It’s a safe space here, so I feel no shame in saying I failed at Patreon.
I launched my second go of it a few months ago (imposter syndrome made me deactivate my profile within hours of launching my first stab at the thing). I loved the names of my new tiers and thought myself so clever. I kept up with what I promised to deliver, and some community members came through. I was positively giddy when I got an email that someone new had subscribed. It was all so…shiny and new and exciting.
Until it wasn’t. This failure is part of why I’m dedicating more time here on Substack.
I got sick a few times. I began to resent the Patreon because it took precious time away from actually doing the work I was seeking financial support in creating in the first place. Things got busy at my Muggle Job, so I’d stay up late to keep up with delivering the rewards because I didn’t want to disappoint anyone. Even though I tried paring down to all the things I would enjoy doing and were aligned with my preexisting body of work, it was just more work even when I worked under ideal circumstances.
Plenty may say I need to “commit to the grind” or just put in a little more work if I want the reward.” But I’ve decided I don’t care about grinding and that the big needle-movers deserve more of my undivided attention.
It’s giving…disrespectful to myself when I already have so little free time.
And to be clear, none of this is to say I don’t have a mountain of appreciation for those who did subscribe from Day One to now. I’m wise enough to know not all endeavors worth doing are always fun. But whenever I’m struggling to decide if I should or should not keep trucking along, it comes down to two things:
1) Am I enjoying it most of the time?
2) Does the output match the effort?
I’m mixed on the first; the second speaks for itself.
And since I’m always searching for trends and some semblance of evidence or confirmation of shared experience, I went to Google to see if I was alone.
Why do people fail at Patreon?
Why do creators struggle with Patreon?
As fate would have it, I’m not the only one who feels like trying to “make it” on the platform is a losing battle.
If you’re also chronically online, you can probably rattle off either the first time you ever heard of it or the first Patreon you considered supporting.
For me and many others, it was Amanda Fucking Palmer.
She’s among the cohort of artists who changed how many relate to crowdfunding. AFP was the first musician to raise more than a million dollars on Kickstarter in 2012 and is massively successful on Patreon, leading many other independent creators to answer the siren call of Patreon in the hopes that they, too, could find their community.
And instead of slaying, a bunch of us careened straight into the rocks, freezing and teeming with exhaustion and resentment.
If only it were that easy for the vast majority of us.
After my questing and getting a ton of feedback from my base, the problem with Patreon stems from a few things:
Problem 1: Marketing is an Energy Drain
Allow me to paint a portrait of the mind of someone trying to run a halfway decent Patreon:
To amass patrons, you need to tell people about your Patreon. But not too much. And it would be best if you didn’t sound too desperate. That’ll make people feel uncomfortable. Plus, you can’t forget to do it entirely; no one will join. Don’t forget to specifically tell people when you have more than three tiers because most won’t notice you need to toggle to see the higher ticket offers you painstakingly curated. Oh, and you can’t petition your audience to support you in the same way every time because then it’ll just blur into the background. You don’t want your request to join to just become…noise. There’s a big push to post on Instagram, but then IG will hide your content because selling gets buried by the ever-evasive algorithm. Well, how about X? Never mind, who knows when that’ll implode. Facebook?? Oh wait - it’s for Boomers now. Email lists?? People must sign up for them in the first place, and you’re competing with every other CTA in someone’s inbox. Also, I’m in [insert creative industry here]. They never taught me how to market in my liberal arts/fine arts education. FUCK FUCK FUCK.
It’s utterly maddening.
Patreon requires marketing, and many of us are at a loss for what works and what doesn’t. Not strictly out of ignorance, but because the rules keep changing, not year to year but sometimes week to week. We all know it’s integral, but more often than not, it’s just more effort, and those are hours eaten away from your reserves for your actual craft.
Problem 2: Consistency Requires Privilege
What does this mean?
If you’re chronically ill or neurodivergent (or both, like me), you can’t plan for when you’ll be operating at 90% and when you’ll be knocked back to 50%. If your day job is in a demanding industry, the lines between work and personal time may blur. Are you a parent? That living being you’re responsible for runs the show.
Childcare costs money. Access to ideal recording studio conditions costs money. The ability to take paid time away from work to focus on your craft is a cost not everyone can afford.
When you factor in the logistics of Patreon, if you distribute rewards monthly, you have to keep to that schedule. It’s strongly encouraged to maintain consistency to build trust with your audience.
Consistency is a luxury for those of us who are disabled. Consistency requires the free time to meet the demands of your commitments.
I will say that I have some qualitative evidence that taking time away from being consistent doesn’t hinder your work long-term. One of my favorites, Rachel Maksy, communicates when a project series is eating at her mental health or if she cannot upload when she intended. Owning the fact that you are unable to be consistent, need to deviate from your schedule, or are experiencing burnout doesn’t necessarily lose followers the way many of us fear. It can make you closer to your audience by being vulnerable. It makes us more human. I don’t want to project a false narrative that I am well or still able to push through when I am sick or burning out. If part of my work centers on honesty and wellness, I’m not doing anyone any favors if I pretend like I can keep up no matter what. Plus, I’m not acting in alignment with my values either if I do that.
I can’t. I know others can’t. And I know they opt out of Patreon because they get self-defeatist and say it’ll be used against them if they don’t always produce as prescribed on their little timeline. Maybe if we were all only doing our art, but if we’re balancing it all, we can’t keep ignoring the impact of the weight of our worlds on our shoulders when we pick up a paintbrush.
It’s a luxury to shake some of the weight off and still show up anyway.
Problem 3: How Can I Provide Even More Value?
In the spirit of brutal honesty, the vanity metrics further disillusioned me despite my attempts to counter my negative self-talk. I tried to convince myself that if I just trucked along a little longer, more people would show up to the party. But I’ve got to reckon with the reality that my attempts at building a Patreon community never amounted to even my most modest goals.
And so much of it isn’t strictly my fragile human ego getting hurt. A lot of it comes from a valid place when I objectively look at how much effort my incentives required of me.
All of the listicles that detail the foolproof plan for running a respectable Patreon offer some iteration of this advice: do you want people to sign up? Make sure you deliver value.
And to that, I say: what is the thing you’re making if not a thing of value? Isn’t your podcast of value because it informs the masses or makes someone laugh? Isn’t the romantasy you’re already writing of value to those craving a fantastical escape?
Why isn’t the thing itself of value?
I say it does.
My podcast is of value because I meticulously edit and only bring on guests I believe in endorsing and sharing my lived experiences so that maybe others won’t feel so strange and alone. My witchy offers are valuable because I meet so many great humans and we have these deeply spiritual conversations. My writing is of value because I know it does. And I can’t keep spending so much time justifying why others need to care. Indeed, there’s a time and place for marketing, but if you don’t commit to the actual work, you won’t have anything to market.
I can’t send out queries for my work if I have no manuscript to send, and I can’t market new podcast episodes if there’s no new content to edit.
I may give Patreon another go at some point, or I may not. But for now, I’m here. I’m wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe, follow, or share if my messy real-ness resonates with you. Support if you can because the work itself is worth it.
And I’m tired of pretending like it’s not.