Patreon Creators, Keep Your Patrons Happy (Without Busting Your Budget)

For folks who don't keep up on my offline doings, I spent the past weekend at Windy Con in Chicago. I saw a bunch of friends I've made over the years, and met a few new folks while I was at it. I sold a few books, and as usual sat on a couple of panels. Perhaps the best-attended panel I was on, though, dealt with crowdfunding, and how you can get your project off the ground. Some folks were experts on Indiegogo and Kickstarter, but some of us were more used to platforms like Patreon. Something I sort of rely on most months, and if you haven't read my previous post Why Patreon is a Lifesaver For Authors (Like Me), I highly recommend checking it out.

Anyway, it was while we were answering questions that an important point came up that I wanted to talk about this week. That point, in short, was that little extras and bonus gifts are what get people to pledge more... but you need to carefully consider what you're offering, and what these bonuses are going to do to your bottom line. Because the more it takes you to produce and send off those presents, the smaller your profits are going to get when all is said and done.

Don't promise, if you can't deliver.

Gifting Your Patrons (Without Going Broke)

If you've run any kind of crowdfunding enterprise, or just participated in a few of them as a backer, you've likely seen the kinds of high-dollar patron packages or stretch goal rewards. You know, stuff like tee shirts, or small statuettes, or signed copies of a bonus book, things like that. And you may have wondered why those only go to high-dollar donors when the items are so relatively small.

Relative is the key word, there, because you have to foot all the costs for it.

That means you need to buy the item in the first place, as well as designing it if it's a unique prize. Let's be generous and say it's only $3 for a paperback book that's being given as a bonus. You then need to pay the shipping on the item (sometimes twice if you need the item shipped to you so you can sign it, and/or repackage it before sending it on its way again). That could cost anywhere from $5 up to $15 or $30, depending on weight, location, and so on. You then need to perform this process for every person who contributed at a certain level, which means you need to handle all the costs, the mailing, and following up on deliveries.

Trust me, it hurts your bank account even more than your brain.

There is a middle ground here, though, and you've seen it even if you didn't put two and two together at the time. If you scroll through Kickstarter or Patreon right now, and you look at contributor rewards, you'll see all sorts of stuff that might strike you as kind of cool, but really low effort when you think about it. For example, a space in the credits of a film, or having your name on the special thank you list for backers for a book or game. If you're a patron, then you might receive free ebooks, digital art, or similar items in your email every month. If you support a YouTube channel at a certain level then you may be able to suggest topics for the show to cover, or even be treated like a sponsor and get a shout-out for the episode you helped make possible.

None of these things require a lot in the way of additional work, or (more importantly) additional costs to the creator. But they still provide something of value to a patron, or make them feel special, or valued in some way. Hell, I use this strategy myself. Folks who donate at least $1 over on The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page get a free copy of whatever gaming supplement I've released that month over on Drive Thru RPG. Why? Well, because they're digital, they're already out, it costs me $0 to send them to any patron anywhere in the world, and it provides them something of value that they no longer have to purchase outside of supporting me.

And that ticks all the boxes for what ideally makes a solid gift that should (at least in theory) act as a solid enticement to get your patrons to chip in just a little more every month.

Gifts and Prizes Are No Substitute For Quality

Since it has to be said.

To be clear, here, stretch goals, bonus gifts, tier levels... these things are icing on the cake when it comes to your crowdfunding efforts. They're nice to have, and sometimes they can be the extra little draw that gets someone to take a look at what you're offering.

However, the icing can't make up for a shoddy cake. Remember that, because you need to be producing something good in the first place if you want people to be happy with you. The extras are nice, and may draw some occasional extra funding, but you can't sell a plate of icing and call it a cake. Well, you can, but it probably won't go over as well as you think.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife!

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