- In my experience, one of
the most difficult things
about Patreon is getting out of a slump.
Some people's slump is
zero dollars a month,
and they never get any traction.
They never get any additional Patrons,
while others have a slump
that's something more like
three or four hundred dollars a month.
I was stuck at three or four
hundred dollars for a long time
until I figured out a great
trick that I'm going to share
with you that doubled and even
tripled my amount of Patrons.
That's coming up next.
I'm digital artist Aaron Rutten,
and my channel specializes
in helping artists like you
be more successful at what you do.
So let's go ahead and talk
about how to increase your
Patrons on Patreon.
So here's a chart showing
my pledge growth on Patreon.
We want to take a look at
January 2016 and January 2017,
and what's happened in
between those two dates.
You can see this plateauing
going on right about here,
and this actually goes way,
way back for quite awhile.
I really wasn't getting
a whole lot of growth or
whole lot of traction,
but right around here,
right around August 2016,
you can see that all of a
sudden it's starting to go up
and up and up and up, and it's
just going to keep going up.
So you can see I went from
about $427 a month to $1354
a month on Patreon.
That's about three X growth.
And if we continue on from 2016 to 2017,
there's about two X growth.
So what is it that happened
right around here in August 2016
to cause that growth to happen,
and what can you do to
hopefully have a similar result
on your Patreon?
Now I have a bunch of
tips here that you can use
that I've categorized,
but first let me start
with the most obvious one.
You have to offer
something to your Patreons.
There's a lot of Patreon
creators out there that are like,
oh, hi, I'm Aaron Rutten.
I make art and if you give me money,
I'm not going to give you anything,
I'm not going to do anything differently,
I'm just going to keep
on doin' what I'm doin'.
So, cool, give me a dollar.
Yeah, right, that's not going to happen.
No one's going to give you anything.
The overall premise of
Patreon is that if somebody's
going to give you money,
you're going to give
them something in return
or do something.
There has to be a reason for it.
And so a lot of those channels
that are just plateauing
and just stuck at zero
dollars a month or $1 a month,
it's because they're not offering
anything to their Patrons.
You don't have to offer
commissions or anything that's
going to take up a lot of
your time or cost you money.
You can offer things that
you're already creating,
but you have to at least
mention that you're going to
give somebody something
to show your appreciation
for their support.
So I would start there.
If you're not doing that,
definitely think about
stuff that you can give away.
If you want some ideas for rewards,
just go to my Patreon at
Patreon.com/AaronRutten
and look at some of the
stuff that I'm giving away.
Check out some other Patreon creators
and see what they give away.
There's a lot of great
resources on Patreon as well
that will give you some suggestions.
So moving on to my tips,
the first category is experimentation.
You have to be willing to
experiment and try new things.
If you're just doing the same
thing over and over again,
and you're not getting results,
that's probably why you're
not getting results.
Patreon is not set in stone.
You can offer reward and
then decide that's not
working for you, or nobody likes it,
and then you can change
it to something else.
Just be transparent with
your audience and just
let them know what you're
changing, and that's fine.
In fact, they'd probably
prefer that you change it up
and that you start
offering better rewards.
So for me personally, what
I did is I would just have
an idea for a reward and I'd go, alright,
that's an awesome idea, and I try it,
and if I fell flat on my face,
then I would scrap that idea.
And no one had a problem with
it because no one enjoyed
that reward to begin with.
If there's a reward
that worked really well,
and everybody liked,
obviously I hung onto that,
and I kept doing it, and
I tried to improve it
and make it better.
So you want to keep the rewards that work.
You want to get rid of
the ones that don't.
One of the things that's
been the most helpful for me
is to get feedback from
my Patrons doing polls
and surveys and just asking questions.
Now obviously that's a
little bit harder to do
if you have zero Patrons.
If you're starting a Patreon,
it probably means you
have an audience already.
So maybe poll your current
audience of people who
aren't Patrons yet and ask
them what they might want.
And in the case that
you've started Patreon
and you don't have an audience,
well, you probably got the
cart in front of the horse,
and it's better to go back
and build your audience first
and then start a Patreon later.
Now going back to getting
feedback a little bit,
I even went to the extent
of having like a really
complicated poll that said,
here's all the rewards I offer.
How do you rank these?
