Offering memberships or subscriptions to fans can provide regular and special content to them while providing more predictable income to creators. We discuss ideas and best practices with creators currently offering fiction, drama, poetry, visual art, and more.
Be sure to check out our generous guests!
You can find Rhonda Parrish doing ALL THE THINGS at her website, http://RhondaParrish.com
Find Jacklyn and Tyler (Ademal and Barron) with their world Ethnis at https://www.worldanvil.com/w/ethnis
Find Julie’s art and comics at https://www.patreon.com/zjbickel/
Find Ben’s music, drama, poetry, and more at http://patreon.com/benasaykwee
Video (from Twitch and YouTube):
<p>Writing is only part of a writing career -- no one warned us that we would need business acumen and entrepreneurship to be an author. Whether you're traditionally published or an independent self-publisher, it's good to have a leg up on accounting, marketing, time management, and other key skills.</p><br><p>These recordings of live discussion on craft and development, on business best practices, on explorations of fascinating and inspiring real life cool stuff, and more will help you along your writing journey and career development. Join Laura VanArendonk Baugh as she shares what she's learned and what she's learning. (Or join the weekly live discussion with your own questions!)</p><br /><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for privacy and opt-out information.</p>
Transcript:
Laura
I have somehow broken my camera. That’s awesome. Cool, you know what, let’s just jump straight in to where I know we have everybody ready. OK, that’s interesting. Hi, I’m Laura VanArendonk Baugh. This is To Write And Have Written and I am a professional adult. Here we are, that’s fantastic. All right.
Laura
I am really excited about tonight’s talk. This was something that people had been asking about repeatedly. And so I sent out a barrage of invitations and phenomenal people accepted like no hesitation. It was great. I’m so excited. So we are going to talk tonight about cultivating a community of subscribers, members. There’s a number of different terms. That’s actually one of the things we’re going to talk about tonight. And I have a great group of people that I would like to quickly, very quickly introduce and then we’ll just jump into the good stuff. Oh, Bridger is in the chat. Oh, boy. Lots of guests. Yeah, like the whole screen are full of amazing people.
Laura
I’m so excited. So what I’m actually particularly excited about with this particular group is the array of artistic pursuits which are currently represented on the screen. So hi guys. I didn’t tell you, but I’m going to let you give yourselves a two sentence bio or something as we go around so you can highlight whatever you would like to particularly highlight. But we have, you know, writing, we have visual art. We have music, we have poetry, we have world building. And like all the things are on the screen right now. So Jacklyn and Tyler, you are on my top left. So would you like to go first?
Jacklyn
Sure, I’m Jacklyn. I’m the director of Ethnis and the owner of the Ethnis Studio and I’m a writer, artist, designer, whatever I can get my hands on, I work on it.
Tyler
My name’s Barron. Tyler, I guess is my actual name as listed. Yeah, I’ve been working on this for probably a decade about now and just whatever needs to be done writing, tabletop design, video editing, whatever it takes to keep Ethnis fueled and a moving.
Laura
Ben.
Ben
Hi, I’m Ben Asaykwee, I am a writer, composer and performer, and I by force of the pandemic, was convinced to create a Patreon which has since kind of revolutionized how I work.
Laura
So, Rhonda.
Rhonda
I’m Rhonda Parrish. I have the attention span of a magpie, so I tend to do a lot of things, usually all under the umbrella of publishing. So I write, I edit, I do anthologies, and I do that across several genres, but mostly speculative fiction.
Laura
She has the best taste in authors. It’s fantastic. Ronda edits quite a few of my things. And then Julie.
Julie
Hello, I am Julie. Ay, ay, that I can speak really good, that’s what I do, no. I’m a visual artist. I like to do comics, I do design, I do illustration, fine arts, primarily focusing on comics and illustration. But yeah, I have a Patreon and I’ll be talking about that.
Laura
Yeah, and you have many welcomes going on in the chat right now, so thanks and sorry, I didn’t tell you I was going to throw you under the bus and make you do introductions. I just got a little flustered when I couldn’t have a face. So sorry. OK, let’s let’s get into a fun and exciting conversation. And I do want to mention, too, we were supposed to have Jamie Buckley, wantedhero.com , and he is not able to be with us tonight because he is ill with covid for a second time. And he was absolutely fine with me, me telling you guys that. But do check out WantedHero.com for additional examples of the kinds of things we’re gonna be talking about, because he’s got a really great setup over there as well. So we will hope to get Jamie at a future time when he’s feeling better.
Laura
So. One of the things when I was prepping for this topic, and this is a great Learn With Me topic because this is absolutely literally Learn With Me because I don’t know this. This is why I’m asking these glorious people here. But when I was looking things up for this and, you know, there’s a lot of you’ll hear membership and subscription get used interchangeably, but there is actually is a technical difference between them.
Laura
So membership is kind of like, you know, it’s a club, it’s a loyalty group. There’s a feeling of being in an inner circle that could be like I’m in my breed club or I’m, you know, I’m a Marine or something like that, whereas a subscription is specifically for financial transactions. So something like Netflix. Sometimes you can have one to get the other. But they are distinct things. And I think that really made, helped me make sense of what we’re talking about here tonight, where we’re asking people to be in a community or to support financially or to be part of an inner circle or to buy things or, you know, whatever is just made that a lot easier to to kind of sort those things out.
Laura
So. Structure tonight, I have some questions that I personally want to know, but also please feel free to throw things into the chat with with questions, because, again, I love the spread, the diversity of expertise and fields that we have here. So this is a great chance to get a lot of different perspectives on this is working great in this area. And actually this technique is a little bit better over here and this kind of thing, so.
