SFA 051 – Increasing Your Income with Patreon

We’re doing a deep dive on Patreon for this week’s show. Jo and Lindsay are active users with a subscriber base, and Andrea has used the service in the past.

We had a lot to cover, so grab some popcorn or a dog to walk, and be prepared to settle in for an hour!

Before we jumped into the main topic, Andrea mentioned that she purchased the web version of KingSumo (software for managing giveaways) and much prefers it to the WordPress plug-in. Lindsay shared the results of a recent Chirp deal for her urban fantasy audiobook series starter and believes that Chirp (owned by Bookbub) is actively growing its subscriber base. She sold many more copies than on a fantasy audiobook deal back in December.

Here’s the run-down of what we covered in the show:

• An introduction to Patreon including an overview on the option of whether to charge subscribers per creation or per month.
• Competitor Subscribestar as an alternative option for racier content.
• Patreon vs. selling direct from your website.
• How authors use Patreon to generate income and why it can be an especially good idea for traditionally published authors (example authors on Patreon: Kameron Hurley, Seanan McGuire, and Sharon Lee)
• Why it will likely be your super fans who sign up (and why this matters).
• The power of actually getting the email addresses of the people who buy (you’ll never get this information from Amazon).
• Possible uses for Patreon: using subscribers as a possible test audience/test market for quirky projects, pre-releasing ebooks or audiobooks before making them exclusive somewhere, sharing short fiction that you wouldn’t make much from selling elsewhere, sharing tidbits between releases to keep readers excited, and as a tip jar.
• The importance of not overpromising or giving yourself too many obligations.
• Budgeting your time accordingly.
• Sticking to (mostly) digital rewards, so that you don’t have to spend a lot of time and money on shipping products.
• Using Bookfunnel to deliver your product (this allows you to create download links that expire) to Patreon supporters.
• Considerations as far as what content should go behind the paywall for subscribers only and what should be public.
• The importance of not pressuring subscribers if they leave.
• Why you need to educate your readers when you “pitch” them your Patreon campaign — most of them probably aren’t familiar with the service.

• Jo’s Patreon (active as of August 2020)
• Lindsay’s Patreon (active as of August 2020)

Thank you for listening, and thank you to Joshua Pearson for producing the show