Welcome Creators
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DESCRIPTION It is time to give you a rundown of the single greatest resource that you have today as a creator, Patreon. To start we’ll take you on a little tour of the personal Patreon page of established creator, Peter Hollens. Peter shares his insights on what has worked for him plus tips & tricks for optimizing your page. WELCOME CREATORS FIND SOMETHING YOU LOVE WITH ALL YOUR HEART “AND PUT IN THE WORK. -Peter Hollens ABOUT PETER CAREER ACHIEVEMENTS Peter Hollens is an American Hollens has released over 170 Hollens consults many of his entrepreneur, educator, pop digital singles and eight studio peers and advises companies singer and producer best known albums and continues to release including Patreon, Loudr, Tubular for his work on YouTube as an new music every other week. and is on the YouTube creator a cappella cover artist. With 2 His latest album, Legendary Folk advisory board. He’s frequently million subscribers, his videos Songs, hit #1 on two Billboard invited to speak for organizations have reached over a half of a Charts. He performs in a variety such as these and met with the billion views on FaceBook and of different genres; Disney, U.S. Congress last year to promote YouTube since 2011. Peter is folk, gaming songs, pop, and music education. In 2015, he was extremely passionate about everything in between. Hollens the key commencement speaker teaching others how to make a has collaborated and performed at the University of Oregon’s living online, living their own with several awardwinning artists graduation ceremony. He made passion. He is married to artist including David Archuleta, Brian his Broadway debut in December Evynne Hollens. Wilson, Jason Mraz, Hunter of 2018. Hayes, Gladys Knight, Lindsey Stirling, George Watsky, Jackie Evancho, and ThePianoGuys. BUILDING YOUR PAGE module 01 DESCRIPTION NOTES It is time to give you a rundown of the single greatest resource that you have today as a creator, Patreon. To start we’ll take you on a little tour of the personal Patreon page of established creator, Peter Hollens. Peter shares his insights on what has worked for him plus tips & tricks for optimizing your page. PETER’S PATREON PAGE TOUR The whole goal of your Patreon page is to welcome in a community of people and make it clear to them how important and necessary their support is to your success. Explain how Patreon works, be consistent in branding and be authentic in how you engage with your supporters. Patreon Page Overview • Your Header should be sized 1600 x 400 pixels. It clearly sets the tone for your brand and what kind of content you create. • Stats: This is where the number of your patrons and your total incoming support live. You can choose whether to make this a per month vs. per creation basis. How much you make can be private but you always have to show the number of Patrons you have. • Profile Picture: Choose a high quality photo. Peter chooses a close up picture of his face so that he is easily recognizable to people who are trying to search for him. • Milestone Goals: Where your current and past milestone goals are displayed. For Peter’s first time hitting a milestone it was for 750 patrons and he gave everyone a free song download. • About Me: Make sure to tell people exactly what they need to know about you in a short digestible paragraph. • Where the Money Goes: It is always good to explain to people where their support is going and how it helps your creations. • Support Tiers: Peter started off with 3 tiers and now has several ranging in from $1 to $750. Always remember to keep your reward tiers doable. • Common Questions: Take the most frequently asked questions by supporters and throw them on your page or see what other creators are doing and copy their own questions. 1 NOTES HOW TO SET UP YOUR PATREON PAGE • Once you have created your account login and name, make sure to pick the name that is synonymous across all of your social media. • Next, you need to decide which category best suits you. If none of the categories fit perfectly or if your work kind of melts across multiple categories, just choose the one that best describes what you create. • The same rules apply to choosing a custom URL. It’s not just about choosing something that you want, but making sure to pick the brand name that people know and associate you by. • Your cover photo, creator photo and description have the same goals: • How to easily allow someone who loves you to come to this page. • Understand what it is. • Know how to support you. • Tell your story as passionately and concisely as humanly possible. • Your goal isn’t to sound needy but to tell them the truth. Tell them that with their help you can create something amazing. Tell them your story and what you want to accomplish with them. • If you don’t make this real and if you don’t have that authentic conversation then you won’t be as successful on Patreon as you could be. I would recommend before finalizing, that you go up to the top E right corner of Patreon and click the list icon, click on “Explore Creators”, and see what other creators in your category are doing. Get ideas and make them your own. Language to avoid Language to highlight • Support • Community • I need this! • Join this journey • Focusing on the money • Access to attention & rewards • When you’re filling out your thank you page, shower your new patron with a lot of love, be real, and be vulnerable. This is a great opportunity to welcome your new patron to your community. Remember that your first impression is huge. 2 NOTES • When setting up your payment preferences, first and foremost you need to decide whether you are going to charge on a per creation basis or per month basis. • Something to note is that this is the most difficult thing to change. Once you set this, you pretty much have to stick with it. • For one, Patreon itself recommends that if you are releasing 4 or more pieces of “funded content” a month, you should choose to charge monthly. • 80% of Patreon creators are running a monthly campaign. CREATING YOUR PITCH VIDEO Data shows that Creators who have a video, welcoming possible patrons to the page, do 70-80% better than those who do not. Which means, if you don’t have a video, you are doing this wrong. • There are several elements to putting together a creator video that converts: • Assume the viewer knows who you are and what you do. • The majority of people coming to your Patreon are there because they already know and love your work. • The best way to make a concise video is to stick to a script or bullet points and practice! • When filming your Patreon video, show your face! Be close to the camera. Look directly into the lens! Speaking into the lens is more intimate, it’s as though you are looking directly into the eyes of the person watching. • Make sure that you are well lit, if you don’t have a proper lighting setup, do your video facing a window so that the natural light brightens your shot. • Briefly walk them around the site and share your vision. Here’s where you can give a sneak peek into what exclusive content they get access to once they become your patron. • Patreon recommends that you keep the length of your video short and sweet— data shows that 5% of viewers will stop watching your video after one minute and 60% of viewers will stop after two. But if you are moved to make it longer and the passion and motivation is there to make it four minutes by all means go for it. 3 BENEFIT SYSTEM NOTES • Patreon has launched some new initiatives to help provide a tremendous amount of value with your rewards while reducing the effort of fulfilling those benefits: Lens Exclusive, Wordpress integration, and a merchandise integration. How to set up tiers • The most impactful and most successful benefits across Patreon are: • Exclusive content • Early access • Access to the patron-only feed • Bonuses and exclusive content • Digital downloads • Physical goods • Content suggestions • Public recognition • Livestreams • Q&A sessions • Being able to provide input during the creative process. • You need to create rewards that are incredibly valuable but easy to fulfill from a time perspective — are you able to do them with 4 people or 4000? • Only launch with a few rewards so you can add more later. Better yet, get your current patrons involved to craft those rewards. • As you grow on Patreon, you need to ask them what other type of rewards they might like, this creates a feeling of ownership, while at the same time providing an organic way to up-sell them to provide more financial support back to you. What to watch out for • If you launch with 8 tiers and have to start taking reward tiers down after you’ve already launched you create a much bigger problem for yourself and endanger relationships with patrons who have pledged to a level that you can no longer fulfill. For example, a no brainer level of support that I love to start at, because it’s incredibly easy to fulfill week in and week out, is including people’s names at the end of each video. It gives you the opportunity to publicly and organically thank people for supporting you at that reward tier in the credits of your videos.