If you've been thinking about using patreon for your creative business watch this video first,
I'm going to be sharing with you my thoughts about using patreon why
it's probably going to be a huge time waster
and why it may not be the best idea for you.
Hi, my name is Mei. And I help makers artists
and designers make a consistent income from selling their handmade products online.
So before I dive in I need to preface this video by saying that I
have no experience selling on patreon,
but I do have 14 years of experience selling online
and I've run very similar business model to patreon in the past for several different projects.
So if you've already decided that you want to sell on patreon
and you want to step by step video on how to do that and how To make the most out of it.
This is not the video for you. Okay,
but if you're wondering if patreon is worth your time
and is something that you can make a living from
or at least some reasonable amount of income from then keep watching
so patreon at the core of it is basically a membership based
model some examples of recurring membership
based business models that you're probably already familiar with are things like Netflix magazine
subscriptions your gym membership subscription boxes like Like fabfitfun,
which is a subscription box that includes products like beauty products skin care accessories
and other kinds of wellness products.
There are thousands of different kinds of subscription boxes out
there for every different kind of Niche and Market.
It's recurring income, which I know is a huge appeal
for people thinking about starting on patreon as creatives.
I know that trying to monetize your creativity and your skills is a roller coaster and so creating.
Assistant streams of income is super important
for us and it is a huge perk to have income that you know,
you can predict in the future
because no one likes to be left wondering when their next meal is going to come in,
right? However, despite patreons inherent appeal patreon
or basically any stream of income that gives you recurring sales.
There are also some major drawbacks that I want you to be aware off first
before you invest your time into building that out.
The first major drawback is subscription products are the first expense that people probably cut
when they're looking to lower monthly expenses.
The psychology of this is pretty interesting,
but it's worth mentioning
because it's not intuitive
even though a person's monthly expenses might include some larger one time expenses
psychologically people are more likely to decide to stop expenses that are recurring the
logic is that they could save more money over the long term.
Even though it is a much smaller cost one thing also worth mentioning is
that recurring income is not necessarily the same
thing as a payment plan.
It can have the same effect of giving you consistent income.
However, a payment plan has a fixed ending where you're just paying smaller
chunks over time towards the total sum of a larger purchase.
Whereas recurring income has no real end one inherent problem of subscriptions
and memberships like patreon
and signing up for things like Netflix
or Subscription boxes for makeup
or fashion is that these things are usually not necessary for your day-to-day life.
Right people really aren't relying on these things for survival.
But what they do is give you entertainment comfort and some fun in your life.
And I think that is a large reason why
when people are looking to cut down on monthly expenses
and do budgeting that these recurring expenses are usually the first to go unless of course,
you can justify your monthly.
As being something that people will really miss out on if they cancel it.
So in my examples before people are probably less likely to want to cancel your Netflix subscription
because it's such a major part of people's lives,
especially since most people spend a lot of their time watching
TV and they're more likely to cancel a makeup subscription box.
I used to subscribe to one of those makeup subscription boxes where every
month I would get a sample size of random makeup products
and unfortunately a lot of it went away.
Waste because I couldn't use them fast enough
or some of the products just weren't relevant to me or suitable for me.
So you can bet my time with this subscription box was very short-lived.
That's another thing too with membership models. Is that whatever it is,
you're selling an exchange for people's monthly fee to you.
You are required to create some sort of product
or service or content for the other person to consume
and because you're most likely only creating one thing every month.
It's likely you can Not make every subscriber happy.
There are going to be some pieces of content or product that you create.
That isn't going to be a good fit for a small percentage of your audience.
So this is drawback number two,
and that is creating retention strategies to encourage your
patreon supporters to State on with you longer
and not cancel you now have the extra worry of needing to keep your
audience happy with whatever content you're giving them.
You have to get creative and create some strategies for keeping people on first.
Long as possible. This unfortunately is something most people don't even get right.
There are so many big puzzle pieces.
You have to worry about when it comes to membership based models like patreon number one.
You have to think about what it is you're selling
whether that's private videos that only your patreon subscribers get access
to or its exclusive services or products or a private Community.
I mean this in itself sets you up
for either success or failure if you get this part wrong right number two,
you have to also worry about Ringer patreon base.
How do you get new subscribers
and new members you have to do marketing and promotion in order to do that.
Number three. You also now have to worry about retention which is how to keep the people.
You've already got staying with you for as long as possible.
Most people only think about number one
and two and they completely forget
or ignore or just are not aware that number three is also equally
as important at creative Hive I used to also run a membership
for $49 a month you get access to some courses private community and a bunch of other stuff.
I had to content and the product and I also was able to get about 200 people to join.
However for every few people that would join my membership for the month.
I would also lose some people who cancel
so with this continuous ebb
and flow of people joining
and people leaving it felt so difficult to get past that 200 people to join.
This was also the same. Experience
I had when I first launched my subscription product the necklace of the month club at tiny hands.
I had 100 people join my subscription
when I first launched it but I struggled to grow it past those 100 people for a whole year.
This in itself was not a terrible
thing because you know who turned away potentially 5000 dollars every month,
right? However, this is where drawback number three comes into play
when combined with drawback number two,
which makes this membership model quite difficult to pull off.
Only drawback number three is with most membership models.
You are required to turn into a content creator.
I don't know about you, but I don't like to live my life being
Tethered to anything I if I can help it
and I'm not saying that I don't like having responsibilities.