Laura
Let’s start with how do we get started? So, you know, I know several of you are on Patreon, there are other platforms out there, but that initial hurdle like where — I’m from the Midwest, I say this a lot, like I’m going through restructuring my pricing right now in my day job. And it’s like I know I’m worth it, but how do I ask people for money? And it’s so hard. How do you guys handle that? Because is it awkward as it feels? And what do you do about it? Anybody who would like to.
Julie
Yeah, it’s awkward.
Given on. Like,
Julie
One of the things that Patreon actually has on their site, like tips for brand new creators, or at least they did back when I started on Patreon, which was five years ago, they recommend that you start putting out social media posts and you specifically ask friends and family members, people who are most likely to be like, oh, yes, I do want to support you because, you know, I love you and I want to further your artistic endeavor. And so that’s a good jumping off point after that. It’s a matter of just, for me personally, it’s been a matter of if you make a post on social media, you might, you know, put another tweet in a thread underneath of it that’s got, you know, if you like this, please support me on Patreon or something like that.
Jacklyn
So just just for us.
Ben
I’ll speak. Oh, sorry. I was going to go ahead and say, since I’m also Patreon, they are totally right in that they give you lots of tools in the beginning and they really help you kind of set everything up. And they actually don’t shy away from admitting how awkward it is and about asking for money. I’m within the first year of of doing my Patreon and I lucked out because of the fact of what I do for a living people generally pay a ticket price for. So it wasn’t that much of a stretch to say, here’s something I’m doing. You can now kind of pay a ticket price. I actually set it up in the beginning that way, on purpose. I’m doing this online show. So and then after that, just convince them to stick around. I’m just now getting around to the point of, like now how do I entice people that are out there in the world other than, you know, here in my city that are used to paying?
Ben
But yeah, I would say that that but posting on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and all of that, that seems to somehow get some leverage regarding that. But the algorithm also massacres us. Like if I mention the word Patreon in a post on Facebook or Instagram, it hides it. And I’ll get, I can post something like I think dogs are cute one day and it’ll get 300 likes. And the next day I’ll be like, please support me and feed me with Patreon And it’ll be like, two people see it. So frustrating? But yeah.
Laura
Jacklyn. I was just I was just saying I know you wanted to say something. Sorry, please go ahead for us.
Jacklyn
We were fortunate in that a lot of people in the World Anvil community at that time were starting their own Patreons. Quite a few of our friends were. And we we discussed with them that in my experience, one of the ways to get people to give money is for them to see that someone’s already given you money. So what we did is about four or five of us, maybe more, all subscribe to each other’s Patreons. We knew we were losing money because Patreon takes the difference. But immediately that starts out like, oh, this Patreon already has 50 to 100 dollars going into it. And once it grew, we kind of eased off of each other and backed down a little bit, depending on if we we wanted the stuff at that each other’s content level, no hard feelings. And so that became like, you know, one one the mutualism of, you know, just supporting each other. But two like everyone saw, like, oh, these Patreons, they are not running at zero. There’s they have something going on and they’re delivering. So obviously someone’s happy with it. It must be worth subscribing to.
Laura
Yeah, that’s a great, like little decoy ducks on a pond, you know, like this is this is thing going on. So that’s really, I was actually thinking about that, that that that was in the the awkward like I have to ask my friends to to to seed me, so I look like I have friends, everything. But what you said about there being a circle of people, like a community that already existed and you all just mutually supported each other, that’s a fantastic way to do that.
Tyler
So you’re throwing your name into the ring rather than just some cash. Yeah. So everyone’s throwing you know, if you have that list of folks who are behind you, that’s going to be your primary sort of, hey, Patreon’s here, it’s alive. Let it speak for itself. But always keep keep reminding people, not not too bad. Not to meanly, that it exists.
Jacklyn
Yeah. It’s what you need to to keep getting what they like out. Either way, I’ll make it, but it’ll be a lot better if you guys chip in on the art and stuff like that. So.
Rhonda
Laura, you kind of nailed it at the beginning when you were asking the question, you said, I know that what I’m creating or what I’m doing or my the work that I’m doing is worth it. I think it’s it’s absolutely pivotal that you not undervalue your work and you recognize that you’re not begging people for money. You’re offering them something in exchange. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship. It’s not they’re not just helping you. They’re also getting something out of the deal with you.
Laura
That is really, that’s a great segue into my next question. Thank you. But yeah, and I think this is fundamentally part of it is, in my day job, I have a day job that, like, has science and numbers and data. Right. And I, I know I can sell out a workshop in Tokyo in a day with my day job so I can set those — I’m still having trouble overhauling my prices. But the idea is there, I can do this.
Laura
And then I come back here and I’m like. But art is, that’s just me and my imaginary friends having a good time, like how do I ask people for money for that? And, you know, even though I know it’s good art, culturally, we’ve been so conditioned that, you know, art. I mean, what I can go online and get fan art for free. Why would I pay somebody else for visual art?
Laura
Like nobody’s paying me for visual art. That’s a bad example. But that kind of thing. Yeah.
Laura
So, OK, so I got some chat things coming in. PJZooFit asking about where to promote Patreon specifically, which I think you guys have touched on in a degree. But if there are some venues that you found that are easier to slip that in without getting silenced by the almighty algorithms.
Rhonda
Newsletters. I mean, if you if you have a newsletter, you have control over that. And I mean, there’s still issues with filters and deliverability, but you can control that in a way that you can’t control Facebook or algorithms or Instagram. My newsletter has been pivotal to my Patreon.
