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Let's talk about Patreon!
11 years ago
So, Patreon! I want to do it. I am always in favour of monies. HOWEVER, I can't seem to get a clear idea on how it works!
Would I be allowed to use it to finance porn? They say you can't, but some people clearly are. What kinds of rewards might an artist offer? Would I be allowed to post the stuff I make for Patreon users on other sites?
This is all just speculative at the moment. I'd still appreciate your feedback, though!
But from what I gather now its virtually like imagine a donation focused tumblr
Yep pretty much, you're paying the artist to draw for themselves with the expectation for perks ranging small to large depending on how much you donate.
Nothing else to be said really, donations lol.
http://www.patreon.com/faq
That said, if you are willing to go with paypal, but are worried, there are tutorials for sending money.
Though if you don't want any risk a chance that someone could spill the beans that you draw porny pictures, you can create an invoice instead, so it's just the customer paying your commission, without giving feedback that could bite you in the ass.
In general, the alternatives I've used for payment (not all would apply here of course) are Alertpay, Western Union, Bank Transfer, Money Order, Check, and being awkward at conventions (cash, card, and Square). I'm pretty sure there are more alternatives to paypal out there. And if all else fails, there's that bitcoin thing, but I'm still quite wary of it.
If you are set in patreon, please go with the 'per finished work' option over the 'per month' option. There are many artists I refuse to offer money to because I cannot be sure they will give anything. It's too easy to just disappear for three months, take the money, and then go "Oh look, I'm back!"
Other than that, it's a great idea. :)
People cannot use Paypal to back you for nsfw stuff though - that is a limitation that Paypal imposes on Patreon because they like to discriminate pr0n at random :D. So if you flag your profile as NSFW, that payment option will be disabled for your backers. You can still withdraw your own funds via Paypal though and your backers will have to back you via credit cards then.
the furry artists that are hosted there seem to get little to no attention or money.
i had myself all signed up and ready to go until i discovered they wanted my social security number. (supposedly for tax reasons)...nope nope nope..not getting that number from me.
Otherwise I see no reason to contribute to your patreon.
Rewards are anything you can think of and feel inclined to offer, at whatever donation amounts you want to set. There's nothing keeping you from posting elsewhere unless you choose to make exclusive patreon-only posts one of the incentives for people to donate. There's no requirement for rewards at all, it just makes good sense to give something back to people wanting to contribute to your ability to create more freely, and obviously incentives give more people more reason to want to contribute more to giving you that freedom.
I stressed and worried over the specific wording and rewards of mine for months before launching it, just going in circles with uncertainties and such. Just go for it, dive in. You'll figure out the bits that aren't clear, and the more support people show you, the more ideas you'll have for ways to offer them stuff in return.
I think the key is to not >expect< your audience to throw insane sums at you, but don't be surprised when your fans want to help you out more than you'd have expected, and don't be afraid to let them do so. There's a lot of negativity towards artists who ask for more, and a lot of that is also hurled at artists who aren't even asking, but letting their audience set the price (auctions and such), and there's really just no call for it. Whether someone offers a 50 dollar slot, or regularly has fans throwing that or more when they only asked for 20, people need to get past this habit of begrudging people who manage to do well for themselves, or always having that shocked disbelief when they see people asking for a better wage (or having it thrown at them freely). When buyer and seller are both happy with the exchange, it's silly for anyone else to act like something wrong or unbelievable has happened.
If anything, things like this give the artist a much more accurate and realistic idea of what their audience considers their value to be. If you have a perk level that nobody picks up, then obviously the exchange there isn't one your audience finds agreeable. If you have another perk level that people can't get enough of, you may have undersold yourself there. Primarily though, patreon's not about buying and selling as much as letting an artist's audience contribute to their freedom to do stuff OTHER than just bought commission work.
As long as you're giving your audience what they want, they'll continue to want to see you able to keep doing so. If any artists start abusing that, well, not many people are going to give more than one time to someone who isn't doing anything to show for it.
Anyways though, some people seem to confuse pledge level magnitudes. Sure, pledging 20 bucks a month to your favorite artist might make sense if there are nice rewards, but I've seen some artists go as far as to offer pledges of 200 BUCKS PER PICTURE(!) with nothing substantial that could ever possibly back such a pledge. Promises of sketch commissions are a piss-poor way of hiding a totally distorted feeling of self-worth! xD
So I will happily be silly and act outraged if I see that someone is selling dirt that has been painted to look like gold. I don't feel sorry for the fools that throw their money away, but I do feel angry because 'artists' like that will do the rest of us no favor.
