Of course, there are more complex Patreon campaigns that have worked just fine, and I don’t think my experience is the absolute only way to go about things. I just really value simplicity and I wish that the moment someone becomes my patron a red carpet was rolled out with wonderful options for them to browse all the content they just unlocked, while also getting a look at what they might be missing out on via locked posts. For me, that’s the dream.

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How do you want to communicate to fans the types of benefits that you offer, so that they understand what they get when they pledge?

I think the current post feed with public & locked posts is effective, but there are some things I’ve thought would be neat for a while: being able to order your posts in a particular way (especially helpful for people who posts things in chapters/sequences and would like to have those viewable in an order somewhere), and the ability to pin a post to the top.

Would you want to share patron testimonials with fans?

hmm, maybe. I would want it to be primarily Patron/follower driven, though, and maybe more of a discussion area instead of just outright reviews or testimonials. right now, there is a spot on our Patreon pages where the Community can make posts, and it would be neat if this was utilized in a more central way. a tiny discussion board for the supporters of a Patron, so to speak. there’s a cute post from one of my Patrons where she shows art mail I’ve sent to her, but you don’t get to see this Community area right now until you click on “Posts”, so it might be kind of hidden for most people that just scroll down the feed normally.

If you had a magic wand, how would you explain your Patreon and membership to your fans who are not yet patrons?

I would really like it to be emphasized how the payment system on Patreon works, and like Kate said, especially emphasizing how it’s something that can be canceled at any time. I used to explain this in my About section, but it made it feel kind of cluttered with how it’s currently formatted, so I got rid of the explanations for now. I also agree it would be nice to see tiers more centered rather than off to the side.

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How do you want to communicate to fans the types of benefits that you offer, so that they understand what they get when they pledge?

I can’t think of anything beyond what I already have: some text in the free-form text area, and some prominent pledge buttons on the side that describe what the various pledge levels offer. (Which is mostly “nothing more than the $1 level, except more money leaves you pocket at the end of the month”, I have a really minimal setup with no perks.)

Is the current post feed with public and locked posts effective?

Pretty much! I do wish I could go back and edit a post to be paid after the fact, sometimes I forget that and it’s a pain in the butt.

Would you want to share patron testimonials with fans?

I guess? Maybe? I haven’t ever thought about that.

If you do, how would you gather them and decide which ones to show?

I have no idea. Maybe I’ll come back and edit this with something in a few days.

If you had a magic wand, how would you explain your Patreon and membership to your fans who are not yet patrons?

If I had a magic wand I’d just wave it and cast a few spells to make my fans want to spread the word about my stuff and have the same percentage of my growing fandom pledge a few bucks to me. :slight_smile:

I just explain it on my page as “crowd sourcing a page rate for my comics”, since I’m using per-thing payments rather than per-month.

Would it be different than how you explain it to your patrons?

Pretty much the same aside from the whole “magically compel people who would enjoy my work to run into it” thing.

Oh wait. I do have a magic wand. It’s full of glitter and is sitting right next to my monitor as I type this. Maybe I should get to casting a few spells after I meet my drawing time goals for today.

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How do you want to communicate to fans the types of benefits that you offer, so that they understand what they get when they pledge? Is the current post feed with public and locked posts effective?

I think the current tier system works well for explaining benefits - formatting allows for clear bulletpoints and also free-form text if a tier needs a bit more explanation.
As for the way posts are displayed, being able to pin a post would be great.
I think the ability to have a public post with downloads locked behind a tier would be amazing - For example, a free image post of some art with paid downloads would give fans a teaser for the content and Patrons the ability to download it all in one post.
This could also be used to provide different “levels” of the same content (ex. render for $1, source file for $5) in one post. Right now the only way to do that is by making different posts at each tier, which is annoying as a creator and doesn’t look great in the posts page. Making it easier to find those different levels of downloads, as well as having an “Unlock this content by becoming a $1/5/whatever tier Patron” button may act as an incentive to become a patron or increase their pledge.

Would you want to share patron testimonials with fans? If you do, how would you gather them and decide which ones to show?

I’ve been thinking about this a bit recently and I’m not sure what the best way to go about this would be for my community. I’d like Patrons to have the ability to submit a testimonial anonymously, if they’d like, which would mean going through an external service like Google Forms. If Patreon is thinking of developing an internal method for this, that’d be super cool. With regards to deciding which testimonials to show, I’d want to pick ones that are descriptive and best reflect the value I provide (as opposed to ones that just say “MadameBerry is awesome!” or whatever).