Are they valuable to you?
Are they valuable to somebody else?
Are they not valuable?
And really did an in-depth
survey and got a great idea
of what people like and what people don't.
And that's helped me a lot,
because my assumptions about
what people are going to
like are very, very different
from what my Patrons actually enjoy.
And there were a lot of times
where my Patrons suggested
rewards that they would like to see,
and in some cases, those
have been really popular,
and I've gone ahead and
implemented those rewards.
Real time versions of my
video is one such example
where I thought, no one's
going to want to sit through
a four and a half hour
video without any narration,
just watching me paint at real speed.
But guess what?
There's a lot of my Patrons
who actually really do
want to see that, and they
find that very valuable.
So even though I didn't think
that would be a good reward,
other people do.
So it just shows that your
own preconceptions of what
people will like aren't
necessarily always true.
Moving on to the next category.
I call this category identification.
You want to be able to
look at what you have
and what you're already creating
and see if that has value,
or if you can add to that and
create value for your Patrons.
For example, I found
something that I was offering
for free already and I
made it a reward instead.
This is my Corel Painter
workspace and brushes,
and this is really probably
my most popular reward.
I create new brushes each and every month,
and I make them available on my workspace.
I make sure that my
workspace is very organized
and always up to date.
And there's a page on my
website where you can download
each individual brush or the box files
and it just makes it really,
really easy and very organized
to find what you're looking for.
I couldn't afford to do that earlier
without Patreon funding.
So once I tied Patreon funding to that,
it became a great
relationship where the people
who enjoy my brushes and
my workspace get to know
that I'm going to update it every month
and add new brushes every month,
and I get to know that I
can rely on their support
each month to make it so that I have time
to keep that workspace updated.
So if you're wondering what
happened right about here,
that's exactly what happened.
I was giving away my workspace
and getting basically
nothing in return because I
was leaving it up to people
to donate if they wanted to,
and surprise, surprise, most
people never donated anything.
They just download the workspace.
And that's fine because it was free,
but that was my choice to make that free,
and when I had the idea
to stop making it free
and start putting it on Patreon,
then that's when this growth happened.
And so I identified something
that worked really well
that I was misusing.
I was giving it away for free,
and that was just not a good idea.
As soon as I put it on
Patreon, boom, it took off.
Now you might be thinking,
well, you just took something
that you were offering and
you put it behind a pay wall,
and now people are going to hate you.
Your fans are going to turn against you.
Well, no, that's not the case.
My fans didn't turn against
me because I explained it
in a way as I explained it earlier.
Sure, I had a workspace that
I was giving away for free,
but I just updated it
randomly, here and there,
maybe every few months,
and it wasn't any more
than just a workspace file.
You couldn't go and download
each individual brush.
It wasn't categorized
and sorted and polished
and looking all pretty.
There wasn't any consistency to it.
And, as I mentioned earlier,
once people started to
download it as a reward
for pledging to my channel,
it made it a mutually beneficial
relationship that worked.
They'd get an updated workspace,
and I'd be able to update the workspace.
And it just made the whole thing better.
So you have to be able to
clearly show the benefit
for offering something to
Patreons that was formerly free.
You have to improve upon it,
and you have to show why it's better.
So I could simply say
with Patreon support,
I can update the workspace every month
rather than unpredictably.
I can add new brushes each month
and I have more time to
create those brushes.
Those brushes are sorted and
organized on a download page
that's well-organized and
updated each month to include
new content in addition to new brushes.
There's also BOX files and
other types of downloads
that I wasn't previously offering.
You can also have input on
the brushes that I create.
I'll also provide tech support.
So basically I'm offering
much better quality
than what I was able to deliver for free.
And that's not all, there's
also all of the other rewards
that I offer as well.
So it's really not hard
to sell people on that
if you just explain it.
So that essentially explains
what I did to trigger
this trajectory here of
getting more and more Patrons,
but that's not all there is to it.
You have to be able to
sustain that growth.
You have to be able to keep it going.
Otherwise it's going to fizzle
out and you'll plateau again,
or you'll start going back down,
and we don't want to do that.
We want to keep going up.
So we want to build upon our success.
So that brings us to the next category,
which is promotion.
I promoted my new brushes in
brush demo videos on YouTube.
