Boosting Your Patreon with Special Offers (Patreon)

I ran a one-time sticker promotion in April and it went splendidly! I have gotten a lot of questions about how to run something like that successfully, so I want to share some of the lessons I learned. 

A quick overview on the context of my sticker promotion:

At peak, in late 2018, my Patreon was the highest it had ever been. However, I was overwhelmed with both work and Patreon, so early this year I cut my high-commitment $50 individual feedback tier to relieve some stress. My pledges consistently fell after that, mostly due to me pausing my Patreon and then planning on stopping it entirely. There was a lot of fluctuation going on in my life and that directly reflected in my Patreon income.

In early April, I was restructuring my rewards (again, yes) and had simplified my page from a multi-tier structure into a single-tier $1 tip jar in order to keep stress low while continuing my Patreon. However, I quickly realized how important $3-5 pledges are, and wanted to reintroduce a tier at that level.

I'd been wanting to try out the Special Offers feature (which is basically just a way to run one-time promotions with a reward) so this seemed like a good time to do that. My goal: create a $5 pledge with appropriate, worthwhile rewards, then boost the heck out of it.

When I (re)started my Patreon over a year ago, I ran a miniprint promo that people really liked, so I went with a physical reward that was affordable and easy to fill: stickers. PEOPLE LOVE STICKERS... and you can get them for cheap in bulk. So I began!

1. Announcing the one-time promotion 

Anyone that signed up for my AMA Asker (Now AMA + early access) tier between April 9th and May 1 got a sticker pack in the mail. I boosted this heavily on Twitter (where most of my audience is) as well as Instagram, tumblr, and Facebook. 

2. Turboboosting with my birthday weekend 

A few days later, I announced a 2 day bonus promo over my birthday weekend. Anyone that joined or upgraded their pledge (so I included both new and current Patrons) got a shoutout on Twitter. I knew this was going to be time-consuming (constantly sharing on Twitter + shoutouts) so I kept it short.

I also created milestones for us to reach in those two short days. At 20 new Patrons, a 4th sticker would be unlocked. If I hit 200 total Patrons (30 new pledges, which I thought was WAY out of reach), ALL Patrons could vote on the 4th sticker design.

By doing Twitter shoutouts, I was consistently able to tweet about the promotion without saying the same thing over and over. Come up with ways to engage with your largest audience without just RTing yourself. Spill your promotions onto social media!

I'll elaborate on this further below, but having specific milestones is ESSENTIAL. It makes Patrons feel like they're actually helping you achieve these smaller goals. They can *see* how they're helping.

We (unbelievably) reached both of those goals, ran the poll on the 4th sticker, and saw my Patreon income almost DOUBLE. You don't have to have a huge crazy promotion. Just enough to draw some more folks in. This is what the special offer did for my page:

A HUGE spike in patronage. An absolute game-changer for my income. 

So what lessons did I learn? How can you run a successful promotion? Here are 5 important things to keep in  mind:

Choose affordable rewards

Don't choose a reward that puts you in the red. I bought my stickers from Sticker Mule, where they were about $.75 per. I bought them in bulk all at once so I got a steep discount for ordering multiple types of stickers. Sounds pretty cheap until you consider that I had to order 90 of them, then buy 90 stamps + envelopes, then pay for some international shipping for my Patrons in other countries. I also spent an unmeasured amount of time writing out all those addresses! I broke even so I didn't turn any profit the first month, but that was planned. The months in the future were what mattered.

Digital rewards are great because they're free! However, I think physical rewards feel special. Having something to hold in your hand is so great, but it does take a ton of effort to complete a lot of them.

Moving forward, if I did this again, I would like to try digital rewards like a process video or more Twitter shoutouts. It's just less time-consuming to fill. If that wasn't successful, I'd totally do stickers or keychains or something easy to produce.

Promote frequently

You cannot be afraid to promote yourself. I tweeted about my promotion multiple times each day, and I tried to post images and drawings and photos to boost it. People are way more likely to read a tweet/post that has images, so don't just focus on text.

Like I mentioned before, part of choosing to do Twitter shoutouts was to spill my promotion onto social media without just saying "here's my promotion!" over and over again. Shoutouts are also so fun and personal! People appreciate seeing THEIR name acknowledged. 

I don't EVER beg for people to sign up and I don't ever speak with entitlement or fear. If you don't reach your goals, that's okay! Don't let that get in the way of appreciating the Patrons you have. People rush away from negativity.

And along those lines- this promotion would not have been possible if I didn't already have a large audience on Twitter. Patreon is not a place to be discovered- it's a place to be supported by your already existing followers.  There is NOTHING wrong with running a small Patreon, but they can very easily be extremely time-consuming.

Have small milestones

If you take a SINGLE piece of advice away from this post, make it this: have small, incremental milestones with additional rewards. If I tweet "let's hit 30 new Patrons!" then that's fine, but if I say "we're 3 Patrons from our next milestone!" then people are more likely to sign up. Instead of their pledge being 3% of a goal, it's 30% of a goal! They feel like they're contributing.

I tweet about this even when I'm not running a promotion. Just 2 Patrons away from 20? Or 50? Or 200? Tweet about it! Again: DON'T BEG PEOPLE TO SIGN UP. But something along the lines of "ho dang, getting so close to the 20 Patron milestone 👀👀👀" with a screenshot will entice people to engage.

Encourage people to get involved

How can you get other people to engage with your promotional tweets/posts? Any time someone even just likes or comments on a tweet, that tweet might show up in their followers' timelines. 

Asking people a question is the best way to get them to engage. Keep it simple! "What creatures would be cool for the 4th sticker?" or "What type of dragon is your favorite?" are open-ended and fun to answer. 

Giveaways on social media can be good for visibility, but keep in mind that Patreon does not allow raffles in their rewards.

Stay positive and realistic

Keep in mind that keeping a constructive, grateful attitude on social media is important. Putting out a good vibe into the world will draw people towards you. Staying generous and kind and thoughtful will always do more for you than begging or being shitty towards folks online, especially when trying to grow an audience. 

Make your goals proportionally realistic to your followings. A lot of Patreons are very small, which is 10000% fine! Just bringing in a little extra money each month can help to cover regular expenses- don't feel bad if your income from this site is low. My Patreon is going better than I ever expected but I have a bulk of expenses that aren't covered by it. And that's okay! I try to put enough into it to be engaged, but not so much that it keeps me from paying my bills. Putting hours and hours and hours into your Patreon won't automatically mean you'll get a ton of money out of it, especially if you don't have an audience elsewhere.

If you don't reach your goals... relax! Take a few moments to consider what you learned and just apply that fresh knowledge next time. I honestly didn't expect to reach my goals- I thought they were too high- but splitting them up into smaller victories also let me think "well, I made the first small milestone! Even if I don't hit the other stretch goals, I got that little success."

Stay positive, engage with your followers, and have fun :)