"Oh Patreon is full of scam and shitty pledges" would be a horrible thing to hear from anyone.
As for YCHs, I see why people hate on them, but it's misplaced. People see a stage of the drawing process that usually isn't shown or shared, they call that crap and half-assed, and ridicule people buying a partly-completed commission they get to see roughed out before they spend a dime - then the complainers go back to paying for complete blank pages they hope will turn out good. Nobody's buying the 'third-rate' sketch, they're buying the eventual final pic. The only difference between that and standard commissions is that you have some people paying based entirely on faith in the artist's ability, and others paying based on seeing the basic rough pose already laid out. Where is the objection there? How is it inherently assumed that the final pic will be of lower quality?
People just gripe because they don't like seeing all the unfinished work stages that were hardly ever posted before, and because they don't like seeing how many people are comfortable spending more money on a commission they got a preview of, compared to what they're willing to throw at empty space just hoping for the best.
They don't propagate a decline in quality - they just cause more visibility to the early/rough/unfinished stages that ALL pics go through before getting to the pretty final stuff.
The feeling that it devalues other art is also misplaced and the sense of 'wrongness' accompanying it is misdirected. People have an idea of the value of custom finished art, and they see these things that upset that presumption of value. People throwing more money that you'd expect at these other things doesn't make anyone hold 'serious effort' art at LESS value. It's the artists who feel that way that are undervaluing their own work, and confusing their feelings when they see the market making it clear that work-you-see-as-lesser-to-yours is worth more than you're charging for your own stuff. So raise your prices, too. If your art is worth more than that stuff, and the market says that stuff is worth _____, then it's your choice to charge more than _____, or to keep undervaluing yourself, and direct unjustified negativity at others because they're making the disparity so clear between what you value yourself at and what the market would value you at (which would be more).
You're working on the assumption that all these numbers and prices are artists just saying "this is what I am worth" and you disagreeing with that estimation because you consider your work to be worth more than theirs, and you don't consider your work to be worth that much. The reality is that ychs and auctions and things like patreon let the AUDIENCE tell the artist what they are worth. The market sets the value. Some artists go "oh, okay," and adjust their evaluation of their worth based on what their market TELLS them they are worth. Others do what you seem to be doing, and ignore what the market is saying, to continue hold your own work at less value than the market would place on it, then speak derisively of artists whose work you feel to be beneath yours but making more than >you< think they're worth because they are charging what the market says they're worth.
As for things that are rewards for pledges - again, you're working on a flawed perception. Patreon isn't a commission platform. Rewards aren't items on a list of goods for sale. If someone sets "here's what I give you if you donate this much" that's not them saying "this is the dollar amount I think this is worth to purchase from me" they are just giving something back to show appreciation for the >donations< people are giving to support their work in general. Nobody's FORCING anybody to pay those amounts either, so anyone who does pick up those levels clearly disagrees with you on it being worth it. Some do operate on a "here's what this is worth, donating this dollar amount is purchasing the equivalent value of work in return" basis, and there's nothing wrong with whether people work that way or not, but that's not really the intent the site is going for.
The problem is not about other people having incorrect self-assessments of their worth. The problem is that >your< assessments of their value and your own do not line up with what the market assesses the value of all this stuff to be. Nobody else making "too much" money for "too little" or "too third-rate" work is costing you or anyone else anything in >your< business. It's not that they're 'not doing the rest of us any favors.' They're not negatively impacting your business. Your own choice to ignore the trends that are the market declaring the value of this stuff as higher than your estimation - and to continue to undersell yourself - is your own choice. If these people weren't worth more than you think they're worth, they wouldn't be getting business at those rates. If you feel you're worth more, then either start charging more, or accept that the only thing devaluing your art is yourself.
Your work IS on a higher tier than most of the rest of us, it really is, but please stop making disparaging remarks about other people just because they're not making the same choice as you to keep holding yourself at a lower value than what your work is really worth.
If people are willing to pay so much for so much stuff you feel to be beneath your own work, that means your work is worth more than you think. Be bitter about people who adjust their rates to what the market declares their value to be, or understand that your own estimations of value are too low, and raise your own self-worth accordingly.
I'm having it for maybe 3 months, no recognition and Partons there... And I don't even know if I launched it properly and if my Patreon even allows anyone to support me^^; I hoped for a few dollars so far... But I'm probably simply too less popular for that, that's all. I've seen a few popfurs who made a few hundred $ of support in less than a week.