I sent out notifications via
social media for each set
of new brushes each month.
I mentioned my new brushes
in an email newsletter.
I used my brushes in my YouTube tutorials.
I promoted the brushes
in my course content
and descriptions.
I promoted the brushes in
YouTube descriptions and Cards
and End Cards.
I also promoted those
brushes on my Patreon page,
and in the description of
the rewards on Patreon,
and in dedicated Patreon videos,
such as my Group Art Challenge.
So basically, it's all
fine and dandy if I have
those brushes there, and
sure, if you want 'em,
you can go get 'em.
But if I'm not constantly telling
people about those brushes
every single month, or
multiple times a month,
new people aren't going to go
there and become my Patron.
So obviously, there's that
really valuable reward there,
but you need to help people discover that,
and they can go, oh, I
want some of that too.
So after we've got that momentum going
and people are starting
to discover our reward,
and we're starting to get
some traction and some
upward trajectory, then
we want to make sure
that we can sustain that.
So I make sure to post as
consistently as I can each month,
and I make sure to deliver
on all of the promises that
I make as best I can.
You know what, stuff happens.
And if you get sick and you
can't deliver on something,
as long as you're honest
and you explain why,
people are going to understand
that you're a person
just like they're a person,
and don't stress so much
about being inconsistent
if it's just a little bit here and there.
If you're constantly inconsistent,
then you need to look at
your rewards and make sure
that they're actually sustainable.
In addition to posting consistently,
I also make sure to answer comments,
and people can count on
me to reply to something
if they ask me a question,
or if they post or share
their artwork I'll say something about it.
You have to make sure to
engage with your Patrons.
Another way you can keep them engaged,
as I mentioned earlier,
is through the content that
you share through polls or
ask them questions.
And then one of the most important
factors of sustainability
is thinking about what it
is that you can do to keep
people from dropping off
and canceling their pledges.
Obviously, a lot of people
are only going to pledge
for a limited time, and that's awesome.
And I appreciate all of the
support that I've gotten,
regardless of how long it is.
Even if it's just $1 for
one month, that's awesome.
And I don't expect everybody
to pledge to me for the
rest of their lives.
That's just not going to happen.
So there is some turn around that happens.
There's going to be
people who will pledge,
and then they'll stop pledging.
They might pledge again later.
But if there's something
that you can do to kind of
encourage people to continue
pledging rather than just
try it once and decide they don't like it,
then that's going to make a
big difference in sustaining
your Patreon.
One of the things I
found that works the best
is instant gratification.
There's people who will
sign up for Patreon,
and they don't really necessarily see all
of the content there or
get that that has value.
And sometimes people just
want something like a product
that they can download instantly.
And so one of the things
that's helped for me
is to have all these things
like brushes that you
can get instantly and videos
that you can watch instantly.
But also if you have something like a PDF,
or something that people can download.
Maybe it's a course.
Maybe it's a video.
But just something that
you put out there and say
if you pledge to my Patreon,
you're going to get this,
this, and this immediately.
And if you can make those
rewards "evergreen",
that's even better.
And what I mean by
"evergreen" is they're always
going to be useful.
It's not something that's
going to be useful for like
a month and then it won't be
useful anymore after that.
It's something where current
Patrons can enjoy it,
and then if somebody comes
along two or three or four
years later, they can
still enjoy that too.
If you need to update it,
to freshen it up a bit,
you can always do that.
So to give you an idea of what I offer
for my instant downloads,
I have PDFs such as my color
guide for digital painting,
and I even have a free
landscape painting crash course
that Patrons can download
the premium version of.
So once you've figured out
how to sustain your growth,
let's say you're here and
you're continuing along
this trajectory,
then what we want to do is
we want to try to ratchet up
the growth.
We want to try to get that
angle higher and higher
so we're getting more rapid growth.
In order to do that, we
want to refine our channel,
because if what we're doing
is working really well,
if we can make that better,
that should give us more growth.
So one of the things that I've done,
which I feel has been immensely helpful,
is I made it easier to find my rewards
and to use my Patreon through
help videos and tutorials.
There's a landing page that
I created for my website
that has all of my rewards
and it describes all of them,
and it provides links for them.
That way it's super easy
for my Patrons to be able
to access my rewards, and
they don't have to dig around
through the Patreon website,
which can be a little bit
difficult to navigate.
