Patreon Product Ideas

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24

I haven’t yet…

My sense is that my audience doesn’t have or isn’t active on the mobile app. They also tend to be the shy lurker types - loyal, but not very engaged, rarely commenting on stuff. Not to mention I don’t have as much critical mass as Amanda.

The ideal feature in my mind would span web & mobile. Lengthier answers and the ability to provide links is also key. The content would not be gated, and for posting you’d need an account, but not be a patron. (This doubles as a user acquisition strategy, since it gives an incentive to register and reduces the barrier for interacting.)

I’m definitely considering at least testing out the current feature and see what happens.

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25

I believe there should be a simple “archive” feature, like the one at blogspot, with posts categorised by year/month.
It is a must for creators that have been long enough at patreon and actually post their updates instead of sending it directly to patrons via “messages” or email.
Currently there are like ~12 posts per page. If you want to see early posts from a creator who have been making 5-10 posts per month for 1.5 years, you have to scroll down endlessly and hit that “load more” button a lot of times. Also it consumes RAM and makes laggy furryfox even more laggy or even makes it crash.
A simple “archive” feature solves it.

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26

Wasn’t that one of the features that was added when tags were? I can view the posts on my page by year and month.

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Great idea! And I can totally empathize with “shy lurker types.”

Lemme know how it goes if you try it out!

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I received once a small questionnaire (from the patreon team, I guess) asking me (as a patron) what would I want to know more about one of the creators I support. I found that idea soooo cool. I had a few suggestions to choose from (and I chose one) an information that would eventually arrive to the creator.
As a creator I would love that to be asked, from time to time, to my dear patrons. It’s a great way to promote the communitacion between patrons and creators!

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30

Hi Ellie!
I’ve pinged Patreon about it before, but I’d love to have the ability to schedule a post.
I upload all of my podcasts to Youtube a few days in advance of their public release, and I schedule them to hit Youtube at the best time for our audience. Right now, I can’t schedule posts to go out on Patreon at a specific time, I have to manually do it each week. This would save me time, and it would benefit my Patrons because they’d see my new episodes right as they hit Youtube, instead of being a few minutes or hours behind.
-Shannon

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31

Hey Shannon,

Thanks for sharing! We’ve been listening. :slight_smile: Scheduled posts is currently released to 10% of all creators; we’ll be releasing to 100% very very soon.

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Woohoo!! :heart_eyes: I can’t wait!

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First off, thanks for opening the floor to us creators regarding stuff we’d like to see {implemented, fixed} in Patreon. I have a feeling I will be rather active in this thread.

A #1 thing that I’ve been asking Patreon to add for YEARS is unique, one-time download code distribution. I want something that behaves similar to a mail merge, but much less complicated than that, and internal to Patreon. This might also help to solve @csarupp’s “locker” idea/problem as well.

Doing my own “regular” mail merge is possible, but not effective, for three major reasons:

  1. Regular emails could get filtered as spam,
  2. Regular mail merges are a lot more work than my idea, and
  3. Regular mail merges do not scale if I grow past a certain number of patrons (I will hit an outgoing mail limit).

My current process when I produce a track is to first do everything that doesn’t have to do with Patreon, ie. get the track+coverart up onto Bandcamp and mark it private, or whatever, and then I go and download a pack of download codes from Bandcamp. I announce the track in a post on Patreon, usually with a short preview, wait until the end of the month, and see which pledges complete.

Here’s the rough part: Now I have to go and click “direct message” for every single one of those people and send each of them a different download code. It’s tedious. It takes a lot of time out of my day and away from creating, which is one thing that Patreon claims it will help me with on https://www.patreon.com/become-a-patreon-creator.

Most of my interactions with staff have resulted in suggesting I attach the music to a post, and if it goes over the allowed amount, to just upload it to a filesharing site. This kind of negates what I’m trying to accomplish, because I’m still trying to make a living creating, and people haven’t given up on buying music just yet. If the individual codes are used, we can do several things:

  1. We can make sure the people that the tracks are intended for are the ones who get them,
  2. We can see who has redeemed their code and who hasn’t,
  3. When a Patron uses their unique code, they can listen on bandcamp forever,
  4. People that download using the codes get informed of our new releases, even if they stop being a Patron (which works to continue supporting creators), and
  5. The Patron appears on our list of “supporters” on Bandcamp, which gives us a rapport boost (people trying to buy our music will see icons for each person that downloaded it, bandwagon effect).

Back in January 2014 @jackconte stated that he was working on meeting with a third-party company about Patreon distributing through them, I’m sure this plan fell through and would have to be re-negotiated as that company has since been acquired. Jack then told me he was working on some sort of CSV code distribution (very close to what I wanted) with Sam. Of course, as far as creators are concerned, we haven’t seen any progress.

I know I’ve spent a lot of time pointing out how this issue affects me directly – and I get it, YouTubers have given up on making money from videos – but this isn’t just about a niche request. Bandcamp is not small by any stretch, so I am sure that other musicians using bandcamp could benefit from download code distribution. Also, any service/site/network that offers unique codes could take advantage. For example, game developers on Patreon could distribute unique Steam (or other game network) codes for patrons to games. Video creators on Vimeo can generate unique download codes to enable ownership of paid video content. This is a request with lots of different applications.

