Hello, everyone!
I’m a digital artist and I’d like to ask for your suggestions on a topic I’ve been considering for quite a while now.
My art is mostly SFW, I have a rather cutesy style, and that’s what I’ve built my fanbase on for the past few years. However, I do make a little bit of NSFW artwork on the side (I love pinups and other sensual artwork), just have kept things separate so far, under a different Twitter username, etc.
I’ve been trying to grow my audience overall, specially on Patreon, but it’s been a lot trickier than I had planned. While talking about it to close friends, a few of them kept bringing up the suggestion of being more open about my NSFW art and adding it to my Patreon page, making NSFW versions exclusive to Patrons.
I have done some case studies and certainly, it seems to be a very powerful and profitable strategy for popular artists out there.
My one concern would be to accidentally chase away my current Patrons, who are used to my innocent, family-friendly art, if I ever include NSFW in my current feed.
So here’s my question: Is there a way to create something like one “NSFW Tier” and only people who are pledged to that one specifically will see its contents? Let’s say, a “special” $5 tier but even if someone is in the normal $5 or $10 tier they won’t see the NSFW content in their feed?
Alternatively: Is it possible for a person to own two different Patreon pages? Would that be the best way to go in my case?
Sorry for the wall of text and thanks in advance for your help!
Yes you can now post to single tiers by using the 'select tiers option when posting.
You can also have two patreon pages (or more) but they are separate accounts, not something you can do from one account. It’s totally doable and people do do it.
Keep in mind that if you post anything nsfw on your patreon you have to mark your page nsfw which makes you unsearchable on the platform. So that is a big downside to that.
I would honestly be more open about your nsfw art on your online galleries outside of patreon and see how people react and build your audience outside of patreon for that content. After a while, make a public poll and spread it to patrons and public and ask
people if they would be interested in nsfw work on patreon. It’s super easy and important to talk to your patrons and see how they feel before springing something on them.
I have had a few people unpledge from my patreon a while back and their stated reasons were something along the lines of “I like the art, but I like to browse my patreon feed publicly and I can’t have porn on it.” Having a “toggle nsfw creators” on the feed itself might be an easy enough fix for that specific problem.
Letting creators run sfw/nsfw mixed campaigns would be a more complicated fix that might be nice though too, creators could flag individual posts as NSFW, and only people able to get past the age gate would be allowed to see them.
I have a sfw Patreon and a nsfw Patreon that I treat as a separate tier. It’s tricky to manage, but I make sure my patrons on the nsfw one get the same benefits of those on the sfw Patreon in addition to their nsfw rewards, but it doesn’t work the other way.
I originally talked about having the nsfw art as a reward tier and it stopped some family and friends from pledging. That’s why I decided to have them separate and, as Temrin said, if you have nsfw content you have to mark it as such and then it’s not searchable. It’s just easier for me to have them separate Patreon accounts so as to not alienate people who don’t want that kind of content. The main problem then is how to separate promoting the two Patreons.
This is really interesting, and thanks to all the people giving clues. I run a NSFW patreon page and it’s really hard to promote my art & comics. Aside from that I draw & create SFW all audience material, but never thought about promoting it through Patreon. Might reconsider, why not.