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In this episode, I am going to sign up for a Patreon Account and share about the process and what I’ve learned along the way. 

Links:

• Creative Funding Show Patreon
• Patreon Affiliate Link (we both each $50+ with this link)

TLDR

What is Patreon?

Patreon is a rewards-based patronage platform where your fans can contribute to the creation of your future work.

How do rewards work?

Patrons back either monthly or per creation. The level of their patronage influences the level of the rewards they get. The more you back the creation, the more rewards.

How do goals work?

As the campaign raises more money overall, the individual rewards will get better and better.

Transcript

Transcription generated algorithmically by Sonix (Affiliate Link)

[00:00:03] This is the Creative Funding Show, a podcast for YouTubers and podcasters who want the work they love without selling them to the creative funny show in this episode we’re going to talk about how to set up a patriotic page.

[00:00:20] I’m of course Thomas Umstattd and this episode’s going to be a little bit different because I’m going to record it in stages as I go through the process of creating the Patreon page for [00:00:30] the Creative Funding Show.

[00:00:31] I realize this is a bit meta but I’m going to go through this step myself and then rerecord on this track. What I’ve learned what my thoughts were what the process was like. So you can go along the journey with me as I create a Patreon page. Now I’ve kind of done this before when we did the novel Marketing Podcast. James Rhubart. My cohost did a lot of the set up I did some of the set up and so this will be my first time to create a Patreon page from scratch. So you’re going to get to go through that [00:01:00] process with me. So we’ll see how this goes. I hope it will be fun. I hope you enjoy it and I hope we all learn something.

[00:01:08] All right this is Thomas from the future. I assume at this point when I first recorded it that you already have a patriotic account so I just go straight into editing my patron account. If you don’t have a patron account already and the first step is to go and create one which you can do. I actually have an affiliate link if you create an account through my link you’ll get some bonus [00:01:30] money so it’s creative funding that show forward slash Patreon on affiliate link I’ll have a link to it in the show notes in how this works. Is that based off how many patrons you get in the first 30 days. We both get a bonus. So it starts off fifty dollars. You get an extra 50 bucks. I get an extra 50 bucks and goes all the way up to 500 if you have a super successful show. So this is one of the ways that I’m funding this shows with affiliates one of which is with patriot and you can create that new account using [00:02:00] the affiliate link by going to creative funding show forward slash patreon affiliate link.

[00:02:07] Okay. The first thing I did was I went to settings for my profile and changed my name so I’ve changed my name from Thomas Umstattd to Creative Funding Show and I’m on the settings page and so far it’s pretty straightforward. Uploaded my album artwork. I need to create a cover image of left that blank for now. I uploaded the Facebook URL and the Twitter handle in the [00:02:30] category of putting podcasting. It’s pretty straightforward and I’ve reserved patreon dot com slash creative funding show for the URL no adult content. And yes we’re going to have a custom RSS feed. So so far it’s pretty straightforward. It’s just kind of paint by numbers filling in the gaps. We’ll see if things get a little more complicated here in a second.

[00:02:51] Alright I just finished the about section. This is probably the shortest page so far and remember correctly the paid period. But [00:03:00] that doesn’t make it easy since is where you describe your podcast or your project or whatever it is. And you know this is always so hard. You know how do you describe your own work and how do you do that efficiently. So I just put the creative funny show as a podcast for creators who want to make a living doing what they love using platforms like Patreon Kickstarter. This patreon page will be how we funded the show and it will also be where we experiment with ideas and suggestions of our guests. If you want to learn how to use patreon and better consider [00:03:30] backing this page.

[00:03:31] Thank you so much. This isn’t great text that I just wrote. I’ll probably make it better. Moving forward and I think that’s an important point now with all of this I think it’s really easy for us to allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. And with a lot of the projects I’ve found it’s better to just launch with what you have and then improve it based off of feedback and analytics rather than keeping it to yourself. So to speak.