TL;DR: what do I want, specifically? It’s actually quite simple:

I want to type ONE message, with a place for a download code to go, where I am happy to type $CODE or whatever so Patreon knows to fill in the blank. Then I want to paste a list of download codes, one per line or whatever, and have Patreon send out codes to those individuals in a Patreon message. I can think of ways to improve this, for example I’d like to be able to make sure they go out to pledges that didn’t bounce (I’m willing to uncheck people from a list though), and it’d be nice if Patreon could hold onto the code to deliver it to bounced Patrons once they fix their pledges, but the basic framework would be a great start.

Really sorry this has gotten so drawn-out. But hopefully after this read, you’ll agree that this is not only a useful feature, but not difficult to implement.

Thanks for reading!

1 Like
34

As a patron, everytime I receive an email from my creators, I follow the link and then, I have to login. Besides, to do that, I have to look for the “login” button somewhere on the page - because, if I click on the locked post, it leads me to pledge (which doesn’t make sense because I’m already pledging).

Is it possible to be automatically logged in when I follow the email link (from my email account) ? It would be so much easier and clear!

By the way, I noticed this problem because my mom quitted seeing my posts when she receives an email as my patron «Son, I love you but I never know how to get there»
:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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@DiogoTomas, I think automatic logins might be seen as a security flaw, but I would sure love a “stay logged in” checkbox, which would probably solve this issue as well.

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36

@DiogoTomas you should suggest your welcome mat idea here as well.

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37

Following @jody 's kind suggestion, here’s what I wrote in “Ideas to improve our presentation/profile page” :

Ok, so here’s my main issue:

For most of the people I know - who get there for the 1st time- it isn’t clear at all.
People who don’t know what patreon is- and I’ve been experienced that a lot, because patreon is practically unknown to portuguese creators and fans - my experience tells me that it’s quite confusing.

I believe that happens because when people get there, they feel they are already inside the page - but they are!, but they’re not!, but they’re half there, etc.

Here’s my suggestion for a solution: we could have the choice (because there could be creators who don’t like this idea) of having a “front porch” page.
It could be very similar to what it already is: all the design + intro text + intro video but without all the scrolled down posts. Instead, a big button with something like:
“click here to see how is gonna look like when you became his/her patron” .
Then, when clicking there, one would have access to all the scroll down page as it is (with blurry post and public, and etc.).

Concluding: it would be much more clean, clear and, besides all that, I believe it would trigger the will of getting inside the page and become a patron of that creator. For me, it would be sooooooo great to have that possibility!

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Thank you for the input :wink:

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Hi I am Marcin from Car Design Pro.
First of all, sorry for my english :wink:

What should be improved?

  1. One, full and simple explanation of the whole crowdfunding idea need to be presented on Creator’s Page in my opinion (in a VERY simple way!). This is because new people usually visits Creator Page (that’s because of course all Creators drive people to their personal Creator Pages, not to a Patreon’s Home Page). Most of my new fans asking me what is acctualy about here… how it works… what is going on… etc. and I think I am loosing many of them, because of this.

  2. Would be really nice to see more features on our Edit Page such as ability to choosing themes, backgrounds, setting up panels, dimensions of the site, fonts, colors, etc. to give us new way to be more creative (from the technical point of view) :wink:

  3. Would be awesome if the same Text Editor as is here could be implemented into the Patreon’s Post Editor. It is really annoying when I need to set everything up by using code HTML (only HTML!)… and still it has many errors. Actually general “architecture” of creating posts need to be rebuilded in my opinion - for example if I create “Paid” post I also need to create a “Free” post with a description what is in “Paid” post that also my new potential patrons could see what they can expect inside. So, generally I need to create two or even more posts just to inform them what will be in my “Paid” post. In my opinion cover photo of the paid post should has an option to set it “visible” or “not visible” for everyone. I usually create PDF tutorials so it could be nice “advertising” what" is inside my new paid post.

  4. Let us to be able to upload images straight from the computer - this is a very basic “thing”! :slight_smile:

  5. General list of all Paid Posts - would be much easier for my Patrons if they could have every link to paid content segregated and placed on one list that they could easly find it. Many of them asking me where they can download oldest pdf tutorials etc… and if there is over a 100 posts it becmes really difficult to find it.

That’s all for the moment!

Thanks for listening :slight_smile:

PS I am inviting everyone to support me on my page:

Cheers!

  • Marcin! :slight_smile:
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40

@ellie This would be extremely helpful as much of my work gets completed in batches. Being able to schedule posts out in advance would be EXTREMELY helpful. Thanks for suggesting it @ShannonMorse

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41

Hey Jody,

I just checked with the team working on this feature and they said it was alright if I gave you early access to this feature. Let me know if that sounds good to you and I’ll turn it on for you asap.

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Hey Shannon,

We plan on taking this feature to 100% next week but I checked with the team and they said I could turn it on for you early. Does that sound ok to you?

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Thats awesome!!! :grin: Thank you so much, Ellie!! You rock!

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Woo! Would you like it turned on for both ThreatWire and TekThing?