
Return of Patronage - johndcook
http://news.kynosarges.org/2014/12/06/return-of-patronage/
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adwf
I've been a little surprised at the success of Patreon. I kind of assumed that
it would make for a nice tip for creators, but not much more. Instead there
are a few webcomics that I read, taking $1000's a month (eg. SMBC at
$8700/month on Patreon alone). That's a pretty decent living when you factor
in that they can still do their normal t-shirts, adverts, print books and
general merch on top.

The only question now is how long it takes to build up that kind of audience -
can you can get that many people willing to pay? Quickly enough to succeed?
Will new authors look at the likes of SMBC and assume that they can make a
living, only to realise that their Patreon is barely scraping $50 a month? If
it takes years of investment to make patronage work, they may give up before
they get going.

It might mean that instead of just being a great artist, you have to be a
great promoter too. (Kinda like being a successful academic nowadays also
involves being a successful grant proposal writer.)

Maybe we'll start seeing the rise of patronage agents? People whose entire job
is to manage the promotion of new talent in order to get to a sustainable
patronage level. There already exist companies that provide Kickstarter
services, so perhaps internet talent agents are just the next step.

~~~
lxmorj
Poke through the existing campaigns and I think you'll find even the newer,
smaller audiences are generating meaningful income for the artists. Their
model does a few things extremely well.

It more-or-less removes the pain of paying for the patrons by making
contributions small, automatic, and feel-good. You're a patron! You're
supporting the cool, small artist that you tell your friends about! Your money
is where your mouth is, so to speak.

Just like Kickstarter, the successful tactics "larger" stars like Pomplamoose,
Walk Off The Earth, and SMBC use get co-opted by the little guys. They learn
how to do self-promotion from people who are _like them_.

Direct monetization of fans means phenomenally fewer fans are needed to
support a full-time artist. SMBC is making $8,700 per month, which is $104,000
per year! That's from a group of 3,300 fans. There are professional comedians
who've been on Comedy Central who make less than that, even though their
audience is 10x that size.

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jonnathanson
Patronage is an interesting and potentially great model (ref: the "1000 true
fans" approach), but it's kind of a half-step in the right direction. It is
part of a fuller panoply, but not complete in and of itself. A step further
would be segmentation (and subsequent addressing) of one's audience—be they
patrons, regular customers, or casual viewers/listeners/readers. Create
flexible, multiple ways for people to get to, consume, and pay for your
content. Experiment with different channels, different messaging, different
price points, and _different versions_ of your content for those channels.
Essentially, what you're doing is allowing consumers to segment themselves, by
opting into the types of content (and according price points) that best fit
their needs.

This is different from a classic up-sell strategy. Up-selling is offering
everyone the same baseline, then either encouraging or goading people into
paying for "value-adds." Instead, consider that your audience is heterogeneous
in terms of what it wants, what it likes about you, which aspects of your
content (or you) it values most, and what it considers those aspects to be
worth. One size does not fit all. So sell more than one size.

[Note that this is _not_ an inducement to cheat people. Don't try to pawn off
the exact same content at different price points on different channels. If
you're going to segment-and-address, you need to customize for each segment.
Kickstarter campaign structures, for example, offer a decent framework by
which to do this.]

~~~
egypturnash
I think the clearest sign that Patreon is doing something that's significant
is this: I started a Patreon for my comics _because my fans asked me if I had
one_.

It's grown slowly over the past year; I currently get $91 every time I draw a
page of my comic, and made about $450 last month - with zero effort on my part
beyond putting a few links to it here and there on my site, and talking about
it on Twitter and my blog when I first set it up.

Sure, there are a million ways I could distribute my comics and get money for
them. But every new channel I try to play with is _time I 'm not spending on
the comic_. Maintaining two channels (free on the website, publishing books
via Kickstarter and selling them at various comic conventions) already takes
up a lot of my energy that I'd rather be spending on drawing more pages.

(said comic is [http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/](http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/),
since I always get a few people asking where it is if I don't post a link to
it when I mention it around here.)

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jwomers
As the digital media world continues towards free (journalism first, and more
recently musicians releasing their music for free) we need a new way to reward
or compensate creators.

My startup, Huzza - [http://huzza.io](http://huzza.io) \- is doing just that.
It's an app that lets you tip any song or artist in the world from your phone.
We like to call it pay-as-you-love, and we think it's the future of music.

~~~
hobo_mark
I like that, but how can you send tips as low as 50 cents (as one screenshot
says) without losing it all to the payment processor (and not the musician)?

~~~
jwomers
Thanks! Two ways: 1) The default currency is Bitcoin, so fees are so low we
can achieve this. 2) With both Bitcoin and Credit Cards, we have a topup model
where you topup with, say, $3, and then can send many tips until your balance
runs out. This way we amortize the fees over 6 tips instead of 1

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tedks
The impact of this re-shift towards patronage on culture in the world of the
1% is an exercise left to the reader.

~~~
ticviking
I am under the impression that most of the people making a career in this
market are essentially chasing the long tail rather than providing goods and
services to the %1.

~~~
tedks
This is irrelevant in the 1%'s endgame, where everyone but them is living
either at subsistence or better yet in debt.

Even if you try to go for a long tail by way of say Kickstarter, the people
who buy your top-tiers are going to dominate your focus.

