The Pitfall with Patreon · 8:49pm Oct 3rd, 2019
Okay, I realize that this title may be attention-grabbing enough to start people off with the wrong ideas. So I’m going to make it clear right up front: I am extremely grateful and thankful to those of you who donate to my Patreon. There have been months where I’ve only gotten by thanks to the kind and generous donations of my Patreon supporters. Writing is … a tough job. It doesn’t pay great pretty much until it does. But I am forever grateful to those of you that donate a little bit of your income each month as a thanks for the articles I post. I couldn’t do Being a Better Writer without you guys (especially as BaBW is ad and subscription free).
No, this post isn’t to have issue with that. Rather, it’s to bring up something I’ve mentioned before. An issue with Patreon that’s, well, quite prevalent. And ultimately, a death sentence if someone falls into its trap. Which I’ve seen happen more than once.
It’s not the fault of Patreon, and I don’t wish to insinuate that. I believe it has more to do with human nature, and the idea of “being owed.”
Okay, so let me just dive right into things. Patreon, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is a modern take on the “Patron of the Arts” idea. See, back in the old days of history, “Patrons” of artists would basically donate money to various artists, musicians, so that these artists would have money to live while they made their creations. You have to realize the idea of a musician selling records is entirely unique to our modern era. If a talented young musician, say a classical composer, wanted to be a classical composer, they could find a patron who would support them with money for living needs in exchange for the musician creating music. If they stopped creating, the patron would stop funding them.
Patreon is the digital equivalent of this concept. Find a webcomic you like? An artist? A modder? Any sort of creative soul you want to support? You can support this person on Patreon, donating them a sum of money each month. The idea being if that 100 people donate $5 each, that creator then makes $500. So for the cost of a half-price lunch a month, 100 people can support their favorite webcomic creator, for example.
Cool, right? I agree. It’s a modern take on the “Patron of the Arts” formula.
But not one without its weaknesses. And it’s flaws. Some of which are, without mincing words, almost deadly to a creator.
This is eating a podcast I used to enjoy. Originally, donating to the Patreon earned patrons a newsletter, and at high tiers monthly 1-on-1 chats with the hosts. You donated to make the show better, and got something small for it as a bonus. The show consisted of two hosts who discuss the news, answer letters, and ramble about whatever strikes their fancy, combined with segments produced by other people. The show ran as long as it needed to, usually around an hour and a half.
Now they're doing something new. They gate all the "extra" rambles behind a patron-wall. This leaves the regular podcast rather dry, as they rush through the news, letters and segments to keep it down to an hour or so, then have fun afterwards (in the patron-only second podcast), which goes on for about another hour. So now I'm on the border of unsubscribing from the podcast, as even if I paid for the extra bits, the whole flow is off. An hour of semi-seriousness followed by an hour of randomness is not the same thing as an hour and a half of fun show. At the same time, the hosts are pushing the Patreon harder and harder in the show, and if they don't keep up the "extra" bits, they'll lose the (originally freely-given) income they had.
I mean, the other half of the equation is that patrons need to be more aware and not get overblown expectations. I've always tried to treat my Patreon donations as just that, and I actively avoid ones where anything is permanently paywalled1. Heck, for many (most?) traditional patrons part of the point was that the work of the people they supported would be seen, and people would know that the patron helped make it happen. BEHOLD MY SUPPORT OF THESE HORSEWORDS2, TRULY I AM A PHILANTHROPIST LIKE UNTO ROCKEFELLER.
...ahem.
This reminds me of when I was more active on Kickstarter—that there are different ways of viewing donations there as well. I always tried to view it as supporting a 'vision', not as ordering a product, and so if a successful campaign failed to be fully realized then I was a bit sad and disappointed, but not outraged like some people, that I didn't "get what I paid for".
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This post reminds me of a few artists I see art of everywhere. Has a patreon and rakes in a lot of cash. But to keep that up they pump out content at a really fast pace. The catch is that if you take a look at the pictures simultaneously, you start to see that "same face syndrome" is in full effect. Gets a bit unnerving actually.
Best thing method is probably either set hard limits to the tiers, as you stated in the post, or regularly keep in communication via blog post updates.