[00:03:54] And then the second part and this again plays to probably my biggest weakness with this whole process [00:04:00] is the intro video. I’m very comfortable on audio I’ve done radio before. Video is not a strength for me so some of you listening are YouTube yours. You’ll be just the opposite. Right the video will be the easiest part of a patron because you’re on camera every day or or all the time. For me I’m not on camera that often. Mostly what I record are courses and so this is a little uncomfortable. I’ll play the audio from the video I kept it very short and you can listen to it but again I’m not seeing this video as something that I’m committed to I’m probably going to update it in [00:04:30] the future. You’ll notice I don’t really talk about the rewards all that carefully and that’s because 1 I want to be able to change the rewards as we experiment with stuff and 2 as I’m recording this I don’t know what the rewards are going to be. I’m a little vague on purpose so let’s roll the audio for the YouTube video.

[00:04:49] I’m Thomas Umstattd that junior with the creative funding show and you have reached our patreon page. That’s right. The show about patreon has a page on patreon so we can prank it’s [00:05:00] what we preach. This page is where we’re going to give you some really cool rewards which you can see below but it’s also we’re we’re going to be experimenting with the ideas and suggestions from the guests who come on the show. This is our laboratory for excellent patreon and there’s one thing I’ve learned about experimentation is that some experiments fail. If you want to watch the adventure to see what works and what doesn’t work I encourage you to back this page and join us on the wild ride that is funding creativity. We’ll be doing it for our podcast helping you do [00:05:30] it for your YouTube channel your book or maybe a podcast of your own. Thank you so much for checking out this page for backing the show.

[00:05:38] You’ll notice that that’s very similar to the text that I had on the page. I see these as being kind of the same message told different ways. Not everyone’s going to watch the video. Not everyone is going to read the text so I didn’t want to put any critical information in one that wasn’t also in the other.

[00:05:55] So now I’m on the rewards tab. I had to make some decisions when it came [00:06:00] to rewards and this is really where I recommend that you don’t start to patreon with the start of your show. Normally how I would pick rewards is based off of listener feedback and what people like and you know we’d survey our listeners and give them more of that. Since I’m doing this before a single show is going live. I have no idea what you like and what you don’t like. So I’m doing this the hard way. But I have two levels to start off. One is watch the experience called Watch the experiment and it’s one dollar per creation. This [00:06:30] can be one dollar per episode or about four dollars a month for the text I have get the patron only updates and the patrons only Q&A episode. Now part of me wants to put the Q&A episode like that behind a goal. So like once we have a hundred dollars a month then we all mock the patrons only Q&A episode and the reason for that is if only 5 people back this or one person. Like if my mom my only backer I’m not going to have enough questions for Q&A episode.

[00:06:57] That’s a lot of work for not a lot of reward. So I think [00:07:00] I’m going to retool this and add plus additional rewards to come. I realize that’s not a lot of incentive but our second level I think is a little more appealing and it’s the featured patron level and it’s everything in the 1 dollar level plus having your patreon page featured on the creative hunting show. So you’re wanting to get the word out about your patreon page. This is the way to do it. I’ve had this one limited so it’s limited to 16 patrons at this level. We had a level like this within Novel Marketing Podcast. It was a very popular [00:07:30] level and the way we’re doing it there and I’m doing the same way here is that it’s once per quarter we will have if you want your page featured and that’s 20 dollars and I think that will help us to get to our goal. One of the things I’ve learned about patreon is that often a lot of your money comes from a handful of people and so it’s important to have high level reward levels that encourage people to donate and you’ll have people donate beyond your highest level tier. So right now we are top patron at novel marketing and turned it over twice [00:08:00] what the highest tier currently available is. This is kind of a higher tier twenty dollars per podcast’s episode that’s going to be 80 dollars a month. That’s a lot of money but I’m hoping that some folks will want to look back at that to help make the podcast a reality.