Laura
For the record, guys, Rhonda and I did not plan this. I did not set her up to say that just because it sounds like what I say frequently that was completely… But no, I think that’s a really it’s a really good point. Like, this is why we need a direct line to the people we’re trying to reach. So, OK, so I’m catching up on some chat here. Adam says this is a very timely episode and is trying to push through the feeling of unworthiness. So great. We’ll get you a membership card. We can all get T-shirts. We’ll do that. And Vinnie. Hey, very welcome to the to the stream. Yeah. Came in through the Ethnis Discord. Fantastic. Thank you. And oh, and Lorraine as well, thank you guys for coming by.
Laura
OK, so. As is as far as, you know, offering things which you just mentioned in the chat and Rhonda’s pointing out that this is an exchange. And this is where I sit down and I’m like, OK, first of all, I have to commit to having a regular product that I absolutely will deliver on a regular basis. And I have commitment issues and it scares me. And even if I’m producing, you know what if I miss a week or something? But I want to call out, Ben has some of the best subscriber rewards that I’ve ever seen because they’re not what you think of in traditional financial transactions.
Laura
Sorry, Ben, I’m putting you on the spot here. And it works because I had already seen your work in advance. This wasn’t my first encounter with you. But when you first launched the Patreon, you had things like, “I will shout your name at the moon” and I’m like, I’m in, here’s my money. Like and then a video goes up of Ben shouting my name at the moon. And I’m like. Great. Best five bucks I ever spent, you know, we’re good.
Laura
So these are what, sometimes it’s it’s so easy to get bound up in, you know, I have to produce a very specific, I need to have, I can’t have a whole book for somebody every month. What am I going to do? So. So what are you what are some things you guys do? Because I know none of you are giving a whole book to somebody every month. What are some things that you guys are doing — I don’t know, Rhonda might be — that that the rest of us mortals could could match in terms of making these exchanges for people?
Jacklyn
If you don’t mind, so something we did at our tiers above, like I think above the ten dollar amount, there’s basically a notification that your reward isn’t going to be monthly if you’re taking this level. This is just because you support the project that much. But at those high levels, for example, when we do our our writing, which is a lot of our focus with the Patreon, is we will take characters that you submit and make them integral. And so you get to leave your mark all over the lore.
Jacklyn
Last October, I did a like a sit down speed-write which was about I think 16 hours straight, and I let patrons all submit the characters and I wrote a whole story from start to finish and their characters became pretty much main characters, which they weren’t expecting. And everyone was just watching because I did it all in Discord one post at a time. I just timed how long it would take myself and sat down and did it.
Jacklyn
And so they liked being able to watch that and see their characters unfold live.
Tyler
Normal patrons could watch, but those who went above and beyond like who were at those higher levels were able to submit ideas and talk it over. So it worked out very well.
Laura
So just giving a more of a really leaning into that inner circle aspect of it.
Jacklyn
Yeah. Just don’t pledge something that you can’t do consistently. Like if you say every month you get a book that’s not going to scale, especially if you get like 50 people at that patron level and you’re supposed to give them all separate rewards. That’s just.
Tyler
At the end of the day, you got to consider how many hours of something it takes to produce one Patreon’s worth of content.
Rhonda
A spreadsheet which I just call Patreon math. So my Patreon community is actually quite small, so I don’t have I don’t have the issues of scale that some of the larger communities do. And I’m quite envious of those issues of scale. But not having them also does mean that I can do like I have a series of snail mail surprise to people who pledge at a certain level getting a random thing in their mail every month. And if I had hundreds of patrons, I could not do that. With the numbers that I have, it’s possible.
Rhonda
I just totally interrupted myself. But I do have a spreadsheet. Speaking of affordability and time dustmen, this is picture email and basically says, you know, this is how many books I can put out and still make money based on the rewards that I’m giving to people. If they’re getting a book, it’s it’s not free to me, even if it’s not free in time and it’s not free in the actual product.
Rhonda
So you have to do that. Math is separate from my other spreadsheet and stuff. It’s a whole different equation.
Julie
Yeah, I’m sort of in the boat of not having a massive Patreon community, which I have a really nice patreon community, you know, but that somewhat smaller community allows me to actually — one of my rewards is I send out a little poster print each month and I write a little letter to patrons who are above a certain level. And I, I am up to writing, I think, like 16 letters every month, which is a little bit of a time sink.
Julie
But, you know, it’s it’s a nice way to say thank you. And it’s, you know, something that my patrons have consistently told me that I love. I love this thing. So I’m like, OK, so if if my community gets so much bigger, you know, it’ll have to be like, OK, no one else gets any letters. You know, you’ll get you’ll get the other mailed stuff, but you won’t get a letter or at least not a handwritten one.
Julie
So it’s. It’s very much you have to be very, very intentional about setting aside time for this, and the thing that you have to remember about this is that people are giving you money for this. So you need to make time for that. But, you know, this is something that ideally you really want to do. You love doing. So it’s not like a huge hardship, but that it does require time set aside.
Laura
Yeah, and I think that’s that’s where I get into my commitment issues. But that’s the kind of thing that you have to think through before you publish those tiers, right. Don’t put up anything you’re not willing to to live with, especially if it actually takes off and now you have to do 20 of them. So which would be a great problem to have, but still could be a problem.
Rhonda
One other thing, though, your commitment issues aside, I find — right now I’m committed to doing one exclusive piece of fiction every month, whether that’s a story or poem or whatever, for all my Patreons. And some months it’s really hard and I get it out at like eleven fifty eight on the last day of that month. But you know, I get it out and I wouldn’t have otherwise if I hadn’t had the Patreon to force me to create that thing. And I’m really happy to see other people nodding, so it’s not just me.
Jacklyn
It’s a good feeling.
Julie
Yeah, yeah.
Jacklyn
One of the — No, go ahead.
Ben
No, go ahead.
Tyler
We’ll keep doing this, the whole time.
