This isn’t actually a rant, or really guided any particular direction at all. I just happened to come across a post on Bluesky that reminded me I have some opinions on Patreon as a service and figured if I’m going to have this space to share my thoughts, I may as well put add my thoughts on Patreon to the list.

For starters, if you’re not familiar with Patreon, a very brief description is that it’s an online platform that allows content creators to solicit support directly from people that consume their content. The main exchange on offer here is that you as a creator get access to a kit specifically designed to help you manage distribution of your content to your audience in exchange for a modest portion of every pledge of support. It’s similar to Ko-fi if you’re familiar with that and probably a few other platforms I’m not aware of; this conversation really applies to any of them but I’m going to look at Patreon specifically since I’m a long time user and am more familiar with their tool and perception.

While I would prefer to embed the thread, the post requires login to view so I guess embeds won’t work, so here’s the relevant portion of the thread I came across that reminded me I wanted to talk about this:

I think we, as a culture, have really done ourselves a disservice by letting Patreon get positioned as a service people pay for.

Patreon isn’t supposed to be about paying for access to certain works. It’s supposed to be about investing in creators so those works can exist.

Someone told me “you really should have more content available for all subscribers, including free subscribers”

And like… why would I do that? Patreon is not a content mill. It exists so that people who want my work in the world can help me stay afloat long enough to do that.

Sure, I share stuff for free, but that’s so people can be invested in me and the type of art I want to create. Not because I owe you free entertainment.

Every time I see creators burning out to meet Patreon quotas, all I can think is “what is this for?” Patreon should be about supporting you.

I burned out on Patreon twice before, so now mine is all about sharing early works & bonuses I would be making anyway.

A symbiotic relationship where people who like what I do can give me a little support and see a little more/get stuff a little early in return. It’s not a store front.

And like, it’s a lot more manageable and fulfilling and it really put into perspective to me why Patreon is usually so impossible.

Unless you’re making $1000s a month (which almost no one is), it shouldn’t be a second job. Most ppl put more hours into Patreon content than they’re paid for!!!

But these people aren’t your “customers”, they’re your patrons, just like art patrons used to fund creative projects way back when.

They should be helping you fund your magnum opus, not paying you chump change for “content” you have to churn out every Tuesday that you otherwise wouldn’t share.

– Emery
Profile: https://bsky.app/profile/mishiiarts.bsky.social
Thread: https://bsky.app/profile/mishiiarts.bsky.social/post/3lc6myvdf322r

I mostly agree with this and the little bit I’d put differently is such a technicality, I wouldn’t bother bringing it up if this were anything other than an unorganized list of thoughts related to Patreon.

Keep in mind that my viewpoint on the platform is that of a supporter; I’ve supported numerous content creators over the years via Patreon and it’s money I’m more than happy to spend. I would rather throw money at small time content creators doing what they love or serving niche causes that I find compelling than subscribe to some big platform where they offer you a service that’s subpar compared against what they advertised and then they start serving ads at the same time they increase the price because they can’t just have some of the money, they want all of the money. Emery is a creator on the platform, so while our viewpoints are different, I have also witnessed some of the referenced behaviors and it’s tough to watch, so let’s break some of that down.

I think the first bone I have to pick is that there’s actually no “correct” way to run a Patreon. The tools are geared towards certain methods of management, sure, but what I mean is that a Patreon or equivalent platform at its core is a way for a content creator to directly connect to their audience, and how that relationship works should be something established by the creator. As a content creator, you should set up the space how you see fit in line with your goals and objectives, with clearly defined boundaries, and with some way to convey expectations to potential supporters. This is where that technicality I mentioned disagreeing with Emery comes up; in my opinion, if you as a creator want to operate Patreon as a store front, where your supporters are subscribing for monthly content, that is your choice, you should be allowed to run the platform in that manner. I’d go so far as suggesting that it is your right to even omit using the communication tools Patreon has on offer in favor of treating the site explicitly as a store front, so long as you convey that expectation and those boundaries to your audience. Conversely, I think it’s weird as a supporter to not only expect this to be the singular manner in which content creators should leverage the site, but complain about there not being enough content from any given creator.

