BIG Patreon Update (Long Read) (Patreon)

Hello! This is going to be one of the biggest updates to our Patreon page, and to be honest, I am slightly worried about making some changes. That being said, I think it’s the right thing for growth for both the Patreon and for our content in general. As always, I like to be as transparent as possible with changes I make in regards to anything that involves money, especially your money.

About 3 years ago I was offered an ad deal to make $2,000 a month by running two to three 1 minute ads on the podcast. I think that was a fantastic amount of money for what I’ve worked so hard to build over the last decade, but the catch was they wanted to run the worst kinds of ads, political ads. I’m sure there would have been WebsiteSpace, Bookible, Hello Foods ads, but the main problem was I didn’t have a say for which ads would have been allowed or not. Fast forward to today, obviously, I passed on that deal. I wouldn’t want you all to suffer through that stuff just for a payday. That brings us to talking about running ads today.

I was connected with a company called Multitude that runs ads for independent podcasts, like ours! Right away, I got good vibes from the conversations and we talked about how finally after 10+ years we could bring in some extra revenue for the podcast with ads. I felt good about us working together and I figured you all wouldn’t mind hearing! Multitude has about 20 podcasts under their belt, and we’ll now be part of that collective! That being said, besides making and bringing ad deals to ISE, everything from the site to the Patreon to the podcast itself is still 100% mine.

Here is where I am excited! With extra money coming into the show, we can do more things like put money back into the website, hiring an editor to help with side projects/podcasts, improving the video podcasts, and possibly allow me to sleep easier at night! While the current deal isn’t a big chunk of money talked about above, these ads are in my control and our deals will grow over time as companies will see how great our podcast is.

Let’s talk about the plan for Patreon. The Patreon rewards, as they stand, haven’t changed in over 2 years, but the growth of Patreon hasn’t really changed either, which tells me that the rewards are not good enough for our listeners to go the extra mile to support. I think I really messed up here not refreshing the rewards more often or thinking of new benefits for you all, and I’m sorry for the lack of innovation on that front. Currently, we have seven rewards ranging from $2 to $70. Half of all the patrons are on the $2 tier and about one-fourth of patrons are on the $5 tier, so overall 75% of all fans support at $5 or less. More interesting, about half of the $2 people don’t even use the Slack, they just pledged to support! This is totally an okay thing to do! Although, since I am looking to simplify this and to give more rewards, part of this new plan is just to cut out the $2 tier and the $16 tier and rework the others. The plan on May 1st is to go to a $5, $10, $25, $50, and $100 tier.

The $5 tier is where most people are going to be at, so besides Slack access, this tier will host an ad-free version of the podcast that you’ll have access to in your favorite podcast app! Bonus podcasts are currently being reworked, but will still be there in addition! On top of all that, I’ll be working with Nick to get all $5+ patrons seasonal EPs of our break music that you’ll be able to digitally download. Nick keeps making songs, so I want a way for you all to get them to add to your current collections! I know the jump from $2 to $5 is a cup of coffee a month, but I really think the new $5 tier will be worth it for anyone upgrading on May 1st. That being said, any current patrons will be grandfathered in, so if you plan to stay at $2, you won’t lose access to Slack, for example.

We’ll go over the new rewards for the higher tiers closer to May 1st, but I am really proud of the growth of our podcast, our community, and the future of both of those together. As always, my DMs are open if you have any feedback (good or bad) that you’d like to share. I could not do any of this without you all, so thank you!!