What's your opinion on Patreon for your channels?

I think Patreon is a pretty awesome idea to be honest. Definitely need a loyal fan base though. I know you said you don't like the idea of it but from watching your latest video I would definitely rate you as someone who would be perfect for a Patreon. You obviously work very hard for what you do and you have people that love what you're doing and are loyal!
 
As much as I personally would want to recommend Patreon, speaking as a part time user of it, ChrisLegend is correct about your needing an extremely loyal fanbase to get any significant pledges, neither of which I have personally, which makes me grateful that I have a mere $6 per paid post at all, which is more than I ever got from YouTube tips (nothing).

There was also a good point addressed in earlier posts about people being turned off by the idea of content creators making money. As disturbed as I am by the problem, it's not completely unjustified: ads are certainly annoying most of the time. When it comes to people who actually need the money, there are plenty of people, including me, who have made the mistake of being so desperate that they plaster their begging for money all over the place before they even get a strong enough following. That being said, the general consensus is a good one: in general, don't bother advertising your Patreon page until you have a huge number of YouTube subscribers, Facebook likes, Twitter followers, etc., preferably on each network.
 
Uncivilized Elk said:
would just do it on the down-low and include it in the channel description and perhaps video description, and as a link on the channel banner, but not have the actual video on my account
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this is the best way to go I think.
I never did go through with it, but now I started doing twitch as well, and found out if I do make it to 100k subs on YT they are likely to partner me, so I can have twitch subscriptions instead. I do drawing requests there so it's something I cam give back. And also I can make some emoticons for it :)
 
Lightsen said:
this is the best way to go I think.
I never did go through with it, but now I started doing twitch as well, and found out if I do make it to 100k subs on YT they are likely to partner me, so I can have twitch subscriptions instead. I do drawing requests there so it's something I cam give back. And also I can make some emoticons for it :)
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Nice! I think for your case getting twitch money/donations from people watching the stream would probably be far superior to Patreon anyway.
 
I think Patreon is perfectly all right and a great way to help creative artists do what they most like doing. Of course it should be done in a very polite and low key manner so as not to annoy anyone if possible. Personally I don't mind Youtubers who do it like that. Of course there are the people who beg or bring it up too often, are too insistent, etc. Which will annoy people. Also I think it should only be done if you have a strong connection with your subscribers and you have quite a few of them.
 
So what do you guys think is a good way to judge how much of your sub base is "dedicated" to your content?

There's definitely Patreon accounts out there where the YT channel (and that's all there is, the person doesn't do additional work of some sort) has only a couple thousand subs, but enough of those subs love the channel for the Patreon account to make a few hundred bucks a month (or sometimes even per video - I've seen a few of those).

Alternatively, I've seen channels that have between 50k to 100k subs, but the associated Patreon account gets them somewhere between $10 to $50.

Tons of variability out there.

As I said, I plan to initiate the YT tip jar at some point (with zero advertising or mention of it) just to see if anybody out there would even be willing to throw some bucks my way out of their own pocket or not. That's going to be my half-baked test.
 
I was thinking about doing Patreon, but I think I need to be much, much more regular in my posting in order to warrant it. I'm thinking when I hit 25k subs I will probably do something along those lines because at that point, it probably will take up a lot of time for me :)
 
XboxDIY said:
I'm thinking when I hit 25k subs I will probably do something along those lines because at that point, it probably will take up a lot of time for me :)
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Depends on how much of those tiered rewards you want to have I think.

Another thing that's highly variable - some people go crazy with how many tiers and rewards they have for backers, and I'm sure that takes up a ton of time, but on the other hand, it can compel people to give you more money.

But I've seen Patreon accounts where there are no tiers at all, outside the $1 needed to simply see and interact with that Patreon's feed. This way that person has none of their time go toward fulfilling their rewards and they can make more content instead, but sometimes it does reduce the amount patrons pledge to you (but check out the Jimquisition Patreon for example, which only has that $1 tier, yet brings in I think over $9k a month through Patreon - so you can still get a lot of dedicated folks supporting you with no rewards).

I'm leaning toward that latter method. I dislike the concept of early video releases, or things completely exclusive to patrons. If anything, I would probably have only 1 or 2 tiers above the $1 tier at most, and they'd be fairly simple (perhaps something dumb like access to doodles I would otherwise never share publicly or something along those lines).

One thing I want to do at some point is start working on a comic, but that has nothing to do with my YT channel, so if I ever set up a Patreon many months from now it's gonna be awkward as hell to try and balance both of those things, haha.
 
With video game music covers, a LOT of people do Patreon, and it seems that this genre is pretty well-suited to it. I haven't done it for a number of reasons (I don't think my quality is quite to the level that I should be charging anyone for anything, plus I don't do the sorts of things that would make sense for an "incentive" structure that I've seen other musicians do.

That all being said, I was a bit surprised to find a musician with fewer subs than I have (this person only had around 400) who had $13 per song committed to him on Patreon. I have no idea if that's just his friends or family, but I thought that was interesting.
 
A common tip I see people throw out is when you start a Patreon, try to get friends and family to contribute to it immediately so people you don't know aren't looking at $0 of pledged money which is apparently de-incentivizing. (Which is a rather s****y thing, but it's probably true.)

So I would be surprised if more than a couple bucks of those $13 wasn't from friends and family.
 
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