The Patreon Mission Statement is, “Our mission? Oh, nothing short of helping every creator worldwide achieve sustainable income. We’re making this happen by building the best platform for creators to make money, run their creative businesses, and connect with the fans who matter most”.

Introducing Patreon

I’ve heard a bit about Patreon, mainly from the several webcomic artists I follow. (You should check it out; it’s a phenomenal literary genre). Up until recently, I hadn’t given much thought to what Patreon was or who uses it.

The way that Patreon works is that the patrons pay to subscribe to their favourite creators. This subscription gives them sneak peeks, behind-the-scenes information, unique extras, and much more.

Patreon is a way for creators to create entirely freely. The ownership is ultimately the creators, as is the marketing.

If a creator wants to deal with ads, brands or sponsors, that is fine. There are no contracts, so you can create however you like. Patreon takes on the other stuff, so all you have to do is start. They deal with patron questions, declined payments, patron payments, and fraud issues. The only cost is approximately 10%, 5% that goes to Patreon and an average of 5% for transaction fees. The creator keeps 90%. An average patron pays their chosen creator about $7 a month. It doesn’t sound like much, but depending on how many patrons you have, it makes a big difference. Within three years, the number of creators making at least $100 monthly rose from 13 in 2013 to 7,960 in 2016.

As far as the creators themselves, Patreon facilitates creators of all kinds. They have categories for video and film, music, writing, comics and illustrations, podcasts, games, drawing and painting, animation, science, photography, education, crafts and DIY, dance and theatre, writing, teaching, comedy, and even have an everything else category. Pretty much any artist uses Patreon, and that includes cover musicians. It’s a great way to support and connect with your favourite artists directly.

To illustrate, here is an impressive cover artist promoting their Patreon page for Patreon. You may have even seen some of his work on Switching Styles!

Nick Pitera

Give me your thoughts on Patreon in the comments below, and check out Patreon for Switching Styles.