If you had a magic wand, how would you explain your Patreon and membership to your fans who are not yet patrons? Would it be different than how you explain it to your patrons?

I wouldn’t want to explain my Patreon page differently to Patrons vs. fans - that seems misleading if I explain it one way until you give me money, and then it becomes something (even slightly) different. For both current patrons and for fans, I would want to emphasize that Patreon allows me the freedom to explore all aspects of my artistic journey, that in return they receive art in the form of downloads and (soon) physical prints and mini-originals, and that they can jump between tiers as they see fit - there’s no obligation to stay at a tier indefinitely if the rewards there aren’t what you’re after anymore.

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Post feed

I think the post feed is a little offputting and a bit of a jumble. I don’t know of a clear solution to the problem, but I’d be open to different designs.

Maybe if there was more emphasis on it being fun for a non-patron to read, with collapsed (but still visible) paywalled posts, linking to it and encouraging non-patron fans to look at it could be less of an obviously commercial activity. I think the ideal work the post feed could be doing for me is being a blog all fans can read, with just enough of a persistent sense that they’re missing out. This, of course, is a two way street that involves posting both public and private posts regularly, which is right now a little hard for me to do because Patreon doesn’t feel friendly enough to non-patrons.

Testimonials

I just love the idea of testimonials. I think it could be really effective, and Patreon could do a good job of easing the process of gathering them and making the whole thing seem a bit less corny and intimidating.

What I envision is that Patreon could have some sort of basic algorithm suggest your top ten fans (like Facebook Pages does), and give the creator an opportunity to send out an email to them on Patreon letterhead that thanks them for being so active in the community, and asks if they wanted to help the creator grow by providing a quick blurb testimonial.

Then, the creator could select and edit the responses and have them appear in a standardised way beneath the creator page, and on their way down the funnel, as a kind of social proof, maybe with little bylines like “Creator really delivers on those monthly rewards!! I’m glad to support her! —James, verified Patron since 2017”

I think most of us would hesitate to gather testimonials and toot our own horn by including them in our “about” section ourselves, but with Patreon breaking the ice, it could be a great way to make for a very attractive page.

Explaining Patreon

I don’t really grasp this question. I think all I can add is that when I am talking to non-patrons I want to be benefit-oriented talk about the rewards and discussion they’re missing out on, but when I’m talking to patrons I feel like it’s worth tugging on their heart-strings and making the “patreon helps us live” kind of case.

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How do you want to communicate to fans the types of benefits that you offer, so that they understand what they get when they pledge?

  • I thing that the tier descriptions are enough. I don’t offer a lot right now, but I think that in the future I’d like to have a pinned post

Would you want to share patron testimonials with fans?

  • How many times can I say yes? YES!

    If you do, how would you gather them and decide which ones to show?

    • Nope. They all deserve the spotlight

If you had a magic wand, how would you explain your Patreon and membership to your fans who are not yet patrons?
Would it be different than how you explain it to your patrons?

  • I’d probably describe it plainly for not-patrons. Pay me, get rewards, both happy ^-^ For patrons, I’d have a descriptive list of bots and rewards
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Hi, Kristine :wave:

  • Every time I share a creation I’ll talk briefly about anything extra or early which the patrons get to enjoy (rough demo of the song, livestream of the podcast recording, etc).
  • I like the current locked and public post system, though I would prefer to be able to have blurred images on locked posts, to make them more tantalising, especially when sharing on other channels
  • I would defo love to share patron testmonials! I’ve been gathering some amazing ones already on this Patreon post, though I’ve not done anything with them thus far
  • I’d love a one-sentence way to explain Patreon to my fans. My patrons already get it, so I don’t need to explain it to them…I think. I’m still working out the best way to do this though
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Hi @madameberry! Do you find that it helps to emphasize certain aspects of your Patreon with fans who aren’t familiar with membership and Patreon? Or do you need to explain how it works in more detail? I’m trying to tease out what, if anything, would help creators talk about their memberships to fans who have never heard of Patreon.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

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Hi @SuitCase! With this blog idea, how much content is enough to create the sense that they’re missing out? Do you see this as something that you would update often (similar to public posts) or setup once?