Just like with Emery, I’ve seen a fair share of content creators get burned out trying to create content on a consistent cadence or put out work they didn’t feel put their best foot forwards just to keep up whatever promises they made about how much content they would create and I always want to just jump in somewhere and say “I’m here to support you making the content you want to make, not for the content you make”. I don’t really know where it came from, but the prevalent mindset on the platform seems to be that you need to create content on some sort of schedule to meet a need, and I think that’s fundamentally flawed. It is true that there are some people that benefit with a kind of time limit, self-imposed or otherwise, and if that’s how you work, creating those requirements and working within them, then excellent, keep up with that setup, but not everybody is built like that, or I’d even argue most people can’t be creative on a schedule and a deadline harms creativity more than inspires it. I’m sure the “content on a monthly schedule” idea is planted by the fact the platform charges supporters once a month, but it’s weird to me that at least most people I’ve supported haven’t looked at that mechanism and said “how about I set my own rules”.

I guess if you take anything away from this section, I want to stress how important it is to both set expectations and understand that some portion of your audience really is there to just support you no matter how much or little is created. To the first part, if you are a content creator that doesn’t make stuff on a regular cadence, you can always notify people if there aren’t going to be rewards and ask them to unsubscribe if they want that exchange, you can make it clear in the information presented to people looking to become a supporter that you don’t create content monthly, or you could even pause charges in months where you don’t create anything (I disagree with the method, but it is an option); as long as that expectation is set and preferably documented somewhere, there’s little reason for conflict (some people will complain of course, but that’s them putting their expectations to produce content for them on you rather than supporting you so you can commit to your art and creativity or subscribing to whatever rules of engagement you set up; that’s not a healthy relationship).

Now, it’s taken me forever to figure out how to say this next part because there are so many ways you can interact with Patreon to create and distribute content and they all come with their own baggage, so I’ve decided to start with what’s probably the most common approach, at least from the creators I follow.

A lot of what I see (that really probably in part creates the mindset of delivering content on a regular cadence) is either content creators using the model of getting paid per creation or setting a standard number of creations per month and pricing their tiers off that expected output. Both of these models work effectively the same way in terms of this current conversation; they create the expectation (or requirement) that content will be produced with a regular cadence. These approaches more or less directly tie your creative output to your compensation and will mentally replace a standard 9-5 job for most people, but as Emery pointed out, most people don’t make enough money to justify treating something like Patreon as a second job. If you’re a creator and you rely on Patreon to help meet your monthly financial obligations, then you’re required to execute that creativity on a schedule; it’s not an option because the model and expectations set have created this dependency.

As I noted before, that can work for those people that require deadlines to execute their creativity, and that’s fine and should be an option, but I would personally argue that this doesn’t actually work for most people. If you’re working a normal job and doing content creation on the side, you may have work get in the way of those times you’d normally be creative or maybe work just regularly tires you out and a lot of time you would like to be creative is spent recovering, or maybe you have issues with your family/friends or other things in life that just get in the way. If you’re a single person being creative but have the pressures of a Patreon with a normal delivery cadence, anything and I mean anything that disrupts your time that would otherwise be spent creating content becomes a liability. That one night out with your friends? Hours you could have been working on that project. Pet gets sick and needs to go to the vet? Money flushed down the drain because you have the vet, bills, and then you need to watch them as they recover (in addition to a little being that’s probably an important member of your family being sick). It’s pressure that most people don’t need in addition to everything else life will throw at you. If you’re part of an organization that uses Patreon for funding, then you have a team you can lean on to deliver in those turbulent times, but as an individual that’s more often than not just another weight hanging around at pretty much all times.

Often times creators’ solution to not delivering the goods on time is simply to not charge people. If your model as a creator is that people subscribed in that certain month get the reward and it’s not available for others, then fair enough; in that case the compensation is directly tied to specific creations. More often though what I see is an artist that has years of content that’s readily available because it’s posted directly to the Patreon feed, which means that monthly (or per creation) contribution isn’t actually tied to that single creation. I do have a specific example here of Jonny Atma who runs GaMetal. He’s talked about his lament of Patreon doing away with the per creation model; it’s clear that it’s a model that works well for him and his situation. That said, Jonny actually maintains a website where you can access all of his previous content for free in addition to a lot of it being available for download on Patreon itself. This creates a situation where the amount of money contributed every month is not directly tied to creations, and even if we restrict this scenario to Patreon itself, for the low, low price of $1 once, people can gain access to the probably hundreds of remixes that I supported over the years at a cost of around $3 each. Now, if we want to look at this as a pay per creation type of equity, this equation is in no way fair because their dollar can, at any point, acquire what I put hundreds into over years, and that is how people do treat Patreon. But if we look at Patreon as a platform to support creativity, that $1 is more power that Jonny has at his disposal to make sure his needs are met so he can better focus on creating more music to share; that $1 is just as important as my contributions over the years because it’s more capital to stabilize his life and allow him to empower his creativity, and that’s really how I think we should look at Patreon (and it’s also how Jonny tries to treat people that support him, encouraging them to stop supporting him if their financial conditions deteriorate instead of treating them like wallets that should fork out money).