Jacklyn
One of my favorites is the Patreon for Rare Earth, which is a like he’s a documentary guy who goes around the world, just shares about all these different countries. At his top level, the fifty dollar tier, he’ll call your mom and tell your mom how great you are. That’s it, you only get it once. But you get it.
Laura
that’s pretty awesome.
Jacklyn
Speaking of screaming your name at the moon, you know, stuff like that, people, people do it.
Laura
I did consider when I was, you know, kicking around the idea of launching a Patreon or something, and I was doing all my tiers and I had one where, like, I will kill your ex in fiction. But then I thought people could take that poorly and I didn’t want anybody not in on the joke. So. And then I just didn’t launch any subscription things at all. So never mind. Ben, what were you going to say?
Tyler
The in fiction part, or you could be in legal trouble.
Ben
Well, first of all, I want to say that I love that benefit. I want to sign up for that. I think that sounds fantastic. But speaking to what you said a little while ago about having trepidation about like having these deliverables and then having to do it, not to dissuade you, but before the pandemic, or I was thinking that any day the pandemic was going to end or at least it was going to end. So some of the things that I had said, one of them was like, I’ll whisper your name seductively to a stranger in a public place or something. Well, I wasn’t gonna be able to do that while we’re all social distancing, I mean, the least I’d be able to do is like holler your name at them from six feet away. So I had to adjust some of those as I went along.
Ben
And I feel like that at least my patrons, they were super. At least if you’re going to give something like different or like that’s of equal value, I mean, I guess they could have their heart set on one thing and then give another.
Ben
But then also earlier, something I can’t remember who mentioned it about. Oh, it was Rhonda said about delivering at 11:59. So much of what Patreon has done for me is giving me like a reason to write, like I can talk myself out of writing any all day. Like, I’ll be like, well, the dishes are over there or laundry needs done or whatever, even if I’m like, I’m doing it or whatever today and sitting down now, it’s like this is part of something I promised I would do, not just promising other people, but promising myself.
Ben
And this is a measurable and a deliverable and all these things. And and I have thoroughly enjoyed that. It’s been it’s what has made it completely different for me.
Laura
OK, cool. PJZooFit points out in the chat that there were some zoos that had a, name a cockroach after your ex, and then we’ll feed it to your various critters. And actually after that was suggested by several readers, I did name a villain, give a cockroach my villain’s name and fed him to somebody this spring. So that happened. Kate asks whether any of you have asked subscriber’s for suggestions for rewards and what kind of things you might have gotten there.
Tyler
It’s been a discussion like we don’t really come out and just be like, hey, give me a reward ideas. Typically we’ll have ideas that we’ve come up with because we don’t. If you’re going to have that conversation, you need to guide it just a little bit because people may have unknown expectations of you. People may have like, hey, I want you to write me a book if I’m paying 50 dollars a month. It’s like. So come in, brainstorm some ideas with yourselves of things that you’d be willing to do and then ask like, hey, do any of these interest you?
Tyler
Would they make you want to upgrade? Would they make you happy to be at that tier or would you just never use it? Yeah, those are. But come in with ideas.
Jacklyn
Oh yeah. We had so many that we put in originally that we ended up cutting because people weren’t using it and we were stressing out over doing something that people were like, it’s cool that you do that, but that’s not really what I got onto that tier for. And it’s like, well, that’s the part that takes the most time for us. So if we can cut that out and no one really cares, and that’s great. Yeah.
Laura
Go ahead. Yes, I’m sorry, what did not to put you on the spot, but did anybody want to respond to that that I missed?
Rhonda
I did have one tier, just sort of on a related note, that nobody ever took. So I changed it to something else. And then nobody ever took that reward, so change it to something else, and nobody ever took that reward. And I was like, I need something at this price point. And I asked my patrons, like, what do you want at this price point? And nobody replied, you know, I just eventually just got rid of that tier because apparently the people who support my Patreon just don’t do that price.
Laura
Was the price point like $13? $666? Like nobody wanted that on their charge account.
Rhonda
Apparently.
Tyler
Was that the low end or the high end?
Rhonda
It was in the middle. I think it was like fifteen dollars and it was just like I couldn’t find anything that landed there.
Ben
I would be to answer the question, I would be terrified, actually, of letting people completely suggests — what I would be scared of is, is that I would have to say at the end of that conversation, OK, never mind. Just kidding. Bye! I’m not doing that or whatever it is, because sometimes people don’t understand, like what he was saying about your limits, your time. Some people don’t understand, like how much time goes into a certain thing or for instance, like, I’m a pretty I’m a pretty intense introvert, but I don’t come across that way. So I can imagine people thinking that I have a lot of things that I would like or would want to do or would even find myself capable of doing that. I would be like, I’m not doing that. I don’t care if you pay me seven hundred fifty dollars, not doing it.
Laura
Point out the dichotomy of, you know, I’m a pretty intense introvert. There’s a lot of things I don’t want to do. But I will whisper your name seductively to a total stranger in the park like, you know, this gets — cool complexity makes you more intriguing characters. Ben, you got a question specifically in the chat whether your motivation or determination increases when, you know, there are others relying on you monetarily or otherwise.
Ben
It most definitely increases. I actually introduced a in response to my launch of my Patreon and how successful I found it. I was just floored that so many people wanted to be a part of it. In response to that, I created a new series that I’m actually just now rolling out where I could then some of the monologues that I had written. I could then have other actors that also are out of work right now or had been out of work that were anxious to get in, not pay them a whole lot of money, because my Patreon brings in money, but not that much money. But give them something and at least a carrot, and something creatively to work on, too. And that was super inspirational to me. And I couldn’t write monologues fast enough. Like, I would sit down, I would have to stop myself. I would be like, just write the idea down and get to it the next day or whatever, stuff like that. That’s essentially why I started a Patreon, is to share the process of what I do with people, some of the extra stuff that has come along with it, like the fact that I am now a published poet and because it gave me somewhere to place poetry, which I was not expecting, that has just been icing on the cake.
