How To Start A Patreon For Art - My Advice For Building A Successful Patreon Account

hello i'm mimi and today i'm going to

share with you my tips and advice for

starting your very own patreon so you

can start earning money from your art

and content

if you don't already know patreon is a

membership platform where you can offer

your audience exclusive benefits each

month that they can pay to access and

it's a really great way to offer extra

goodies to your most engaged audience

members whilst building a reliable

income

for me patreon is my largest and most

stable income stream each month so

naturally i want to share with you my

tips for starting your own this video

isn't sponsored by patreon or anything i

just really like the platform

so here's how it works

first you need an audience it doesn't

have to be huge and you can always start

small and grow over time but you do need

people to refer to your patreon

then you need to decide what benefits

and tiers to offer your audience and

figure out how to price them

you can then set up your patreon page to

be beautiful and enticing and start

uploading your benefits and then you can

market to your audience that you have a

patreon what's on offer and encourage

them to join

so let's dive a little deeper into each

of those

how big does your audience need to be to

start a patreon obviously there's no

right answer to this but basically you

either need quite a lot of people seeing

your content or a small but really

engaged community

i've seen it said that quite often

creators on patreon see a 0.1 conversion

rate from their social media audience to

patrons meaning that for every 1 000

people you have in your audience on your

social media platforms roughly one of

those will convert to a patron

this is of course a super general rule

but it's been pretty accurate for me

that as my audience has grown roughly 1

in 1 000 convert over to being patrons

a big factor in that conversion rate is

what benefits you offer on patreon and

how much value those benefits have to

potential patrons so as i've improved my

tiers my conversion rate has improved as

well

so how do you know what benefits to

offer on patreon

to have a successful patreon you need to

understand what your audience would be

willing to pay for access to and this

could be different for everyone

they might want to learn from you or see

exclusive behind the scenes or have

access to live streams

think about what would be really

valuable to your audience and if you're

not sure you can always ask them

my advice would be to write down a list

of all the things you think your

audience would really like to access

from you then go through that list and

remove all of the things you aren't

comfortable committing to making every

month from what you have left you can

decide whether to offer all of those

things or just some of them and whether

to offer them as one tier or across

several keeping in mind that you can

always start simple and add tears later

on

but then how do you decide on a price

for those tiers that's totally up to you

and the benefits you want to offer and

there's a few ways you can go about

pricing your tears

you could just start with one tier at a

medium price point and see how you go or

you could offer a few tiers

a popular method and the one that i use

is to have three tiers one at a low

price point of just a few dollars one at

a medium price point of between five and

ten dollars and one at a slightly higher

price point of around 10 to 20 dollars

consider what kind of value people would

want for paying for each of these tiers

and assign benefits to them that your

audience would enjoy and ideally that

they would be happy paying for each and

every month a really important thing to

keep in mind here though is not to over

commit because you'll need to create

these benefits each month and it'll

likely take a few months for your

patreon to get off the ground

so you know what tiers and benefits you

want to offer how do you build an

enticing patreon page

a good place to start is to look at

other creator pages and be aware of what

you like about their patreon page what

is it that makes you want to join their

patreon or what is it that puts you off

joining do a bit of research not to copy

what others are doing but to be aware of

your own thoughts as a potential

customer of this

once you're ready to set up your own

patreon you want it to reflect who you

are as an artist so take the opportunity

to illustrate some assets to use on your

main page

create a banner and make sure you upload

a profile picture to me it makes a big

difference when each tier has an

illustrated icon for it and i really

like when the tiers are themed rather

than being called tier 1 2 and 3.

now the about section is your

opportunity to introduce yourself what

your patreon is all about and what you

hope to offer people be personable and

explain what value they'll get from your

patreon and i think it also helps to

explain a bit about how patreon works as

well because a lot of people won't have

used the platform before

i like to make sure people know that

although it's a membership platform

they're very welcome to just join for

one month and they can cancel anytime

you also have the opportunity to add

photos and a video to your about section

which can also help people understand

the platform and what you offer i only

had text in my about section for my

first year on patreon and just added the

video explainer quite recently so you

can always start with what you've got

and upgrade some things later

it can take a little while to set up

your main page especially if you're

illustrating tier icons and a banner but

i think it's so worth it because this is

a page where people will decide whether

to become a patron or not

so now you have a beautiful page and

some great benefits how do you actually

get patrons

well quite simply you need to tell your

audience about it use whatever platform

you most often engage with your audience

on to let them know that you have a

patreon now how it works and what value

they can get out of it patreon has a

feature that lets you run special offers

for a limited time so you might consider

offering something special for your

launch to encourage more people to give

it a go

you might not get many people joining

straight away and that's okay

keep letting your audience know that you

have a patreon share on your instagram

stories some behind the scenes of you

making benefits mention that you have a

patreon at the bottom of your captions

whatever feels right for you and your

audience

if you find that your audience isn't

joining your patreon at all then it

might be time to reassess what benefits

you're offering

perhaps the price is too high for the

benefits on offer or maybe the benefits

are just something they're not really

interested in you can always reach out

directly to your audience and ask them

for feedback

now i have a few general things that

i've learned from having a patreon that

i want to share with you

first it's a long game unless you have a

massive audience you're not likely to

get an influx of paying patrons who will

pay your bills every month but keep

growing your audience and keep improving

your patreon and it should steadily grow

over time i've had my patreon for over a

year now and the growth is pretty clear

secondly people will leave although

patreon is a membership platform you're

going to have a lot of people who just

want to join for one month and that's

fine

each and every month i have people join

and i have lots of people leave too some

of them leave for good because what i

offer isn't a good fit for them and some

of them leave knowing they'll come back

in a few months

remember that everyone has a different

financial position so although for some

people paying you five dollars a month

for the benefits you offer is no big

deal for some people it's a big

investment so they might not be able to

stay every month

don't be alarmed when someone leaves be

excited that they chose to invest in

your content for the time that they did

and also you can always change things

although it's a bit awkward to change

what you're offering on patreon once you

have paying members if the benefits

aren't working for either you or your

community you can change them

what you set out in the beginning

doesn't have to be how it is forever

the final thing i want to share with you

in this video is ideas for patreon

benefits you could offer as an artist to

get you started in case you aren't sure

where to begin

you could offer access to a discord

server where you can all connect

together a mailing club where you mail

out some of your art each month phone

wallpapers or other digital downloads of

your art physical products you've made

like stickers or pins

access to live streams of you creating

art one-on-one chatting or tutoring

sessions discounts to your products or

stores shout outs on your social media

platforms art tutorials and guides

newsletters of what you're up to sneak

peeks of projects time lapses of your

process vlogs or video tutorials access

to polls sketchbook tours and well

pretty much anything else you can think

of

so those are my tips for starting your

very own patreon you can find the link

to my own patreon in the description if

you'd like to take a peek

i hope you found this video helpful and

i'll see you in the next one bye