[00:08:13] Also patrons can limit the monthly amount so that’s 20 dollars per podcast’s they can limited say forty dollars a month and we’ll explore kind of how that works. That’s all I have for the rewards page. I’d love to have your ideas what kind of [00:08:30] rewards you’d love to see. This will be an iterative process but I’m kind of letting you peek under the hood of the very beginnings so you can learn with me.

[00:08:40] So I’m on the next tab that says goals. This is where you set goals for the patreon. The closest thing to this in kickstarter world will be like a stretch goal so once we reach a certain earning level or a certain number of patrons everyone gets this special prize or gift or what have you. So I set [00:09:00] up three goals to start off the first ones a 100 dollar goal and it’s patrons only monthly Q&A episode so I rework that reward and I said plus the Q&A episode once it’s unlocked so this way we’ll have enough people to ask questions before we start doing the Q and A episode. The second goal is a 250 dollar goal and it’s a community Slack channel. So once we reach 250 dollars funding and I actually think about changing this from a earnings goal to a person goal in fact that many of us I’m going to say once [00:09:30] we get to 100 patrons create the slack channel. We have a handful of people who are donating a lot of money.

[00:09:36] I don’t want to have a slack channel that will be an empty room so I’m making changes as I’m explaining it to you live on the air but the idea with slack you can talk with other patrons of the show you can ask questions you can get feedback on your patreon pages if you’re wanting to get feedback from the community. This will be a way to do that and that will unlock once we have 100 patrons and then I have a five hundred dollar a month goal [00:10:00] which is episode transcript so I’ve gone through this with many other podcasts transcripts or a bit of a pain. There’s two ways to do it. You can have a human do it or you can have a computer to it. When you have the computer do it you still have to have a human touch it and it’s work and it’s hassle so this one’s at five hundred dollars a month. The advantage of transcripts are not everyone likes to listen to podcasts. This is going to open up the show for them if they want to be able to glance through it. It also will make the show more findable on google and it will make it more searchable turn to look up the answer to a certain thing they heard a few episodes ago. Once [00:10:30] there’s transcripts it makes that easier. 500 dollars may be too much for this level. I may lower it but right now mostly focused on that 100 dollar level and 300 patron reward level and I will add more goals as I get feedback from you.

[00:10:45] So again this is the initial launch early and iterate often model so I’m launching the thing mostly broken and as I get feedback from you I’m going to make it better. I realized this isn’t the best way to do it but it’s the most transparent way I can do [00:11:00] it and hopefully it’s helpful.

[00:11:02] I just finished the thank you Page. At first I was thinking that I’d be like oh you have to back the Petreon on for a dollar to see the video or whatever but I’m not going to do that. I think that in the purpose of full disclosure I’ll go ahead and post the audio also the audio of the video here in a second. The idea with the thank you page is to give a heartfelt thank you to your patrons and typically patreon. Campaigns that I’ve backed in the past. This is not [00:11:30] a super polished video. So typically you get a little bit more of a behind the scenes view. So while the other videos I shot in my podcasting studio so to speak. This one I shot while I was going to get the mail with my wife trashed today while I’m recording this. Trash cans all over our neighborhoods it’s not super fancy but having my wife on the video is a big deal because she’s not typically one who likes to be on camera So that’s kind of like the special thank you for my patrons is that you get to see my wife and get a little glimpse behind the scenes. It’s [00:12:00] not amazing I realize but it’s where I’m starting. So let me roll the audio for that real quick.

[00:12:09] Thomas Umstattd i’m walking to get the mail with my lovely wife is expecting our first baby I just wanted to say thank you so much for backing this patreon page. This is very scary to do especially since a lot of you are also patreon patron on in doing this and learning [00:12:30] in front of you and trying to be as transparent as possible. And I just want to say thank you from the bottom my heart for helping to make this possible and for joining us on this adventure and we’ll see you online.