Ben
So the answer to the question is yes, yes, yes.
Jacklyn
So I actually kind of want to bounce off of that and the previous question and make a suggestion to everyone who is trying to figure out what rewards to add, go through and look at the work you have to do to give people what they like, what you’re normally giving with the Patreon. Like, for example, ours is the writing. And we look at all the steps that lead up to that and say, can we tie this in to a reward in some way?
Jacklyn
So, for example, Tyler and I have an ongoing tradition of at least when we were going into the office, we would stop in the morning, drink coffee and talk about like what we were working on, what we wanted to write, what we wanted to share with people. And so we created a coffee channel in our Discord and whatever we we have that talk now, we just hop into the coffee channel and our patrons are welcome to just listen in.
Jacklyn
They can’t talk. We have it muted. But you get to listen to, like, this kind of little morning coffee podcast of us brainstorming. And so it becomes like. That’s no extra work for us, but it becomes like a benefit. People get to see behind the scenes, they want to know what you’re doing. People don’t just, like a lot of your first maybe 40 people, I would say, on Patreon, they’re subscribing to you more than your product. They’re putting their their vote of confidence in you because they know you personally. Once you move past that point where people don’t know who you are anymore, that’s when you have to lean on your product and your tiers. But before that, people are, theyr’e your friends. If they don’t start your friends, then they’re probably engaged enough with your content that you end up making friends with them anyway.
Laura
Yeah, that’s a great example of that inner circle cultivation, because, how fun is that to get the sneak peeks. Cool.
Rhonda
I’d just like to second that. That is a super cool idea.
Laura
Yeah. So everybody who’s working with partners, there’s an idea. For me, I’d just be talking to myself and I do that a lot anyway, so. Yeah, so oh, you’ve got some some fandom for that coming in the chat. The coffee calls are fun and behind the scenes it’s a favorite parts of DVD and the like. So that’s the favorite part of the stuff that Lorraine is, am I saying this properly? Lorraine Ali, I’m scared to get it wrong.
Laura
Thank you. OK, sorry. And I just realized in the chat, none none of my little bots with everybody’s you URLs are going out. So I’m going to make sure that we get I’m going to drop the URLs in the chat directly because that is part of this here. Come on.
Jacklyn
Lorraine who is in the chat can kind of give some of the other side perspective because, like, they’re saying they’re one of our patrons, actually one of our top patrons, too, so. They can answer a lot from that side of the equation of like, well, this is what Ethnis does that works.
Laura
Great, Kate says, I could talk to Undómiel and Penny, I yeah, that would probably sell, I could do that just so. All right. So I guess. That actually feeds really well into something else. I was kind of kicking around and thinking about which is, you know, like Ben, you were already doing a ton of theatrical productions, Rhonda. You had books and you were an editor and like lots of work already visible before you launched anything to ask for direct financial support.
video
HELLO.
Laura
Oh, all right. Why are you like, hey, that’s me! Why are you
Jacklyn
Sorry, just checking the other vids.
Laura
Why are you for so many, for so many people were trying to get us off the ground and, you know, we’re not a household name. You know, what are what are some ways to get that portfolio visible without, hi, my mom likes my stuff, I swear. You know, like what can what can we do? Tyler, that looks like a thought.
Tyler
I was just like, my mom does like my stuff.
Laura
Oh ok. So I’m glad. Good that you don’t have to pay somebody to call and tell, tell her that your stuff is good so. You can too. But yeah. Ideas for that, guys?
Jacklyn
So we were kind of around when World Anvil started growing and we’re both hyperactive in its Discord and that goes a long way. Being a face in the community, even when you’re not promoting yourself, the moment you do promote yourself, people see it because they’re like, oh, that’s that’s Barron. He’s the head of games. He organizes challenges for the community. If he writes something, it’s got to be really good. So when he says, hey, check out Ethnis, people check that out.
Jacklyn
So it’s not like people don’t respond well to you just walking up and being check out my thing. That’s advertising. If you want to. If you have the patience for it, being present in spaces where people like things like that, you like that. It’s just groups of friends and communities and hangouts and chat like discords like that’s where you’ll end up making the friends who want to see your stuff.
Yeah, I. Sorry. Go ahead.
Laura
I just wanted to say I didn’t tell Jacklyn to say that either. This is great. You’re just echoing something I made a big soapbox about a couple of weeks ago, so thank you very much. Sorry, Tyler, go ahead.
Tyler
I was going to say, like as Jacklyn is saying, like those investments, I’m going to call them investments, because there’s a bunch of different investments we as creators can do, whether it be in talking, creating, researching, whatever. Finding a discord that well mirrors what you’re putting to the table and becoming just active in that discord, you’re cultivating a plant there. Yeah, and so, like, it’s so slow every now and then pop in, say on a chat, give feedback, and eventually as you go, it will ripen and you’ll get fruit from it and you’ll be able to harvest it, which is when you go, here’s my Kickstarter, guys. I’m really excited about this. I’d love to have you guys just thoughts and feedback or here’s my patreon. I’m really making a push right now for because I have this new design and play something and that’s the time you harvest your cultivation. So it takes a long time, but you really reap the rewards at the end.