I’d love to hear more about this. What makes it feel unfriendly? Is it the layout or the types of information being shown or everything? :smile:

Thanks for sharing this! I’m curious why you don’t tug on the heart-strings of non-patrons. Do you focus on benefits with them because that’s easier for them to comprehend your Patreon?

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Hi @natemaingard! When are you sharing locked posts on other channels? Do you do this to help promote your Patreon with non-patrons?

Please, tell me more! Would this be more focused on explaining how Patreon works in general or would it be specific to your membership?

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I wish I had a better answer for this personally. I tend not to explain what my Patreon page is beyond its face value, and perhaps that’s a failing on my part. I’m also currently re-working my Patreon to include physical rewards, so my current explanation for my page will be changing soon.

If I could say anything, it’s that due to the multitude of payment schedules Patreon allows, it may be confusing for fans to tell when and how much they’ll be charged, especially for those on pay-up-front and per-creation schedules, and when they get their rewards for accounts on a standard monthly schedule.
For some reason I tend to get more new patrons near the end of a month, and since I’m on a pay-up-front schedule, that can lead to some double-charges. I try to be up-front with that information in my About section, (it emphasises immediate access to rewards, and then goes to say “next month, you will transfer to being charged on the 1st of every month from then on”) but if Patreon could provide an easier way of explaining that information or perhaps mitigating the double-charge effect somehow, that might alleviate some apprehension some fans might have.

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How do you want to communicate to fans the types of benefits that you offer, so that they understand what they get when they pledge?

When we talk about our Patreon page, we usually call out to a specific perk. That seems to make a greater impact where people will go look for the thing that we mentioned and pledge at that tier, rather than just going and having to determine what tier they want.

Is the current post feed with public and locked posts effective?

Maybe? We recently surveyed our patrons but didn’t ask a “why did you start supporting” question, so I can’t say for sure.

Would you want to share patron testimonials with fans?
If you do, how would you gather them and decide which ones to show?

YES absolutely! I’d love to have scrolling testimonials at the top of our Patreon page the same way that a lot of websites selling things do!
We got a lot of positive comments from our survey, so those would work perhaps. But that was anonymous and we’d love to be able to attach a name to it. For our community, we could probably just ask patrons directly if they wanted to write a testimonial about supporting us on patreon. It would make for an extremely nice post in the community tab!
We’d probably manually choose which ones to display so we could talk about a few different tiers. And my guess is that we would get enough good responses that we could swap out the testimonials every so often and have new names pop up!

If you had a magic wand, how would you explain your Patreon and membership to your fans who are not yet patrons?

We are “established” creators and the way we explain membership and Patreon to our fans is that they allow us to take risks and try new things. We love creating and trying new things, but there is inherent risk to doing new things. If it’s not popular or profitable or sustainable, then without Patreon, we couldn’t do these things. We explain that in our welcome to our patreon page video (currently being re-recorded because we changed our tiers) and I think the idea that fans will get new things because they support us on patreon is really exciting!

Would it be different than how you explain it to your patrons?
For existing patrons, we’d probably skip over more of the “basic” explanation of what patreon is, how it’s a monthly charge, etc. If they’re already patrons, we’d expect they have a non-zero amount of understanding of how the platform works, although now that I say that, I realize we might be taking that for granted.

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Seems to me that the right way to do it would be to establish a blog with specific purpose, updated regularly by the creator with a specific type of content for fans, like a Tumblr blog that shows WIP work or provides commentary on past work. It would definitely require commitment from the creator, and some artfulness in deciding what is public, what is early access, and what is private…

I don’t think you’d need much mention of locked content in the experience. Right now there’s way too much of that. If this was to work, and one’s Patreon creator page (or blog sub page) became a page people bookmark and visit regularly, a huge amount of “conversion work” would already be done by the fact they were willfully browsing a page on Patreon.com, with a “sign up” and “Become a Patron” button in sight. I think the pledges would just naturally come in over time due to repeated exposure to that.

Well, I just take a look at my Posts page while logged out. I feel like I have a fair mix of public and private content that makes a good example.

It’s absolutely dominated by sidebars and floating bars that serve the purpose of explaining every tier and reward and pushing them to sign up, and so it doesn’t feel like a place to read anything. It’s like you’re under duress and unless your goal is to evaluate the benefits of the campaign, you want to get the hell out of there as soon as you’re done finding whatever content you were sent there to look at. It feels like you’re in the wrong place to dive deeper, like you’re reading an article that’s on a web shop for some reason.

