Plea for curators, adjustment of categories, visitor friendliness

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Preface: I am fine with sex (and without). I don’t mind naked breasts, be them male, female or furry. I like artists to do whatever they please.
However: My interests are not in sex/erotics/so-called-beauty-of-women (I like gay people, unfortunately I am not gay, sorry).
I am interested in learning. I am interested in expanding my horizons. I want to get motivated to explore things I don’t know yet. I would, for example, love to get into photography.

However, when clicking on “photography” on the Patreon homepage, I get this:

schirmschuss
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Naked women, half naked women, women in bondage, furry girls with high heels … again, don’t get me wrong, I am FINE with your art being supported here, that is not my point.

My point is: When thinking of photogragy, I think of way more than just the same thing over and over and over again. I would prefer getting presented a variety of creators that do different things (in photography). I would love to get motivated to click somewhere and look at a “portfolio” of kinds.
I do understand - from discussions around here - that I am not expected to use Patreon (as a potential patron) but instead search on “social media”. However, I don’t do social media. What for is a portal (patreon.com) if what the portal provides isn’t meant to “wetten my appetite”? (I know there’s a joke in there as some people might get some wet appetite from the offerings “photography” shows).

My plea

Could patreon, please, do some “jour fix”, some “clean up” on their categories and make the ENTRY pages of the portal more inviting? Instead of showing user avatars, please show “best rated examples of creators’ works”. If a category is “flooded” with a single topic, have some curators take care of picking a variety of samples. Have users vote for “show casing” creators on the category entry pages - with some minimum moderation to get enough mix in the mix.

Please consider subcategories. If I want to find a creator that provides educational material, I can only click “education” - and get faced with everything. I would like to be able to click on “Photography” and then “learn” or “workshop” or whatever. I would like to “filter” my search.
I do not want to use Google for that. I want a visual feedback, I want comfort. It’s the 201x, not the 199x.

I hope this cry does not come across as dismissive of cosplayers, bondage-lovers, sexy-picture-makers or anyone, anything or anyfur else. Or moaning. Or wining. I really mean it as a constructive crit to make Patreon more visitor-friendly.

Marc

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As a photographer this is my biggest bugbear about Patreon too Marc… Patreon is certainly not patron friendly for any potential patrons visiting the site within the ‘photography’ category!

Everyone lose…

As a potential patron myself (I wanted to put something back in) I switched off after the first page of mostly cosplay and bondage type people. Patreon lost a potential patron - me.

On that basis also photographers lose potential patrons.

And maybe were these things given there own category they may actually gain more patrons… It is it’s own thing, it isn’t photography. Bur where else would they categorise themselves as things stand?

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Thanks, Alan, you’re singing my tune …

Let me emphasize, though, that “photography” really is just an example that jumped out on me. Let’s take another example - since I am somewhat working for the movie-industry, I am very interested in everything movie-/filmmaking-related.
So I clicked on “Film/Video”. What I got was a bunch of Youtube-channel-creators (again, I don’t have any issues with those, not at all!) and not a SINGLE movie creator or “film” (as in how I would define film). None.
So I searched for “movie” - and what I got were some obviously abandoned creator-pages or possible just junk-links (empty profiles with just an URL pointing somewhere I would definitely not click).

So even actively searching doesn’t help there.

Let’s have a look at “animation” (since I am interested in that topic, both professionally and personally). What do I get when I click on “animation”? Youtube-Videos. Seriously. YouTube-Videos on physics (cool), math (cool) and some motion-graphic-self-promotion stuff. I don’t get to see examples without having to click every single channel (and even if I do often enough I don’t get to see anything either). Frustrated, I left.

Yes, I do get it: Patreon is not for PATRONS but for creators. So is Gumroad. You cannot search on Gumroad, it is just a payment system - so is Patreon. Got it.

Being a “creator” in some means myself (and not using social media), I am disappointed, though, because, obviously, people won’t find “me” if they don’t have the correct URL to my Patreonpage. Accidental visitors are unlikely to pop in because Patreon does not provide a meaningful “browsing experience”. In the end, it is a purely financial thing, not a community system. In that sense it is not really “for creators”, but for “social media experts to make an additional income”.

Got it.

Excuse the rant, please.

Marc

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Being a “creator” in some means myself (and not using social media), I am disappointed, though, because, obviously, people won’t find “me” if they don’t have the correct URL to my Patreonpage. Accidental visitors are unlikely to pop in because Patreon does not provide a meaningful “browsing experience”. In the end, it is a purely financial thing, not a community system. In that sense it is not really “for creators”, but for “social media experts to make an additional income”.

That’s exactly the catch-22 I’ve been noticing and that means the site is a closed system. There’s no chance of finding a new audience on Patreon, and there’s very little chance of converting an existing audience to it. The site is not designed for the former and makes no effort to win over the latter. Either you already have a Patreon-compatible audience, or you don’t.

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Yep, definitely a Catch 22.

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Yes, we sure are singing off the same hymn sheet, I started a very similar thread a few days ago.

The crux of it is that Patreon needs to deal with both these issues to improve it’s own marketing. It has so much potential to become more than just a payment platform (and I very much doubt that was the intention at the outset). Does Patreon want to be aligned with the likes Deviant art or place itself more in the space occupied by Saatchi Online? It does have the potential to sit in the space occupied by the latter but they seriously need to look at the issues of curation and general QC and the vast number of inactive patrons.

As a potential patron I would browse for more than a few minutes - I’d be coming here to patronise the arts not to obtain access to ‘NSFW’ pictures of young women wearing fancy dress costumes.

There’s a marketing disjoint, Patreon needs to decide what it is… Does it want to support, artists, bands, animators, writers etc… or is it happy to make a few dollars out of just any old content…

In short, they need this job filling with the right person!