Jacklyn
Doing some sort of flex every now and then as well. Like, for example, we rolled out — World Anvil has a summer challenge and a winter challenge. And it’s always like basically do ten thousand words, and him and I’ll do a stream where we’ll do it all in one sitting, something like that, where it’s like look out, you know, like if we can do this in one setting, imagine what else we can write. And you know, just like kind of show off a little bit, like show off how good you are, like push yourself in front of everyone. Have those moments of panic. We had one where we ad libbed the whole story basically like over a table like role play, basically, and people love that. So, yeah. So.
Tyler
That’s it.
Laura
OK, so I’m enjoying the chat a lot, like Larry is like, wait, you show your stuff to your mom and Kate’s like, my mom finds my typos. So this is just great. So. I know that Patreon obviously is the is the one that most people are very familiar with in this service model, and I know it’s supposed to be coffee, but I swear it’s spelled Ko-Fi. They’re launching tiered subscription or tiered support or something coming up in the next month. I don’t have all the details in that. I just saw that they, just got an email about that a couple of days ago. So there’s a lot of different models. I guess, first of all, like, how do you select a model to do this? And then I have a follow up question once we’ve picked that. So is there a best way? Is there a best, you know, things things that work better for one venue than another? What do we got?
Tyler
Very simple answer to both. So if you can match it.
Jacklyn
I would say scatter shot at first and then find out where you’re not putting energy and where it’s not. Like if you’re putting this much energy in and getting this much out of it, then cut that. There’s reason why there’s YouTube stars and tick tock stars and Twitter stars and there’s very few people who are stars of all of them, because it’s too much energy to go 100 percent on every platform but scattershot and see what gives, what echoes back first.
Julie
Another thing is it depends very much on the kind of work you want to do. I know that at least in the visual art community, I have noticed some other creators on on Twitter talking about the different restrictions and different things that are possible and not possible and like how much money you are able to keep from your subscription on one platform versus the other. So that’s something that, you know, you might want to look into. I don’t know what Ko-Fi’s little portion that they keep, I don’t know what the details are on that, but that’s something that you want to look into. I know that one of the big things is that Patreon does not allow certain types of not safe for work stuff, which in visual art, you know, that’s a very wide field, you know, so, you know, it depends on what you’re doing. So Ko-Fi, I believe, does not have that. But I would want to double check that because I’m not sure.
But, yeah, it’s that’s getting into some of the nitty gritty of what each platform offers. But that’s something that you want to do your research on for sure and see just what’s going to be the best thing for you.
Laura
So then one of the things that occurred to me of all this looking things up and so in with Patreon, just as an example, if I subscribe at a tier, I get access to everything that has ever been offered for that tier in the monthly, you know, monthly products or whatever. And I don’t know, this might just be me being petty and small, but I could sign up for one month and get the last two years worth of stuff for that tier.
Laura
And somebody who has been a loyal supporter for two years has paid this much, much more. Twenty four times the amount for for the same collection. And then I could disappear the next month or something. And so, like, life is too short to to stress about micromanaging everybody on the planet. But is there something that I should think about, you know, just for me, keep my loyal patrons happy standpoint or am I just overthinking this, which sometimes happens?
Tyler
So you kind of have a couple of points there. One is, how do you deal with people who are coming in for one month, taking whatever they can and getting it? At the end of the day, that’s going to happen. It’s definitely not something you should — really don’t focus on those people. That’s not something you should consider like, oh, is there a way that I can stop this? Because there really isn’t. And it’s not worth you want your focus more on, OK, how do I make sure people who are here the entire time are getting what they want? I mean. Hold on. I lost my thought.
Jacklyn
So also, like if someone comes in and let’s say you have like two hundred posts worth of content to steal, if that person comes in and they take that, if they’re actually going to read all that, the odds of them also being someone who’s just going to stick with you and want to support that are pretty high, I think. I don’t know the numbers, but I imagine people who do that don’t look at half the stuff they take. They’re just digital hoarders. They they take it and they don’t look at it. They’re just like, yes, I stole something and they run away and they feel special for it and who cares?
Rhonda
And your long term supporters aren’t hurt by those people coming in and getting stuff because they’ve been happy getting what they’re getting, you know, doled out fashion over the two years or whatever, like the fact that somebody else is paying less and getting that stuff all in one chunk. I mean, I guess it’s sort of like you pay for the work for the community and the experience as well as the content. So they’re not getting ripped off by supporting you over the long term as opposed to coming in and taking everything and then just like go away.
Tyler
And they’re not going to get anything new.
Julie
I will say one thing that sort of guards against this and as much as anything ever can, is don’t put 100 percent of your content behind a paywall. Make sure that you have teasers you have. Like what I do is I put up all of my art. There’s a watermark on it, but you still get to see it. You know, it’s low rise. It’s got a watermark. But you do get to see my work. Everybody gets to see it.
Julie
Now, if you want if you want to get into that, you want to download stuff. You want to see the work high res. No watermark. Yeah. You have to get behind a paywall for that. More often than not, if somebody is going to take the time to look at your page and go, oh, I really want that one, you know, they might come in, grab a single download and leave, but they gave you money for it.
Julie
So that’s something. And it really doesn’t happen as much as you might think. People coming in and being like, oh, I’m going to download all of the content more like. Really does not happen all that often in my personal experience, so had it has happened to me once, but interestingly, this person seems to keep coming back. So there’s something to be said for that, too.
Tyler
Well, that brings up the fun point of finding a way to balance FOMO versus not encouraging theft, but like Julie says I don’t think we’ve ever seen anyone on the Ethnis Patreon go boopboop on and off.
Jacklyn
Yeah. The only time we’ve had people like bug out was just they wanted to pay one big month and then head off.
Tyler
They wanted to make us eat hot sauces and we’ll get. I think that’s a story of when you talk about community.
Jacklyn
Yeah, that’s right.
Laura
Well, let’s talk about. Oh, go ahead then we’ll come back and pick up.