Every time I see a creator I follow that has their entire creation history up on their Patreon stop payment because they didn’t product anything for that month, it stings a little bit because I am not there for an exchange of goods for money; I’m there to support something I saw interesting and if you didn’t make a thing that month? So be it. I can decide when I should withdraw my contributions on my own, and if you’re going to have years of art available for some cheap entry fee, I’ll probably be quite willing to wait out the droughts for new content; god knows the previous volume more than justifies it most of the time.

An ideal Patreon to me as a supporter has a monthly model so I can contribute a stable amount every month that’s easy to budget around, has all prior rewards available for those tiers in the past, and essentially allows me to treat the page as an advertisement for why I should support the creator moving forwards and a tip jar to keep funneling them money every month to support their creativity. I don’t want this sword hanging over their head that keeps them producing content just to make content; I think having that past rewards available to new supporters on the page serves both as a demonstration of a consistent work ethic and a presentation of progress over the years (and is a bonus to people for choosing to support you); I think that breaks should be a normal accepted part of the creative process and having down time during which I still pay you is fine. And, of course, this is all ideal; there will be people that abuse the system paying that $5 once to get 4 years of content (I’d argue that behavior demonstrates that those people view your work as a product and not an ongoing endeavor and really you’re the one getting the good end of the deal because they are probably the type to simply pirate your content if it were more convenient), there’s going to be people that drop support the moment it’s clear they won’t be getting that monthly reward, and there will always be a contingency of people complaining no matter which route you take because you didn’t tailor your setup to their specific sensibilities. There’s no “winning”, there are definitely models that will appeal to a general audience better (and if you’re comfortable playing that game, you should take that route if you desire), but what I’m getting at with all of this is that you should do what is best for you, not what “everybody else” does.

As an addendum or footnote to this whole argument, I do think another problem that contributes to this idea that Patreon should be a transaction instead of support is that people don’t like the idea of “getting money for nothing”. But say going back to Jonny up there, he has created music that has kept me entertained for endless hours; if I’m willing to subscribe to a service like Spotify for music because it keeps me entertained even if I listen to the same old playlist a million times, maybe I’d also be willing to throw some money at an artist every month for access to that back catalog and the hope that some day, there will be more. It’s not really a stretch to mentally put these two things in the same category of spending for me as a consumer with a little abstraction and I believe the different mentality between the two comes from the fact that Spotify is an application run by a company (that you as a consumer have a nebulous relationship with at best) and Jonny Atma is a dude that you can actually go and have a conversation with. We value the two differently and as an individual, not wanting to take money for the service can probably be summarized as wanting to respect a more personal relationship, but involving money doesn’t have to have this weird connotation or value attached to it. Me giving you money for something you have on offer doesn’t grant me a license to act however I desire in the same manner that if I go to a gas station and buy a candy bar, it doesn’t justify going around and destroying their stands and destroying their inventory; they can and will refuse to allow me on their premises despite the fact I gave them money. If you’re a content creator, establish your boundaries and don’t let money change them because god knows the business up the street won’t and you shouldn’t either. That money isn’t being exchanged to gain some level of power over you as a creator; quite the contrary, I see some value in making this investment, be it for myself or for others, and that compensation is either for access to that value or to help lay the path to create that value. In either case, it’s a value proposition supporters make that you’re not party to and the default expectation shouldn’t be “I took this money so now I need to provide value”. If you want to know that value proposition, you can ask, but it’s deeply personal and you’re not going to be able to appeal to all the various sensibilities of a large enough audience.

If you read all this, thank you, I think, or I’m sorry. I don’t know which at this point; hopefully something useful came to you out of all of this. I normally try to provide answers or possible paths, but the journey of a content creator is so wildly varied that really only overly broad statements that are too broad to be useful can apply universally, so all you get is a complaint and a whole bunch of facets. To summarize the mess above, we treat Patreon and similar sites more like a storefront for content instead of the original promise of a direct way to support creators and I personally find that weird and have now made that your problem.