PATREON is a monthly subscription crowdfunding platform which aims to help creators to get paid by their fans to keep publishing their contents.
Unlikely to Kickstarter or IndieGoGo, PATREON campaigns has no expiration date and no mandatory goals to be respected in order to being paid the money you collected, but it works on recurring (monthly) payments by your subscribers, the patrons; moreover, PATREON allows you to deliver your supporters a wide range of contents and rewards, including exclusive access to files and physical contents.
Default PATREON Accounts allow you to have just one $5/month tier with 5% of site share on each sale, but you can upgrade at any time at the only cost of a higher site share; these upgrades will let you customize your tiers and even deliver your loyal patrons exlusive Merchs, and you can revert to your previous plan in any moment. PATREON, howewer, is not a discover platform, which it means the company running the site will make almost nothing to help you being found and funded: all the promotional work to attract patrons is up to you.
PROs
- PayPal accepted
- low payout threshold: $1
- Community indexing of your page
- WORDPRESS plugin
- Discord integration
- Vimeo PRO integration
- itch.io integration
- wide variety of post types
- chance to set up Merchandises for loyal subscribers
CONs
- no Community indexing for your posts
TIPs
- use it to deliver exclusive access to digital contents on a itch.io store
- Merchs are expensive and are delivered after 3 months of active subscription: think well if it is worth use them or if it is better to sell them apart on redbubble (wider selection)
- use the WP Plugin to enhance your PATREON page visibility
- use it with Vimeo PRO (paid upgrade) to give exclusive access to videos