Ben
I was just I was going to speak to that because I I’m of two minds on that subject because part of what really drew me to even doing content this way was the accessibility. I’ve always felt really strongly about people being able to access my work that were from multiple socioeconomic backgrounds. One of my tiers is two dollars. And I, I want it to stay that way and I want people to be able to see things for two dollars, if that’s all they have.
Ben
And if they only have two dollars for one month, then the fact that they offered me that two dollars actually means more to me than somebody who has fifty dollars every month that has that money to spare. Don’t tell those people that because I mean, you know, but so but I it’s weird because because of that dual thinking, I also have along the way really thought of like, well it doesn’t seem fair that some people are so supportive. I’ve tried to offer things for continuity for those people that stay around, like even if it’s just like I’m doing this because of the fact that you all are still here. I’m doing this because of that. But three times now, I have offered content that then goes away after a certain amount of time. So if you aren’t a continuing patron, then yes, you could just come in that month and see that, but then you might not catch the next one of those and you can’t collect all of those. So that’s a suggestion for people who are really worried about that. You could offer and even be really upfront with your patrons, say this is only going to be live for two weeks. Right. So read it, watch it, do whatever you do to it. And then and then just note as many times as you want and then it’s going to go away. So that’s those are my thoughts on that.
Rhonda
Tangentially, I actually use my backlist as things that I used to promote the Patreon. Like if you come in, you support at three dollars and you will get all these books, which you can’t possibly read in a month. And as a side note, they don’t actually get downloaded by everybody who’s eligible to download them, like all the patrons of the tier that are eligible to download e-books, do not downloadable or or if somebody wants to come in and download them all, then they aren’t pirating them. Even if they are, you know, they’re getting downloaded. But they do use the fact this is a marketing tool for sure.
Laura
OK, so like several points back from the chat, and for me, it’s been, you know, at the time that time limited time offer things. I have missed several things on Ben’s Patreon because I was busy and I didn’t get it in time and I didn’t get mad. It was like that was all on me. But my big, big concern really with this was like, would you would you rest of your community feel like they had been shorted? And it sounds like nobody’s getting that feedback at all from your community.
Rhonda
Well, they wouldn’t know. They wouldn’t know.
Laura
Well, I guess I’m picturing, like, you know, in the things with the really active community. But I guess a grab and run is probably not really going to be active in the community either. So never mind then.
Ben
Yeah. Yeah. And I would say that those specific things for me, those have been icing moments. Those have been I’m still offering the regular stuff on my Patreon like and pretty much posting regularly in the way that I feel like is what my patron is. And here’s this extra thing that is, and to be quite honest, I kind of also used it as a promotional tool for my Patreon. To say Prozac the Sad Elf is going up for a week during the Christmas time. Come see it like a show, and then maybe you’ll forget to cancel your Patreon next month. And it’ll just like roll over. Right. Or maybe you will. And you got the show for two dollars and that’s OK to.
Laura
Oh, all right.
Tyler
Prozac the Sad Elf!
Bridger is pointing out that sometimes you discover something you love late and you wouldn’t otherwise have access to that early stuff if things were time locked. So, you know, that’s a really good point, too, that if I come in, I want to be able to go back and pick up especially something like this. If there’s stuff that might be a continuing story or something, you want to go back and pick up the beginning.
Laura
So, yeah, OK. Yeah, or maybe you just stay there at that tier and intentionally forget to change. OK. Great.
Laura
So we are technically starting to close on time, but I’m just going to throw out that if the chat has any more questions, now is the time to get them in as soon as we start to wrap. So for those of us who maybe have been thinking about this for a long while and haven’t committed because commitment issues, totally asking for a friend, what would you what would you say to people who showed up in the chat today to to specifically get information about this and are teetering on the edge of that cliff? What are your words of encouragement as you yeet us off into the ravine?
Julie
It doesn’t cost any money to start a Patreon. Now, they take a little bit of each of each subscriber’s donation, but you don’t pay a fee, so you lose nothing by starting one. And honestly, it helps there’s a sort of carrot/sticks situation going with me each month, like I have created at least one thing every month since I started a Patreon. So there’s that too.
Rhonda
And starting a Patreon is really scary. I think it may be that that’s worth acknowledging because, you know, I’ve done a lot of a lot of bookselling and marketing and promotion and stuff. But Patreon felt really personal when I was starting it. Like, if people didn’t sign up, it would be a reflection and a rejection of me, not my work. And and I think that it’s important to recognize that it is terrifying, but it’s also worth it. Even if I have a relatively small audience comparatively, and it is positively impacting my life a lot, and it was definitely worth taking a chance.
Julie
I mentioned earlier the encouragement that you get from people just like throwing money at you, being like, hey, I love your work, I want to see more like that is an amazing feeling. And even if you have a relatively small community, which I mean, I do, too, but for the most part, they are really loyal. And it’s amazing to see these people just continually be like, I love getting your cards in the mail every month. I love seeing your artwork on my on my phone as a background, you know.
Laura
Bridger asks — Oh, sorry, go ahead.
Ben
I wanted to say something to starting a Patreon. I would say if you or any of any of them, a Ko-Fi or whatever you’re starting, if you aren’t already a patron or a coffee drinker or whatever it is that you are, then you need to do that first. Don’t just jump in, because it is a weird world. Like it is, it’s hard to understand exactly how to deliver. And it does feel super vulnerable. And I think what helped me is me becoming a patron and then discarding that patronage also helped me remember how easy that is to do and that it isn’t a personal slap in my face.