It's just that I don't like to needing to be consistent about something in my business.
So if you've watched any of my other videos or if you've been following me for sometime,
you know that a big part of my philosophy
when running my businesses To keep a lot of it automated as much as possible.
Now when you're running a patreon power business or any other sort of membership business model,
you need to constantly be giving your subscribers some sort of content
or product or service and I've always believed that
unless you are some sort of YouTuber
or blogger where you're already familiar or comfortable with making content consistently.
If you are a physical product maker first,
like say you make jewelry or sculptors or hand-sewn accessories.
You're most likely Klee not already a content creator being a content creator takes a long time
and it's a lot of time spent making something that you don't directly get paid
for like with your products.
And the icing on top is you have to create content consistently
and frequently in order to be a good content creator because you know,
no one likes a blogger who only blogs once every two months,
right? So your content has to be good.
And in order for it to be good. You have to spend a lot of time doing it
and you also have to do it often.
Which means most of your time then gets sucked into creating content and not into making products.
Did you know that for every one of these YouTube videos that I make for you?
We invest anywhere between 5 to 10 hours per video that
includes my time planning the video thinking about
what to say recording the video
and then my video editor takes hours to edit the video
and then we have to optimize the video giving it descriptions and keywords.
And then we have to create all sorts of promotional Graphics to
help promote this video on other channels.
Tools like Facebook and Instagram
and on our blog and on our newsletter
and I publish two videos a week that's easily 20 hours per week.
And I'm not monetizing any of these videos like you don't see any ads on these videos,
right? So do you or can you afford to have 20 hours a week that you set
aside to just create free videos like this.
I personally wouldn't recommend becoming a content creator if you are a hand maker
first and you want to sell your finished physical.
It's online. I think that is a better way of making an income than becoming a content creator
and then there's drawback number four,
which I touched on a little bit in number three.
So you have to create exclusive content
for your patreon subscribers that the regular public don't get to see right,
but in order to promote your patreon in the first place,
you have to prove to the general public that you are an artist worth paying a monthly
fee for and the best way to do that and how I've seen everyone who is successful.
With patreon is primarily with producing a lot of great free content first.
The people that we know do well on patreon
and that are making fortify figures every month our content creators who already have a super large
following online some of your favorite YouTubers that are
doing patreon probably have upwards of tens
of not hundreds of thousands of followers on YouTube already.
Don't forget that did not happen overnight and it took them years to get to that point.
So doing well with patreon. Fires due to invest a ton of your time every month
and it's not something that you can easily automate in the future.
You are basically stuck with it. And it becomes an obligation.
You have to fulfill in order to keep your customers happy
and also you probably have to already have a very large audience in order
for it to give you any meaningful amount of income.
So if you're just starting out, I wouldn't recommend a membership based model
for you because the Dynamics just don't work out.
It's a lot of work up front and consistently every month.
For initially just not a lot of money. We all have a limited number of resources every date,
right? So, I believe it's very important to think wisely about where you spend those resources
and that we should all strive to invest your resources
and things that are going to pay you the most amount for your time.
This is also called the 80/20 rule that I like to talk about
and that my assailant a business system course is based off of I personally
don't want to do things that is going to waste my
time or that is going to be very high f Art
and low return Patron is also just generally not a great way to
make a living from your creative skill,
whatever that may be maybe you're an artist or a designer.
I have seen a lot more money flowing into business models where you are selling a
physical product from the customers perspective that is also a much greater value to
them than just receiving exclusive monthly videos.
I mean it all depends on what you're selling and what your content is,
but if you're looking for a way to make money online you're going to Have faster
and more success from turning your skills into a finished product that people can
buy even if you're an educator,
for example, like if you teach weaving I'm not saying you
necessarily have to sell the finished weavings
as wall decor.
Although that would be very lucrative
and a lot of people will definitely
buy those but as a teacher you could also sell one of courses that people pay a one-time fee
for in addition to selling kits for weeding projects.
It's a lot more clean-cut of a Models do it that way then to run a membership
or a subscription-based business model having said that a membership model does make more
sense for an educator than it would for a physical product maker.
If you do feel like you really want to have the same Purpose with patreon
where you're getting recurring income every month.
There are other ways you can do that without using patreon
because let's not forget that if you sign up with patreon,
they do take anywhere from five to twelve percent commission from your sales on top of credit.
Card transaction fees. Yes,
there is definitely value
and having a platform that does all the techie stuff
for you already so you don't have to worry about it,
but you can virtually do the same thing on your own website like on Shopify or WordPress.
You could even go really simple
and have PayPal subscribe buttons on a static WordPress page
and you could host a private community in a private Facebook group.
I'm not necessarily saying that that is the better way to do it than patreon,
but I just want to impart on you that patreon is not the only solution out there
for creating recurring income.
And if this is truly something you want to explore definitely do your homework
and research first running a membership based business model
whether or not you're using patreon is a lot of work that most people are just not prepared
for we get sucked into the Allure the of recurring income
and the stability that In size
but no one really tells us how hard it is to actually pull it off successfully.
A lot of time goes into creating consistent
income and there are a lot of better ways to do it than with a membership.
Obviously if you already have a really large
or even a small but very engaged following then perhaps Patron would be a quick success for you.
But if you're just getting established
and you're just getting started I highly recommend you hold off on doing anything membership-based
until after your business is more established.
