This is the Creative Funding Show, a podcast for authors, YouTubers, and podcasters who want to fund the work they love without selling out. I’m Thomas Umstattd Jr., and with me today is Bremner Morris. He’s the head of Patreon’s Creator Partnerships and Creator Success Teams. He helps creators join the platform and become more successful once they get on Patreon.
What is Patreon?
Bremner: Patreon is a membership platform for artists and creators to get paid by their most loyal fans. What I mean by that is artists and creators can use Patreon to engage with their audience on a monthly, recurring basis. They establish a membership fee with those fans by offering them something exclusive and unique as part of that membership campaign. Today, we have about 70,000 creators on the platform, processing about 150 million payments a year. To date, we’ve processed about 300 million payments back to creators. So it’s pretty exciting.
Thomas: It’s very exciting, especially when you consider 150 million a year and 300 million total. That means the growth curve is up and to the right quite a bit.
How many new creators are joining the platform on a given week?
Bremner: We’re adding hundreds of creators per week. We have a lot of folks who join the platform just to test it out. But we also have many who join and see significant outcomes because they have a very established fan base. Patreon is really for folks who have an established fan base. They’re simply converting their most loyal audience into paying subscribers.
Thomas: If no one knows who you are, Patreon is not going to help very much.
Bremner: We have an internal term that says we’re not for the “zero to fan” problem, we’re for the “fan to member” problem.
Thomas: I’ve noticed that many people are surprised by how much their most loyal fans are willing to give. There’s a curve, and at the top are a few fans who would happily give you hundreds of dollars a month, sometimes without even wanting the rewards. That’s the big surprise. You put together these amazing perks, yet some fans never even send you their mailing address. I’ve heard creators say, “Yeah, I reached out, and they replied, but they didn’t care about the rewards. They just wanted to support me.”
Creators who aren’t using something like Patreon are leaving money on the table. If you’re an author just selling books, your most passionate fan and your most casual fan both pay the same $10. But that passionate fan wants more. They want a deeper connection with you, so you just have to give them the opportunity.
Bremner: There are probably two motivations for a patron to sign up. One is a support motivation. Patrons really love what you do and want to continue supporting your craft so you can make it a sustainable lifestyle. The other side of the coin is a benefits-oriented patron. Patrons sign up because of the exclusive benefits they get for being a member. Interestingly, these motivations merge over time. We’ve seen that folks who sign up as support-oriented patrons tend to migrate toward being more benefits-oriented, and those who sign up for extra episodes or exclusive merchandise begin to feel great about supporting creators they love.
The average patron spends about $12 on the platform, which is more than a typical subscription to a music or video service. Some creators offer benefit tiers in the thousands of dollars and have patrons converting at that rate.
Thomas: It’s remarkable. You spend $10 for Spotify, and it’s split among tens of thousands of songs. Whereas if you’re spending $12 on Patreon, it’s probably split between five or six creators. That’s a much bigger piece of the pie. If I’m an artist on Spotify, any given listener may be giving me a few pennies.