[00:12:41] So that was the video and I just shot that on my iPhone. I don’t have a fancy iPhone I’ve got a kind of an older iPhone but the video quality is great and I just had it held it while I was walking along the road. So it works. And another thing real quick is that you get to write some text here. I just put thank you. The creative [00:13:00] funding show would not be possible without you. You are an insider now and your voice is especially important in influencing where the show goes in the future. If you have a topic you’d like us to discuss. I guess you want us to interview or a question you want me to answer please let me know and then I sign it. Thomas and with all three of these videos or the intro video and the thank you video. Also while I was coding videos created a video for the website kind of introduced the show. Figured why not. They recorded them in Camtasia which is the same software that I use when I’m putting together a course [00:13:30] for Mac. I like it it’s pretty easy to use while being fairly powerful it’s not as powerful as like adobe premiere but I’m able to very very quickly make video recorder on my Web cam the video quality is meh those of you who are you tubers are going to cringe. I’m sorry but I invested in lightings at least the lightning is good and I’ve got a good microphone the focus goes in and out.

[00:13:50] I’m not sure why but again it’s a starting point. And then what I do is I uploaded the videos to YouTube. Now the Thank You Video. I want to keep private. So it’s an unlisted YouTube video. So really the [00:14:00] only good way to get this video is to back the page you paste in the URL on the thank you page her on patreon. And then we are good to go. So that’s it. There’s just one more page the payments page and then it’s time to launch this thing. I’m still on the same day. I think I’ve spent maybe 30 minutes on them pages and probably an hour or so on the video so far so I’m still on day one here of launching this campaign.

[00:14:28] All right. So the payments tab [00:14:30] and patreon creation process is actually pretty straightforward. So the first thing and ask is do I want to get paid monthly or per creation and I’m selecting the per creation here partly because I’m doing the Novel Marketing Podcast monthly and I want to do this one differently partly for the educations I’m doing it both ways and then it asks you to type in kind of per what you’re creating. So I just typed weekly podcast episode so charged my patrons only when I make a paid post per weekly podcast [00:15:00] episode. So create certain paid posts that I’ll have the podcast episode in them and that will trigger the payments and then the next question is earnings visibility so you can be transparent with how much money you are making or you can keep that private.

[00:15:14] I’ve opted for public a lot of YouTubers do this certain really popular ones don’t. It can make sense in some cases to keep it private if you think that it will inspire envy in that it will cause people to hate you. I’m this is a no brainer for me because the whole [00:15:30] point of this process is to be super transparent with you as you know how patron works patreon works and how making money and how much money making so I’m selecting public event then this is an interesting change I don’t think this is the case. Last time I went through a patreon payment creation but it’s not asking me for my employee identification number or any the tax info as it just says we’ll ask you this information once you make some money which is really cool.

[00:15:54] So now I’m going to go ahead and quick preview and launch. This [00:16:00] is really scary. In some ways it’s actually scary and a lot of ways because I know that you guys are wise in the ways of patreon and I’m opening myself up to a lot of criticism when I posted about this on the podcast or groups there like you know what do you know about patreon and doing it for a month.

[00:16:17] I mean I’ve been backing patreon pages for almost as patron was created but I’ve only been a creator for a month on my other channel or at this point two months. That’s not a lot of history but you know I’m hoping it will be [00:16:30] nice to hope that this episode is interesting to you. I’m going to go ahead while we’re live and click go live. Quick yet give me a pop up if you want to leave the site leave. I don’t know why it asked me that it gave me a check box of what I’d done and what I had done. Most of the things were checked.

[00:16:47] So now we’re live creative funding shows live on patriation so anyone can come in back now which is pretty crazy. I’m going to come back and start tweaking this almost immediately. But [00:17:00] you know I cannot create posts I can see a list of patrons. I’ve got a dashboard where I can see donations and what’s come in notifications messages and invite creators which is what gives me the affiliate link that I use on the show. So this is kind of a shorter show. I realize it’s a little weird. Normally this would be like screencast but I will say as a huge podcast listener I really love it when people create audio things that normally would be visual.

[00:17:29] So I’ll see [00:17:30] you next episode thank you all so much for listening to the creative funding show and feel free to check out the patreon Page for creative funding show and you can see what it looks like and you can see what I look like.