Temrin, you are far kinder than I in this thread. Joumana, I think you’re really rude; you came into this rude and you’re continuing to be rude.
I think it’s pretty clear that people don’t want random strangers messaging them for money. Sure. Get that. Fair point.
But if people have chosen to follow someone, that creator should be able to message those people. That is this thread. The end.
@carla et all, would love Patreon’s thoughts on this.
@lisavollrath , I absolutely agree with your method of contacting them casually when you make free posts. There’s no pressure and it’s not directly aimed at one person to guilt them into paying.
My reason for wanting some protection against abuse in place is because it doesn’t just turn a person off that particular creator, but Patreon in general. If the pressure applied to me to pledge in the past happened to me when I first came to Patreon, I would have been completely turned off the entire platform. I wouldn’t have wanted to associate with that as a creator, nor would I have wanted to return as a potential patron.
Public posts do the job of advertising and showing the value in support. The majority of people who follow on Patreon now have a pretty good idea of what it’s about. They may just be following for the free stuff or they may be following to determine if our content is something they’re interested in supporting. I don’t feel the need to advertise directly to each person. However, I would like to offer something to followers as @Temrin said to reward them for following and participating in conversations or whatever event I have going on to give them an idea of what patronage is like. I think if this were opt-in as @DysonLogos said, that might prevent some abuse and allow the follower to have some control over what amount of contact they have from us.
Tooootally hear that point too. I’m not sure it’s possible to really police, but again: maybe it’s a turn-off-able feature?
Very much agreed! Great points!
For crying out loud, you don’t need to be a mind reader to understand a short English sentence describing facts. Tone has no relevance here. This is not a roleplaying forum.
Actually, I spoke with @erin at the Patreon conference about how happy I am at being able to see followers now and did express my concerns about the potential of abuse with the messaging, but that I saw a lot of potential with interacting with followers. She was very receptive and told me she would take it up with her team to find ways for creators and follower to interact.
Sorry, y’all. A lot of exciting things happened at the conference and I just forgot that bit for some reason. 
Yes. Another reason why Patreon doesn’t ‘get’ what they are actually doing (being a membership platform and if they are lucky a social media platform as well…
Hi Temrin, would you mind telling me how I can find “followers in the back end” or provide me with a how-to link? I didn’t know this existed and am just curious.
Thanks.
When you are logged into patreon, look to the left hand side bar. Click patrons then, relationship manager.
In there there are drop downs and one if them has the option to filter followers/patrons/etc.
Thanks! 