I’ve never used it; from a non-user perspective it’s hard to get a handle on it, but it seems like a lot of people are using it, either as creators or followers.
Anyone here using Patreon and think it’s worthwhile?
Is there a ‘sign up for a month, download everything and leave’ approach that goes on with it?
Genuinely interested to hear from those in the know…
ive supported a few people on patreon before, but only one has been worth it. most patreons i’ve seen have very little to offer a supporter outside of the free content offered by the creator on other platforms, they are basically just a route to support the person more or less directly.
ive been listening to a podcast for about 16 years now and they started a patreon right when it started popping off. the podcast does a 3hr live stream every Friday night, which is then offered as a free podcast episode in two parts. their patreon has multiple tiers, the lowest is $2 and it just gives direct access to the audio files immediately after the live show. theres like four more tiers up to $11 which includes everything else they put out in a month, which includes three episodes of other side shows they record and one or two movie commentaries where they include the actual movie file with their commentary added on top. then their highest tiers are $20 and $25. they include entry into a periodical raffle (its not a raffle, its a gift!). the winners have been flown out to the studio to hang out with the crew, others won some big amazon gift cards, etc. all the money in the $25 tier gets put into a pot and they go to a casino and put it all on black. they actually were on a roll for a while but i think they have been losing more recently.
basically this patreon has soiled my experience with every other patreon ive seen because none of them provide nearly the same amount of value as this podcast does.
i have joined a patreon, downloaded the stuff i wanted and then left. that is definitely a viable route
Is it always supposed to offer „more“ ? Just asking? Thought it was also a way to support Artists you like without the capitalistic overhead.
I never care about the extras, just a nice way of supporting people who make good things.
the way its organized is for content to be posted and locked to different tiers so i would say the entire structure is built around the idea of providing more to the supporters. if there isnt anything to find there, you might as well save yourself the Patreon fees and just have a paypal link as your virtual hat on the ground.
I always seen partreon as very “sell content” oriented, for supporting artists I guess something like buymeacoffee works better, and they still take 5% unlike patreon
patreon takes 8% plus processing fees
yep and that’s their most cheap plan, the pro is 12% I think?
either way, it’s more about ongoing selling stuff rather “hey I like your stuff can I donate something” which is more buymeacoffee thing…
I am not at all comfortable with patreon. I realize this is the way people do things now, but back in the day if you asked people to help pay for your hobby because you like posting videos of yourself it would not be acceptable.
People think that if they own a camera then what they post must be “entertainment” and they should be reimbursed for it. Maybe this is an inappropriate rant, but if someone tries to link me to patreon to check out their content I immediately lose interest in whatever the content was.
I guess it just goes to show that these types of services are polarizing, and there are always people like me who probably wouldn’t give you money anyways and are now unwilling to view your content.
I tend to spend money when something seems valuable to me, not because the creator thinks it has value.
Would actually be great interesting to who could make a mild living of patreon by just being a cool Artist and not manage patreon as an extra job with special needs.
eh, I’m not too bothered by it, I don’t see the difference between “check my patreon for exclusive content” or “use my affiliate links on your purchase”, it’s all the same to me, I do think that many people use these creators as alternative to other media sources so who cares if the do it…
it’s the new gig economy I guess?
I’ve never tried Patreon, but I do have a onlyfans account!
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i have a friend who started a patreon for his ambiguous art project that went nowhere. is it a coincidence that he was heavily concussed when he had the idea to start one? the world may never know…
I don’t think you have patreon platform to find the artists, like you’d have to get to the artist from elsewhere and that elsewhere usually youtube being the highest traffic I suppose, so it’s not like you open a patreon account and people start throwing money at you, you’d still need something like a website or whatever to redirect people to that account…
if you have soundcloud you could also put a link, basically you’d still have to maintain something to get people to sign up for you
I can see that it’s a commonly accepted practice and I’m not going to vilify those who use the service in either direction because that’s just the way things are now, I’m sure it helps content creators quite a bit. I’m just saying how it makes me feel and it was not so long ago that people created and shared content because they loved to do it and wanted to get their stuff out there, not because they expect someone to reimburse them for the inconvenience of their efforts.
For me it’s a turn off to be redirected to patreon. I understand that people will mention it and I’ve just learned to ignore that, but when someone says “hey, listen to my new thing!” and then links you to patreon, it feels like them saying “HINT HINT” and I don’t really like how that feels because the meaning behind someone sharing their work with you because they want to know what you think is lost when there’s an element of “pay me to show you” involved.
I can give you a great example of how it works though, when I started learning TouchDesigner 99.99999% of the youtubers doing tutorials are doing pretty basic stuff and use patreon as the platform to earn money.
now, thing is, it’s pretty damn hard to learn this stuff by yourself if you just want to start cracking with it rather reading documentation on 500 different elements and how they work or interact.
these creators do pretty elaborate patches step by step and they definitely invested time into learning that software, so imo it’s not unreasonable use case for patreon, they do weekly/monthly patches and you can learn or just get the damn patch and start messing with it for some amount a month.
I’m not that person, I don’t buy patches or sound packs and all I need is the very basic understanding and then I want to do things by myself, but I definitely see this as a good use case for others.
sure it wasn’t a thing before, but now that all the magazines closed people need to spend some money on hobby content 
I can see the merit in a nontraditional education, and I see why you would feel that it’s valuable for those purposes. If patreon is the way that you pay for that education, that makes sense, I guess.
I’m speaking mostly to people’s creative endeavors where you pay for entertainment, as information content is definitely different, but even in that regard patreon seems like kind of a lazy way to run a business. Although I do agree that it’s not like everyone has a resource to start their own tutoring business and website.
If the educator is serious about educating people and not just skimming their money, I would think they might be actively interested in their own website as opposed to letting patreon take their cut.
It seems like it’s used because it’s popular and people with no experience can use it and still harvest cash, which is the bottom line and so for me although I do understand and agree education is a bit different than entertainment, at the end of the day the whole thing starts to bleed together.
nah, maintaining a commerce website is definitely a chore and it’s worth paying % of what you earn for that if that chore is not your thing, not saying the patreon is the cheapest but if it works then it’s probably worth.
they had 5% until some time ago and raised prices recently, maybe this will open a path for competition…
I’m not going to be swayed on the subject of patreon but I respect your opinion and if that’s where you enjoy to spend your money no one will prevent you from doing that. It’s definitely one way to support people asking you for money who you feel deserve the support.