Ben
I do wish that some of the, like I do wish that Patreon would rethink how the set up for creators. That’s the first thing we see generally when we click on and I really I don’t want to make that to be my my goal I’m creating is my goal. Right. And for that to be the first thing you see when you look at notifications is like so-and-so declined their payment this month, which is kind of a buzzkill. I mean, even if it was like a two dollar person that, you know, signed on for just a amount of time or whatever, but but I would agree with everybody and say just do it.
Ben
Even if you do it for like three months and your work gets out there and you make twenty dollars or whatever, you wouldn’t have made anything before. And Patreon’s doing all the hard work as far as like financially taking the money and all of that kind of stuff. And yeah. So I would say do it.
Jacklyn
Yeah, never decide your value for other people. It’s because you’re always going to, at least a lot of creatives, you’re going to downplay your value. It’s like, oh my work’s not worth it. I’m not like a great writer yet, but like someone wants to read it, someone wants to look at your art, wants to listen to you. And when those people find you and they say, hey, do you have a Patreon? And you don’t, that’s on you.
Laura
We got the tough love coming from Jacklyn tonight. All right. That’s a really, really good point. And I love what you said about don’t set your value in someone else’s eyes. That is, that’s our next t shirt.
Laura
OK, Bridger had a question about pay per month and per work models and what you guys how you guys approach that. What do you, how do you make that decision?
Tyler
So that just depends on your product and and whether or not you feel that it is and also what you give. If you are literally just giving that piece of work, then yeah. you should probably do it per work. With us, I mean, we deliver a bunch of small works. When you’re delivering things that are behind the scenes, typically you want that to be a month to month as well, not just that for the project or per milestone.
Tyler
And then at that point, if you’re doing the per milestone, you do have a risk of putting them too far apart or too close together and getting people annoyed.
Jacklyn
Yeah, so I would I would say do the per product if you are one hundred percent, like just — like your product may be good, but if you’re not confident in it, don’t do that. You have to be able to be 100 percent confident you’re going to deliver this every month. It’s always going to be quality, whatever like that, however often you need to deliver it.
Because when you do per month, it’s more of that they’re investing in you. When you do per product, you’re less of the equation, at least to me. That’s what I’ve noticed. Like, it’s usually the really big ones. It’s like I will do a YouTube video every two weeks about, you know, this documentary guy again. people aren’t paying attention to him as much because his audience is so big.
Jacklyn
So when you’re doing a project, that’s what you’re saying is, focus on the project less than me.
Rhonda
For me, it was kind of the opposite. So I do monthly ones myself, but I have an alter ego who works in a different genre, and she gets neglected for months and months and months at a time. So she has a Patreon. I’ve actually made it idle, because it’s been a very long time. But when it was active, it was per project payment because it could be six months before I put something out and I didn’t want people paying every month and not getting anything new.
Rhonda
So in that case, I did her thing. But for me, myself, as a motivating and community building and like all of those things that I’m looking for in a Patreon, I needed the monthly thing.
Jacklyn
That’s good to know.
Julie
This might be a good place to to plug Ko-Fi’s model just a smidge. Some people use Ko-Fi like as a tip jar, which is what I do. I just have it there. Sometimes people throw me a few bucks, but, you know, you can set it up to where somebody can just go in and buy a thing, which is not the same as setting a price point like per finished project, but as far as being on the consumer end of things, it’s the same thing.
Julie
So I have done that before where I go to somebody’s Ko-Fi page and it’s like, hey, I have this pack of Discord emojis If you donate five dollars. And I’m like, I’ll buy that, you know? So that’s also something you that you can consider depending on the way that you work the product that you have. I have my Patreon set up per month, but I have, you know, a thing that I give you every month for that. So it depends on your product.
Laura
Yeah, Vinnievante asks, So if you make a lot of content, but someone only wants one thing they can do that? Yes, on the on the Ko-Fi, I’m going to train myself to say coffee. Yeah, you can take donations for a specific item.
Julie
Yes. And that might be a feature of Ko-Fi Gold. I have not done the research on that. Ko-Fi Gold is something where I think it’s like you pay 50 bucks a year or something.
Laura
It’s a flat fee.
Julie
But it’s a flat fee and they don’t take any money from the donations that you receive after that. At least that was when I last did my research, again, you might want to double check.
Laura
That’s the case, because I looked at it again in my in my semiannual, “Eh, I should do this” round and I checked it.
Laura
Are there any other questions coming in from the chat for our illustrious panel? Actually, guys, thank you. This has been a ton of great info and I’m so, so glad that we got this gang together. This has been a really good group. And I think we’ve got, like, a couple of t shirts need to come out.
Rhonda
I’m taking notes from other people.
Laura
Yeah, there will be many playbacks. Bridger says this has been fabulous. Kate says y’all are awesome. So, yeah. Great job, gang. And yes, seriously, thank you. This is something that people kept asking for and I’m like, I am so not the person to ask, because, like, I’ve been looking things up and not doing it for years. So that’s definitely, definitely not the person to ask. So so appreciate you guys coming and being, sharing your experience and your and your expertise.
Vinnievante says this is really interesting, not currently content creators is going to file away for potential, but thank you. So that’s great. Adam says, thank you, PFZooFit, like all the, all the love. So thanks, guys.
All right. Well, we are at time, so I’m going to wrap us here. Make sure that you check — for research, guys, for research — go check out all the links that have been in the chat belonging to these creators and go see what they’re doing. And then, you know, thank them for for sharing their expertise in a very direct way. So PJ’s got so many ideas swirling around. Awesome, awesome. Send some my way when you’re done. And I’m going to wrap this here. Thank you, guys. Everybody have a fantastic week. Next week is the Create-in. I’m pretty sure. I didn’t check the calendar, but I’m pretty sure that’s right. So I will see some of you back for that. Thanks. And have a fantastic night. Bye.
All
Bye! Chao!
