Is there a way to enable people who haven’t pledged to access the Community section of the Patreon page? Right now they can comment on posts and join in the discussion on the main feed and they can view the Community tab, but only people who have pledged money can participate in the Community section and make posts there. I think it would be really good for encouraging people to engage and potentially become patrons later on.
If there was some kind of optional toggle to enable this feature, that would be ideal.
I’m trying to make Patreon the central hub for all of my work, I write a sci-fi series that generates quite a lot of discussion, and I feel like this is the only feature that Patreon is missing right now. If I created a forum somewhere else for example, or a Reddit page or a Discord or something like that, it would only serve to direct people away from the website and break up the community.
Seconded! (And, seconded that this should be optional) — I see people who “follow” my Patreon as lapsed patrons who will resume at some point or prospective patrons who are in the funnel towards conversion - the more they can participate in the community & experience the fact that there is value in my patron-only posts, the better! And, I’m sure there are people who see the community as the buy-in & see the embargo as just as useful, hence- make this an opt-in, if you do it, and, do it!
thanks for the thread @snekguy! That’s interesting to hear you’re trying to make Patreon the central hub for of your work, are you seeing good community engagement? we find that mostly creators have built their community elsewhere prior to coming to Patreon. I’ll pass on your request to the product team too.
Thank you for your reply, Mindy.
I post my stories on several different websites and then I try to direct people back to my Patreon. I use it more like a blog, where people can read daily updates and see cover artwork before the content gets released on other websites. The format makes it very easy to interact with readers, which I think goes a long way towards making people feel involved in the writing process. Engagement had been very good, especially where polls are concerned. Right now the only thing people can’t do on Patreon is engage in the community discussions, at least without first pledging. I see a lot of discussions happening in the comments sections of other websites and I really want to encourage those people to bring those conversations here instead.