Why I'm still on Patreon
While many of us steemians will go on and on about how Steemit is the best and how other platforms can't compare, we also know that no platform is perfect. So while I think it goes without saying that Steemit is a more diverse platform with much more potential than Patreon, there are still a few reasons to keep my Patreon account open. I want to share with you why I think that, for now, Patreon is a pretty decent yang to Steemit's yin.
What I share on Steemit
Currently, a large amount of my energy on Steemit goes towards essays on a variety of methods for navigating social issues and encouraging personal development in a series called "Optimism at the End of the World". I also focus on how to foster community on Steemit and in our daily lives and do what I can to build relationships that go beyond the confines of a single platform. I have just over 700 followers and, for the record, the response to my posts shows almost no consistency.
What I share on Patreon
My Patreon account, which I always link in my signature, currently contains a collection of short stories called "Confessions of the Damaged". It's part memoir part fiction and the style is very different from most of what I share on Steemit. I only have 4 patrons as I write this since I don't have much of a social media presence and prefer to remain relatively anonymous but the payout and engagement at Patreon is totally consistent. I've also opted for a pay-what-you-want model (which is a bit atypical for Patreon) in an attempt to be as down to earth as possible. I'm not really here to provide tshirts or VIP videos or special edition whatever and I want my writing to be available even to those who have little or no money to give.
What's good about Patreon
There are a few things that make Patreon a decent platform and while I absolutely do not recommend you leave Steemit in favor of Patreon, I would like to explore how the two can be used together to make up for each other's weak points, especially for those of us who are quite serious about writing and are hoping to live off it.
- More reliable "payout" and response
Readers at Patreon generally don't spread themselves too thin, they have a few creators that they support, sometimes only one or two. Some do forget that they are paying you by the month or by the project but if they like your stuff, they generally keep up with it. At Steemit we are all spread ridiculously thin and it's sometimes hard to remember all the people we'd like to support. At Patreon, even if people stop reading, it doesn't dramatically affect payout unless people decide to unsubscribe in mass' which they generally don't.
- Less incentive to shit post
Since you are paid based on a "fan"s (for lack of a better word) trust that you will consistently post good material, there is little incentive to shitpost.
- No 7 day post life restriction
Patreon doesn't have the best organization but at least there is a profile page that allows you to give as long an introduction as you want. I plan on using it to put a table of contents for my stories. Old material is given almost as much attention as new material.
Paid in established currency
While some people would disagree, I still think it's nice to have a source of $USD or other long established currency rather than making all crypto (best to have both, right?). I don't anticipate steemit to fail UNLESS here are further crackdowns on crypto which I do anticipate. I think we'll make it through the other side but just to be safe....
No need to spread yourself thin
While it is nice that steemit incentivizes lots of interaction with more users, it can be a bit overwhelming at times as mentioned above.
Giving earned money, not upvotes
Most people might see this as a downside but I see it as a positive. When you give someone an upvote, it helps you, but it didnt cost anything of the other person. As I hope that we can all learn to become more giving, I value the chance to be able to actually give something to others that I might otherwise help myself with. Something that I have worked for. It also shows that people really support you when they support you.
The main drawback of Patreon : No community
This is extremely regrettable, especially considering how Patreon likes to portray an image of being run a bunch of community minded hippies. I don't think so, Patreon. It's absolutely baffling why they didn't create a forum for creators and potential supporters to connect with each other and form support circles based on similar content, similar beliefs, similar work ethics, whatever. I am thankful for this lack of community, however, as it forced me to seek out something better and that is how I discovered steemit.
Using the two together
I am slowly coming to the realization that content isn't valued much at steemit, it's just too easy to find and hard to sift through and we are all creating more than we enjoy others creations. Have you read your favorite posts multiple times? Have you talked about your favorite posts with other people?
Steemit is a great place for connecting with likeminded people and sharing what you are doing, but it's not always the best place to let your best work shine, at least not yet. This may be a problem of social media and modern times in general but it can be felt very clearly when you have 700 followers and write a post with 7 views. Steemit would also not be the best place to share my stories with people who do not feel very interested in joining the platform, while Patreon seems a bit more accessible to those who aren't looking to create their own content and just enjoy someone else's work.
I hope that together the two sites can help me reach all the people that my work was meant for. I'm still working on coming up with creative ways to make Steemit a place for more interaction and collaboration on the stories I share on Patreon, so far I've only thought of allowing Q&A based on my writing, or inviting people to share their interpretations or personal stories, perhaps inviting some "fan fiction" based on my characters. Any more ideas?
The Steemit Writers Guild
@vangelov came up with this brilliant idea and I've been helping him to develop it and make it happen: The Steemit Writers Guild is about organizing some quality content creators from Steemit to share our material OFF STEEMIT on places like Amazon and Facebook. The purpose is to promote our personal websites and Patreon accounts to find more support for our work outside Steemit so that it's easier for us to feed make a living doing what we love WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY PROMOTING STEEMIT at these websites. As we share our work we will also get to share a bit about Steemit and bring people over!
If you or someone close to you has a wide reach on social media and would be willing to help us get the word out please let me know! :-)
And check out "Confessions of the Damaged"
Do you have a Patreon account? Feel free to share it in the comments!
Join the "Be Awesome" community
The Be Awesome discord chat, was created with the intention of making deeper connections with fellow steemians. Come talk about "deep shit", practice languages or make friends.