There's been a lot of cases where people
have stopped pledging
because they're not happy
with the way Patreon works,
because they can't even figure
out how to find my rewards.
And even though I feel like
I've made them super obvious,
they're just super obvious to
me, but not to everyone else,
and so the more you can do to
make Patreon easier to follow
and easier to use and the
easier you can make it
for Patrons to find the rewards,
the longer they're going to stick around.
Another thing that I've done,
which I feel has been very helpful,
is I continue to tweak my
rewards to eliminate less
popular offerings and I
put more focus on the ones
that are really driving subscriptions,
such as the brushes that I offer,
and the coupons I offer for my courses,
and the long format, real time videos.
If that's what my Patrons want to see,
then I need to be putting
my time into more of that.
And if there's things that
people really aren't enjoying,
such as the private live
streams I was doing,
and some of the other
things I was offering,
people obviously aren't
using that for a reason
because they just don't find it valuable.
So why dedicate hours of my
time each month to something
that people could care less about.
So do yourself a favor.
Do your Patrons a favor,
and eliminate anything
that's just a useless reward.
It's also important to
never stop experimenting.
Obviously if something is working,
you probably don't want
to mess with it too much.
If you can make it better
without completely wrecking it,
that's awesome, but don't
stop thinking about other
rewards that you can offer
because there might be
other things that are
still just as valuable
that you haven't tried yet.
So, for example, one of
the things that I tried
was to ask people what
they thought about rewards,
and did some different polls,
narrowed down a specific
price that people were
willing to pay for a higher tier.
And I got some information ahead of time,
which was very helpful.
Now what I ended up doing
was creating a reward tier
that allows my Patrons
to sponsor captions.
They pay a little bit extra to
be in this higher reward tier
and that gives me money that
I can use to pay to have
a third party caption my videos.
That makes my videos easy
to follow for everybody.
It allows my videos to be auto-translated
into other languages,
which opens me up to a more
international audience,
and again, it makes the
videos easier to follow
for people who speak a
language other than English.
So it's something that
benefits not only the person
pledging, but it benefits
the entire art community
as a whole.
Now I didn't know when I
created this reward if it was
going to be successful or not.
I had a pretty good idea that
it would probably do well
since I got some feedback
from my Patrons ahead of time.
But I just had to put it out there
and just see what happened,
and right off the bat,
I had one person pledge that
amount and now I'm up to three,
and it's my highest reward tier.
It's allowing me to caption
my videos and that's awesome,
because that's making my
content a lot more accessible.
And those people who are
pledging that amount can feel
good knowing that they're
helping support that.
Alright, so now we've
started to get some growth.
We've sustained that growth,
and we've refined that growth
to continue to grow more rapidly.
But now what do we do?
Do we just kind of kick back
and just let that money come in?
Or do we continue to develop
our strategy and think
two steps ahead of
ourselves into the future,
or try to think about
new rewards to offer,
or ways to make Patreon better?
And so this is the final category of tips,
which is strategizing.
So I can look at my growth
here and I can see that
if I'm here in February,
if I follow that same trajectory,
then I'm probably going to
be around three thousand
a month in August, assuming
that I grow at the same rate.
But I don't want to grow at the same rate.
I want to figure out how I
can double that and I can grow
even faster.
I want this growth here to
look basically like this here.
I want there to be a huge jump.
So I don't want to be content
with the growth that I have now.
It's awesome and it's
great that I have growth,
but if I get stagnant and
I don't keep adding to it,
then there's the potential
that it's going to fizzle out
or plateau again and I don't want that.
I want to continue learning
from these lessons that I've
discovered right around here,
and I want to keep applying
that so I can keep having
more and more of these
events that trigger growth.
So I want to keep an eye on my analytics.
I want to always be one
step ahead of myself
and plan for the future.
And I want to think about what I can do
to drive more subscriptions.
And I think if you take all of
this advice and you apply it
to your Patreon, you're
going to have growth too.
It might be less, it might
be more, it might be equal.
Who knows, but nevertheless,
I think these tips
are going to be very beneficial.
If you found this information helpful,
take a quick second to like this video.
And if you're interested
in more helpful tutorials
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Thanks for watching and
I'll see you next time.
