I am just using USPS right now. I don’t do much shipping except for occasional giveaways and cards. I would like to add a merch level on Patreon but I hate the hassle of shipping stuff and I have found the .CSV files to be difficult to translate into shipping labels. I would love to be able to automatically print postage on a home machine (which I am planning on buying). It would be awesome to go to Patreon and select the patrons or level for a merch benefit then be able to click “print labels” and just enter the weight and size and then have it calculate my shipping cost and print them.
Last time I tried to do a bulk mailing I sent 750 Christmas cards to patrons and it was very time consuming. The .csv file did not print well to labels. The international folks (over 150 of them) had to have changes made to the address labels. I had to carry the whole box full of cards to the local post office and they ran out of international stamps so they had to print them individually for about 50 labels. They were not happy with me. LOL
I didn’t do Christmas cards this year because I didn’t want to do it myself again and I couldn’t find an online service that would create and mail cards internationally.
I apologize if this concern has already been addressed as I’m new to this group/thread, but recently we’ve been struggling with patron retention from month-to-month as the payment cycles turn over. While I imagine this retention is an issue for all Patreon creators, what’s most concerning is that when these natural dips occur our page then updates previously met goals, making them appear unmet (ex: we reach a goal at the end of the month & post corresponding rewards, however we lose a handful of patrons in the new billing cycle so now our last couple goals do not say “reached!” anymore like the others even though they have been & the reward content is still publicly available).
We’ve been using short-term goals (5 patrons, 10 patrons, etc) as incentives for potential new members so that they can see what their contributions will get them in return if they sign up, however our page develops a hint of false advertising after these monthly dips in patron numbers, making it appear as if we’re now marketing several future goals that have actually already been met…I almost wish there were a timestamp feature on public goals that said “Reached! [March 18th, 2019].” for example, so that our page could still reflect all met goals in the past-tense regardless of current patron standing.
In the meantime, I’ve edited a few met goals as a temporary solution (for example, changing our once-met goal of 190 patrons to now read ‘175’ so it appears as met on our homepage) rather than deleting those goals altogether as if we didn’t reach a checkpoint/accomplishment…which kind of feels like a cheat.
This certainly isn’t the biggest issue regarding patron retention but it has become a recurring concern & we wish there were a way to keep ALL met goals listed as “Reached!” even in the event of a small monthly dip in patron numbers, that way everyone perusing our page can accurately see all of our met goals as well as those unmet.
Hey @thepalmersquares, welcome to the forum! Thanks for joining This is great feedback, and something I’m sure a lot of creators have experienced. I will bring it up with the product team and see what we can do.
This is why I have largely dumped all the goals.
It does nothing for Patron retention, new sign-ups, or drops. At least in my case.
At first I was focusing on what I needed to give Patrons to make them feel as though their money was well-spent. And it turns out, most people don’t care. If a Patron is going to support you, it’s because of what you are already doing, not what more you can give them.
I think the focus of late has been way too much attention paid to special offers, and value for money.
When in reality, that’s not at all what true Patronage is about. The initial focus on attracting fans of your work has been lost of late, and instead the focus site-wide is shifting to what products or services we can give for supporters.
This is starting to become a pain point for me, because the amount of responses and threads like this cropping in the forums all the time lately. I think there’s too much confusion going on.
Too many creators are confusing Patrons as Customers and not Fans.
And the latest push for special offers, and treating fans like customers is coming directly from Patreon itself. It’s almost as though they’ve lost the initial drive of what this site is about, and for.
This is my biggest pain point because it seems the focus is shifting on what we’re all here for. I’m not here to sell stuff or provide any services for Patronage. Patronage should be what allows you to keep creating what you’re creating, not to add even more work to a creator’s schedule.
I say less focus on special offers and what you’re able to give, and more focus on doing what you already do, and increasing the quality of it.
The more we get involved in our Patreon page the more I tend to agree with you & the notion that fans don’t really care about the incentives as much as they just want to support…while many of our goals have become a re-branding of some our existing work (i.e. trying to set/reach a Patreon goal before posting something we planned to release anyway) our fans don’t typically respond well to that marketing & we’re left wondering what we should be focusing on to help build our patron community & keep them there consistently.
Being musicians, I think our fans just want to hear/see more new music so our bonus incentives of video outtakes & behind-the-scenes tour footage don’t attract many new patrons, however every time a premier new music on Patreon our fans respond much better & we see an uptick in patron numbers…I think it may just be on us to keep fans satisfied with new musical content more consistently as they don’t really respond as well to “bonus content”.
My primary drivers of support is just more actual content. I get more supporters by just putting out free content every week than any other method.
My retention is much higher as well because instead of looking for something for their money, Patrons will be just looking for more of the same.
It also helps if you accept input and feedback from the Patrons and fans that do ask though. And I found that this is also a major driver of Patronage.
