When folks get started on a new podcast, we get a lot of questions about, “when should we start looking towards networks?” The underlying idea under this question is usually, "How can someone sell ads for us to make money on the show?” But building a Patreon community will be a much easier, faster, and more rewarding way to get a financial return on a burgeoning show.
We’ve found there are really two reasons someone will support you on Patreon: 1) you’re offering more regular content and they will pay for it or 2) they want to give you money for nothing in return. Depending on the amount of time and work you want to put in, your Patreon strategy should revolve around one of the previous two ideas.
SOME QUICK TIPS TO START
Don’t have a $1 dollar tier (unless it's for no rewards). Is your time worth 25 cents a week? No, it’s not. Folks can pay whatever they want on Patreon, so if they want to throw you a dollar a month, they can. Don’t give them the option from the jump though.
If you’re beginning a show, have a Patreon from the beginning. Let people get on the ground floor!
Don’t overload yourself. We STRONGLY dissuade you from doing behind-the-scenes videos, playlists, exclusive merch, research notes, a Discord, and more. In fact, a lot of these offerings aren’t what move the needle. If you’re going to offer merch or physical products, it should be at a high tier that gives you a lot of money in return, because shipping is a nightmare.
GIVE THEM REGULAR CONTENT
If you have a good chunk of time to devote to a Patreon, want to push for this to be your full-time job, or are looking to build community through your Patreon, the best way to do this is with exclusive content. People like your show, enough that they’re downloading it as soon as it comes out and marathoning the entire back catalog. So give the people what they want: more podcast and more of you!
If you have a fictional or more structured show, this Patreon-only podcast should be looser, both in terms of style and how you can all act on the mic. It’s the “just talking” show you might have avoided doing as your main show, but with an audience paying for more audio time, y’all can be yourselves and reveal more facets of your personality.
This was our main idea around Party Planning, the exclusive podcast for Join the Party. What started out as a structured TTRPG advice show has blossomed into sharing what’s going on in our lives, spontaneous creation on mic and video, and weird game shows, allowing us to be ourselves more.
Hey Riddle Riddle, a riddle-and-improv show on Headgum, is leaning into this by doing incredibly interesting audio on their Patreon feed. While they must do riddles on the podcast, the Patreon feed is an opportunity for them to be creative, giving an already devoted audience more of what they like about HRR. This leads to incredibly fun places, like TTRPGs powered by riddles, full 50-minute improv scenes, unhinged gameshows, and a whole lot more.
MAKE YOUR TIERS WORK FOR YOU
In our experience, the optimal number of tiers is four: a low-tier for everyone to contribute and join a Patreon, a chunky middle tier with the most number of rewards, a higher Producer Level tier where people hear their names read out loud, and an incredibly-high deluxe tier where a very select few get something very special.
When you’re making your regular content, put it at that second, chunky tier. This is a consumer trick that has to do with the human condition: folks want to pick the middle option. Whether soft drinks, cakes, ticket prices, whatever, unless they really want the lowest or the highest, people will want to pick the middle choice. Because of that, make your lowest tier an option for people who want to just support, but don’t make the most reward-dense. Save that for the middle tier!
Check out this great example from our rude friends over at Rude Tales of Magic:
They even called the lowest tier the Pauper’s Folly! You always know what you’re getting into. We’re doing this over at Join the Party as well. Our $10 tier has the newest rewards, plus Party Planning is planned as a video medium, with good cameras, visual jokes, and the only real opportunity for folks to see our faces as we make jokes.
As for the incredibly deluxe highest tier, even if you think it is silly, you should still do it. For one, it ties into the human condition thing: the middle two tiers look much more appealing. But for another, let a rich person spend their money on you! It’s not your responsibility to say, “No, no, this is silly, don’t do this.” It’s your job to say, “Oh wow, thank you, you’re incredible!” if it happens!
Make it 69 dollars a month! Offer to send them a video on their birthday. Make a poster that you need to look at every time you record that has their name on it. Make it big, make it silly, but at least, make it.
ALLOW PEOPLE TO GIVE YOU MONEY
You may be thinking that the clause we wrote earlier, “Depending on the amount of time and work you want to put in…” was a value judgment on you and we’re pushing you towards making extra regular content. No, absolutely not. If you can’t or don’t want to put more work into bonus content, you don’t have to! But you should still allow your listeners to support you directly. Especially after March 2020, people want to show appreciation to creators with their dollars, and you should give them the ability to do so. Also, you deserve voluntary money in compensation for the free audio you’re putting into the world.
If this is the position you find yourself in, optimize your Patreon for this! You could make just one tier at $5 or $10 a month, title it WOW THANK YOU, and offer to read patron names in the credits every single episode. Or, you could do three tiers: a $2 dollar THANK YOU with no reward, $5 or $10 tier of YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE and read their name every episode, and a $20 tier PRODUCER LEVEL where they can suggest one episode subject a year you’ll cover on the show.
This is minimal work on your part, and you give folks the thing they love the most: hearing their name on their favorite show!
AN IMPORTANT CAVEAT ABOUT THE TECH LANDSCAPE
Right now, we’re recommending Patreon as the platform to allow people to support artists (ie: you) directly. Patreon is currently the only mainstream game in town explicitly doing membership support. We beg anyone else in the tech space to put pressure on Patreon and build a competing platform to do the thing the free market was supposed to do: make a better product for the customer. As the sole entity in this space, this has given Patreon the space to do things that tech companies love to do: “grow” at the expense of their initial product for the benefit of shareholders and flirt with crypto and NFTs. If Patreon does go full bore into crypto and NFTs, we can’t, in good conscience, support it any longer, and we will update this article accordingly. If you are using Patreon, please take the time to tell them not to do crypto; they’ll listen if enough folks complain.
So get out there and make money on your art! How are you going to be able to podcast if you can’t eat?
Head of Creative