My Patreon didn't work out and is now free
Back in January I started a Patreon page for online marketing advice. I wanted to take the "teach a man to fish" approach to search engine optimisation - to demystify it and put business owners in control of their own websites and online presences.
The feedback I got from subscribers was really good - people who implemented my advice saw their websites climb through the Google rankings and attract more visitors, and they said I explained things in ways that non-nerdy types could understand. But it was really, really hard to get people to join.
People would message me wanting SEO help, willing to spend thousands of pounds with me if I was able to bump them up through the Google rankings even slightly. I would point them to my Patreon, explain that everything they needed to know was there for £20 a month, and that I'd be happy to answer any questions they had. But almost none of those people joined.
Creating posts and videos for Patreon was time-consuming and exhausting work. Recording and editing videos took ages, and more than a few times I had to scrap "near-complete" videos because my microphone glitched out, or the background noise was too high, or I hadn't taken an antihistamine and you could hear me sniffling.
Engagement levels on the Patreon page were near to zero, most of the time. I had hoped that I'd be able to create a little community of small business owners helping each other out and giving me feedback on my videos, but most videos had no comments or even "likes". I wondered whether anyone even saw them - Patreon's stats would tell me that videos I'd spent all day making had never been watched or had a total view time of two seconds, even months later. I started to hope that Patreon's stats were just busted - because if they were right, I was often talking to nobody.
And even though I didn't "need" the money, it was hard to avoid doing the mental maths of how much I was earning "per hour" when working on my Patreon. After six months I'd managed to get up to about £150 per month, after Patreon's 12% cut. Each video would take me at least four hours to make. I made at least three posts each month. So that's a minimum of 12 hours of work per month for £150 before tax. Slightly above the minimum wage.
All in all, it was just very disheartening. I felt like the "content" I was creating was pretty good - not super slick, but honest and useful - but nobody was seeing it or engaging with it, and it was locked behind a paywall I couldn't convince people to climb over.
So: I have now made my Patreon entirely "free", and have removed all of the membership tiers. I have re-uploaded all of its videos to YouTube on my @ChobbleDotCom channel, as well as to my own website on the new "videos" section. I've copied all of my non-video text guides over to a new "guides" section too.
If you'd like to learn about search engine optimisation, content writing, the effective use of AI, tweaking your browser setup, tidying your website, tracking search results, or a bunch more stuff - check out those links.
Hopefully by making all my content free and readily available, it will provide more value than it was doing behind Patreon. It's likely that without the (small) financial incentive, I will produce videos and guides at a slower pace. But that's fine - people can always hire me if they want me to explain / write something specifically for them.
If you previously subscribed for my Patreon page, thank you. If you feel like your payments were wasted now that the content is free, please get in touch with me. I'll do whatever I can to keep you happy - including refunding you (minus Patreon's fees) if you really want. But I'd prefer to just give you some personalised SEO advice or something.
If you're considering making a living off Patreon, good luck! You will need to spend a lot more time doing self-promotion than I did. But you might want to check out Ghost instead because Patreon's commission will start to sting.
If you still want to support my efforts, wow that's very cool of you! You can do so on LiberaPay or Github sponsors. <3