To Patreon or not to Patreon

[grabnutzParticipant 994xp 2]

Hi there fellow game developers.

Now a tiny minority may know of me as one of the gentlemen who writes games for the Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare.

However, even you probably don’t know that I also write roleplaying games, other wargames and build terrain. None of which I have monetised.

What I am looking for is advice about whether it is worth building a Patreon page for my non-Ministry work, and how much work is involved.

I’d love to hear from those of you who have, and those who have considered it but not gone forwards with it.

Cheers,

Craig

[limburger 21535xp 0]

Speaking strictly as a consumer I’d have to say : it depends on how frequently you’re going to be updating it, because at its most basic it is a blog with content that can be restricted to paying subscribers. Paying subscribers are going to expect monthly updates at the very minimum.

One thing to be aware of is their pricing, which you probably did look at already :

https://www.patreon.com/product/pricing
It looks like for a 1$/month pricing they take 15% (5% + 10c) …
At 3$/month they take +/- 13% (2,9% + 30c).
To reduce it to 3% you’d need to be asking a lot more of your subscribers per month …

Example 1 : Jim Sterling

https://www.patreon.com/jimquisition

Getting access to his blog/patreon costs 1$/month
Example 2 : Simone Giertz

https://www.patreon.com/simonegiertz

However both are high profile youtubers already with active (free) social media on other platforms like YouTube. And like BoW/OTT both mentioned that the unreliability of YouTube was one of the reasons they looked at a more reliable partner

Jim Sterling did mention in one of his youtube videos that Patreon tried to change its revenue model which would have made the cheap subscriptions next to impossible. I don’t know whether Patreon are going to try that again in the future, but IMHO it may be something worth worrying about. It’s almost as if any new social media platform tends to get really greedy/creator-unfriendly once they achieve a certain level of dominance on-line. It happened to YouTube and Patreon is showing signs of this too.
As such it may advisable to plan for the unexpected end.

[mageParticipant 20595xp 1]

Plenty of youtubers who have sponsored content, and successful channels with regular youtube advertisements, also have a Patreon. Go for it. Your hardcore fans would spring at the opportunity.

[grabnutzParticipant 994xp 0]

Thank you so much for the detailed advice.

It looks like I have some homework to do 🙂

[limburger 21535xp 1]

@grabnutz

“If you build it … they will come”
I think you’ll be surprised at how many people are willing to pay if you give them a reliable option.

And given the horror stories I’ve heard of blocked paypal accounts and the damage that credit card fraud can do to independent developers … I think having a thrid party take care of that part of the equation may be worth the cost (in money and sleepless nights) even if it is ‘only’ a hobby.

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