I could have written this! Although I don't write as well as you do ;)
No, seriously... I am trying to juggle Patreon and Steemit myself since a month or two and am having a hard time doing so. I spend way more time on Steemit but I got 4 Patrons on Patreon who are actually all friends of mine :)
I sometimes share my Steemit posts on Patreon but find it hard to create extra content to share there.
When I think about it, Patreon is mainly meant to share my creative process and on Steemit I'm a little more versatile (I blog about my life, creativity and movies). I often feel I am too versatile/ inconsistent on here though and, all the writing on Patreon actually seems to distract me from my creative project. And then there's LinkedIn, Twitter and my recently re-opened Fb account. Sigh...
As you sort of mentioned... Even though I've made more money so far by blogging on Steemit than I've earned with Patreon, it feels kind of askew sometimes that my best/ most interesting posts are sometimes hardly noticed on here.
I could go on and on. You really struck a chord here but let's continue our conversation on Discord. I just joined the deep-shit channel
Thanks for sharing and let's see if we can perhaps help eachother out!
No need to compare. I'm sure you are better at functioning in society than I am ;-)
Steemit is not a great place to promote a Patreon account, which is too bad cause Patreon doesn't have any way to promote a Patreon account. Most people are stuck trying to "make it big" on Facebook or YouTube first and find their patreon following on there. I've gotten great payout on a small fraction of posts but honestly, I feel like support on steemit is too fickle because the ecosystem requires you to constantly expand, so loyalty isn't a big deal here, neither is going deep into what you read, our writing all becomes kind of cheap, everyone skims through it, too much going on. I think this atmosphere is great for finding like minded individuals and creating collaborative efforts but it's a shitty mode for sharing art that you intended to be timeless. By design, everything here has a 7 day life span.
We are kind of stuck in the competitive consumerist patterns of society, we are all kind of struggling for a sense of security in a world that, our level of development, could easily provide for even this insane amount of people. More more more, new new new.
Anyways, glad to meet you, I'll see you in the chat :-)
hear, hear! I also feel more and more that it might actually be more about making connections on here, finding like minded individuals and perhaps start collaborations than on making a decent income.
Just like is the case with for instance Twitter, the majority of the blogs - and even very interesting ones - get sucked into the void. Especially when they are written by smaller fish. Meanwhile, even the mediocre posts by big fish make loads of money all the time.
It sometimes feels like the only way to succeed is by becoming a big fish but do we really want to be one? Let's just keep doing what we can the best way possible and enjoy the process as much as possible
I agree. One should never put "all their eggs in one basket", especially in these volatile and uncertain times.
Followed for more, I love your blog :)
Thanks , I swear we have run into each other before, no?
I believe we may have, I recognize your photo ;)
You got some fair points there. I always felt Patreon attracts high-quality creators, many of whom are bona fide famous authors, or creators of famous channels on youtube. Whereas steemit is mostly garbage to be honest, and that's very unfortunate. If this platform is gonna grow, we need to attract the kinds of people Patreon attracts.
You bring up an area where both sites fail actually.
Ideally these platforms make it easier for good content to get more attention just because it's good content, even withoutmuch of a following. Patreon doesn't do shit for you, it just offers a nice payment system.
Steemit incentivizes good behavior but also bad behavior including our tendency to give our attention to people who already have the most attention and more money to people who already have the most money. I'm afraid if we attracted lots of big names here, it would mean even worse payout for the rest of us, regardless of quality. That would only trickle down to skilled ass kissers. Inevitably this will happen but I'm not looking forward to it.
Embrace the Garbage! We are lucky to be here earlier enough that even as tiny minnows we might have some small influence on the direction of things to come but I'm not getting my hopes up either.
What's good about steemit though is that it currently has a thriving and talented community where you can seek out basically anything you are looking for, so in my mind, at least at this moment, it is the ultimate grounds for collaborative efforts, brainstorming new ideas, finding likeminded people, etc. but whether or not you get decent pay is just up to a few whales, some of which are decent people but who are, to a large extent, in their own bubble.
It's still much better than regular social media, I wasn't getting killed by Facebook algorithms so I found my very first readers here!
I like your realistic down to earth thinking!
I've considered joining Patreon for the past year when I came across it especially as a means of funding my personal creative projects especially my underwater shoots but still have my doubts if what I will get is worth the time and also the strategy/model to use. Steemit is easy that Im just posting or cross posting from my past shoots for the meantime.
Yeah, patreon only works if you already have other ways of showing people your work, be it an active Facebook account or postcards with your patreon on them. Even with these thing she it's hard to "monetize" a "fan base". Rather an appeal to people's desire to buy shit, I try to appeal to their hope for a better world where they too can quit their job if it's what they really desire or where people like us who are trying hard to do what we love can inspire them to live The life they have now more fulfilling.
I think I've got a good thing going but it's hard to get people to check out a page in the first place.
I always been planing to use patreon, though its seems like a lot of work to me, and there is no guarantee of getting a decent income, i dont know... I guess its just a matter of trying...
For me, like steemit, it's kind of a beacon of hope...it may be nothing, or it could be a way for me to quit struggling to do all the things I'd love to do. But firstly it's about trying to share ideas and stories and feelings
Thanks for the great article! @whatamidoing
let me try and see if it will be worth it