One major issue is the vertical height of the hidden posts. I think they are also unfriendly, and break up the content so that it would really be no fun for a non-patron to go here and browse the backlog of stuff. Nobody wants to keep being blocked as they read (but a more subtle visual indication might not have this repellent effect.)

This is not to say that the posts subpage doesn’t have a good design — I just think they are designed as an extension of the basic creator landing page experience, and as a thing for paying patrons to find posts with. They haven’t been designed to be a good place for non-patrons to casually visit, and that seems like a missed opportunity to me. I’d love to link to some kind of section on our Patreon page as a great place for behind-the-scenes tidbits, to get people used to visiting and using Patreon, passively exposing them to the marketing message and FOMO.

I’ve developed a sense (helped by Patreon materials and talking with Patreon staff at meetups!) that the mushy aimless “every dollar helps! Thanks for the support!” talk does not motivate fans (beyond your superfans) to pledge, and my recent very-benefit-focused special offer campaign that boosted our patron-count tremendously seems to have proven it right.

Whereas I think for current patrons, there’s a role for installing a sense of belonging to the patron community, and (if we’re being candid!) reinforcing some measure of guilt in withdrawing a pledge. The emotional hooks seem more appropriate to ensure they feel their pledge is making a difference for you, and worth maintaining. It’s also lower stakes! Once someone has pledged, you don’t need too much marketing to keep them on board, so the nonspecific thank-yous are good enough in a way they aren’t when trying to convert people who have yet to commit to Patreon.

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A few people have mentioned pinned posts (@madameberry and @enkiel8029 in this thread specifically). I wonder what sort of post you would pin for the benefit of visitors who are not yet patrons. What would be included in that pinned post? Would you want a different pin post that shows for people who are already patrons?

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I would probably pin an index of tags, posts, and other important content that Patrons get as rewards - this would serve both as an indicator to fans of what they can expect to receive, and also a quick reference for Patrons for current rewards they have access to (ie, downloads and such).
Edit: I may want to word fan vs patron pinned posts differently? Like “Hey, if you become my patron you get…” vs “Hey Patrons, this is where you can find…”
So that feature would be somewhat useful, but if it weren’t developed, I could certainly work around it.

I’m replacing my “commissions” reward with physical rewards, but if I were keeping that tier, I would pin the post I made explaining how my commissions work. Instead, especially with the new gallery posts feature (which I love!) I can include examples of my work and previous rewards, like photos of the prints I’ll be sending out soon.

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How do you want to communicate to fans the types of benefits that you offer, so that they understand what they get when they pledge?

I would love a pinned post or a custom tab like the community tab but entirely customizable, so i could make a space for questions, FAQ, etc that don’t get lost in the PM system. Right now, i use a post i’ve formatted for such use and link it from my about section. It works but it’s not the most convenient.

I post about patreon to my fans of all kinds in similar ways and i use info graphics to help make things clearer. Some content is exclusive to patreon patrons, some isn’t. Patrons get behind the scenes stuff and i make that pretty clear that patrons get exclusive offers and opportunities. So far this all works fine. There are a few people that need a little extra assistance with understanding patreon but for the most part, i haven’t had to much trouble explaining it. It’s when an issue occurs like they get confused by the sign up process, payments, or other things where the patreon FAQ needs to be better, that stinks for me. I spend a lot of time in my FAQ post explaining common patreon problems people seem to have and also discussing that it’s cancel-able, how to do X/Y/Z and linking to what FAQ pages are there or make my own walk through.

Is the current post feed with public and locked posts effective?
Would you want to share patron testimonials with fans?
If you do, how would you gather them and decide which ones to show?

For the most part, the posts feed is fine.

I also already share testimonials with fans. I use the community tab for reviews and feedback and share them with my social media pages, etc. https://www.patreon.com/Temrin/community

If you had a magic wand, how would you explain your Patreon and membership to your fans who are not yet patrons?
Would it be different than how you explain it to your patrons?

My patrons were once non paying fans so they would have seen how i post about it on social and whatnot like everyone else. My current patrons already know what my patreon is so there isn’t really any explaining to do with them unless i change up some things about how i choose the run my page. Because there are multiple ways to run a patreon, there’s no easy way to just magic wand it. The creator has to create their pitch, their page’s purpose, and share that.

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