I always answers questions and take requests in the comments of my videos, and respond usually within an hour or two. Fans have my full attention. Often after helping some one in the comments a bunch is when they become a Patron - because they have even more immediate access to me via my Discord.
Largely my focus is attracting fans and not numbers.
I want this too. It has been bugging me since the new plans were announced and the majority of us cant get access to this.
Idk why this, i mean RB and S6 are on demand print/shipping sites and I think their system could work pretty well if not better on Patreon. I would even be happy to pay a certain extra percentaje to have access to this service on Patron instead or managing so many shop accounts that Im fogetting to check. im tired… pz patreon dont discriminate us xD (jk)
no, but seriously, you have no idea how extenuant is to go to my mail post office and pack everything there THERE due national mail regulations (they check what you send).
Last shipping the lady had to close the office to help me packing all the boxes. at the end one of the mugs broke due a bad packaging.
i would have wished to pack it all securely at home and just ship it.
ugh
I found this invariably occurs when using Firefox. I don’t face it as often with Chrome. Just have to remember to switch browsers when posting a podcast.
I second this. If we have our social media linked, it would be great to have the option to setup autoposting to them. Would make things so much easier.
some of my pain points are going to reiterate what others’ have said, but here it goes:
Messaging it needs to be AS robust as an actual email client in order to be worthwhile. if i get a message from a patron, i want it to have a subject line. i want it to show our messaging history. i want it to show their pledge information. i’d also love sort of a “pop up” or “warning message” option that asks the patron if they’ve read the FAQ before messaging me. a lot of the times i get the same messages over and over again.
Pages along the same lines as what’s above, custom pages would be SO USEFUL. i’m thinking along the same lines as tumblr page customization. like right underneath my icon on the left, i can list a handful of links so people can read my personal FAQ or instructions on how to see my private instagram, ect ect. at the moment, that’s all in my bio which is just getting WAY too long. nobody wants to read a novel. i’d love to keep it simple for those who “get it” and have an option to expand on that info if people are curios.
Patron Manager/Benefits Manager it just doesn’t work. because of the ‘charge up front’ option, anyone who signs up should get access to that months’ rewards even if they don’t stay til the end of the month. but the benefits tracking AND patron manager don’t help me with this. when i send out rewards after payments have been processed, i only have the option to select whoever is CURRENTLY pledged in a tier rather than who had been pledged and already paid for that month.
Loyalty Program YES!! as soon as i saw others in the thread talking about this, i got excited. please let me give extra rewards to my incredibly generous patrons who’ve been with me for 2+ years. and please let it carry over even if they have to decrease or even delete their pledge for some time. i want them to feel how much i appreciate their long-time support.
Image Previews sometimes i post nsfw or potentially ‘triggering’ content. currently, i have to crop my own preview image, upload that cropped preview to patreon, then host my full uncropped image on an external site and then LINK that full image in the caption below. please include a ‘preview’ option so that if i post content, i can hide the nsfw or potentially upsetting content and the patron can view it on their own terms.
Hi Cari - Vanessa from the Patreon Research team here. I just sent you an email to get in touch with you re: accepting other currencies. This is a feature we’re considering and I’d love to speak with you if you have some time to talk.
Creators both large and small have their bottom lines affected by having their Patron count shown publicly. Patrons do not need to know this as many base their patronage on the count for various reasons. It should be because they love the Creator and want to support them.
Tags should be searchable on the Mobile app. Many people do not find it user friendly for locating a post to which they wish to refer.
Welcome to the forum, @kino_unico, and thanks for posting this suggestion. I’d love to get your feedback in this thread: Open Studio #2: Image galleries in posts as the design team shared an early look at what those galleries might look like.
My biggest pain point:
When a Patron signs up and then deletes their pledge within the same month, I do not get a notification of deletion. This makes it really difficult to communicate with those Patrons (say thank you for their support, &etc) and it also makes removing them from any off-site rewards at the end of the month more difficult, as I have to go through the Relationship Manager one by one to see who has continued pledging.
I also saw it mentioned here and would like to second that:
It would be great to add a preview picture to locked posts and having an in-site image gallery service would be awesome!
Individual Patron message history. I can send a patron a message, but there’s no way to tell what I’ve previously sent them without scrolling the endless feed of all messages? This seems like a trivial SQL fix. How do I get to my message history with a specific patron?
Better database searching and support; it drives me nuts that when I filter patrons on the member page, it shows people who cancelled years ago as “paid”, so they come up alongside current members even if I filter for Pledges between $X and $Y in “Paid” status. I also can’t see any way to go back into users’ payments over time and do other analytics, unless I had been downloading the CSV on a regular basis, and even then I wouldn’t have a lot of control. There isn’t even sorting on the columns… if I’m going to treat Patreon as a serious business, I’m finding myself gradually building my own whole database system to compensate for these inadequacies. Please let us sort in the PRM