I am looking for ways to improve my patreon. I recently added some new goals, and I am wondering about a $10 tier, but don't know what to offer.

Anyone have any suggestions? I really could benefit from more patrons so my two collaborators get paid more.

I feel like maybe posting just the 'short and sweet' versions of the patreon rewards under the actual tiers, and the longer descriptions in the body of the page, could be helpful! I feel like when people skim the tiers it's usually with an eye to quickly picking out what they'll get, so the more concise it is in there, the better.

One thing a friend of mine did for awhile on Patreon, which worked pretty well, was to post an extra side story (which was in comic form, but more roughly coloured than the main comic) in alternating dates with the main comic, but only to Patreon. I thought it was a pretty good idea since it gave her patreon-only content to advertise on a pretty regular basis, and an incentive for people to sign on so that they could read the whole thing. IIRC it was just a super-cute lil sidestory, something that'd be fun for fans but 100% not necessary to read in order to enjoy the main comic.

I'm not in the best financial situation, and any small amount of money I could potentially bring in from Patreon or other online sources would be super helpful right now. I have a Patreon already https://www.patreon.com/kristintipping, but I haven't done much with it. Does anyone have any suggestions for good early Patreon rewards and goals? What's worked for you? How do you promote your Patreon?

Well I'm not sure that my set up will work for you,however at my lowest tier I have early access to comic drafts ($1), $2 patrons get early access to finished pages, $5 get behind the scenes for upcoming projects whether comic related or upcoming novel art and whatnot. My upper tiers include Novels on Kindle, PDF's of comic arcs, and the highest tier (as yet no takers) has a commission as reward twice a year. So each previous tier's rewards gets added to as they go up.

hpkomic Do you have a buffer? I have a reward called 'Jump ahead' which basically lets people be two pages ahead of the public update.

Does anyone here want an invite to the Patreon forum? I didn't even know it existed until recently but it's a great place to pick up ideas and tips. I don't know how many invites I can send out daily but if you're interested, shoot me your email address.
By the way, and I'm totally showing off here, I spent a day hanging out at Patreon HQ back in March, which was absolutely amazing and got me much more invested in the site. Brilliant bunch of people with a long-term plan, and they really do care as much as they say they do.

I have a Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/soulbound_comic but its consistently unfunded. I dont know whether its because of the terrible employment climate, or if my comic just isnt worth it, or if my tiers are dumb. can anyone help me out? My medical issues are starting to compile and get worse and i could really use even a little pocketmoney

Heh, I've certainly not found the magic formula in that department either. So not sure how much help I can be for you...

I had a look at your page, and the first impression I got was: there's nothing to see! You need a lot more visuals in your introduction (don't assume visitors will follow the link to your comic, you need to be a lot more in-your-face than that), and also you need to post blogs there because you haven't touched it since september 2016. If people land on your page and see it's never been used, they're going to move straight on. Your tiers look fine, but you need to make your page a lot more enticing. Show your stuff! You can add a video, as many images as you want ot the introduction, and you can add an image to each tier as well. Make the most of that to whet people's appetites. You don't need to mention your funding goals in the body of the page, that's confusing as they look too much like rewards (which isn't really what they're about?)
The second consideration is, are you promoting your patreon page enough? Don't expect random visitors to land on your page and pledge, that's the exception rather than the rule. After revising your page you need to really spread the word among your following and regularly mention it in your social media.
Hope this helps!

Thanks for the tips ill see what i can whip up

Wow, I've never heard of it before. Send me the link and invite, please ( [email protected] )

I really want to improve my Patreon and get more patrons but I'm out of ideas.

Quick question- for those of you who have a Patreon...when did you decide to start it up? Was there a certain threshold, like x number of readers, or did you just wing it and throw it out there? I'm working on the skeleton for my Patreon. It won't likely be right now since I've got a lot of other stuff on my plate, but I hope to get one up and going.

Another question- do you like to do your goals per-patron, or per-amount?

I started mine as soon as I possibly could, which is my recommendation for pretty much everyone, but you can and should mention your Patreon regularly to remind people it's there. Don't lock yourself to any one set of rewards forever; try a bunch of things and see what works with your workload and what people respond to. This will also give you new stuff to talk about while you're trying to drum up patron attention.

I haven't personally gotten close to hitting any milestone goals beyond the nebulous "at this amount, my web hosting is covered!" or "this money's gonna go into my convention fund" and I've seen them backfire more often than not by overloading artists with work they can't keep up with or getting unfunded from one month to the next.

So I would honestly skip them, but if you gotta try it, I would keep it per-amount-based, and make sure whatever it was you did with them would be easy to toggle on and off from month to month.

Good luck!

On another note, did anyone see the note in the Patreon email about the limited-time offer tool they're beta testing now? I'm actually kind of excited about this one because I did something similar in August (any patron in the month of August got a free button from me) and it worked pretty well.

I don't necessarily want to do it again so soon myself, but I'm looking forward to finding ways to trying it out.

Thank you for the advice- you make some pretty useful points.