What is “patreon.com” and what you need to know about it

There is such a resource in the world of crowdfunding - PATREON.COM , which, in contrast to the already bored kickstarters, uses slightly more interesting financing schemes. Here, your investors are called patrons (patron from English - “patron”) and they pay you a salary every month or for a unit of finished work (for example, the release of one new video), instead of transferring a one-time amount.



The original idea of ​​the resource was to help novice creators in the field of music, drawing, maintaining video blogs, creating comic books and writing articles. People who would like to enjoy the creators' creations became patrons and counted a certain amount of money every month (at their discretion starting from $ 1). The creators of these monthly incomes continued to create what people like, instead of going to work at the plant and raising the country's economy, as normal boys do .

And they came igrodely ...

But over time (patreonu already 3 years) the resource boundaries expanded and game developers began to appear in the ranks of the creators. Although it is worth adding - there are so few of them there that a needle in a haystack will glisten brighter in the sun than the game developer in a haystack of patreon.



Our view of indie developers decided to fall for this wonderful resource. The idea was great and consisted of the following points:

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1. We are a small team of four people developing a mobile online game, create a page on patreon.com and post the already working game clients for android and windows.
2. We attach beautiful pictures and video of the gameplay with bots (it did not work out enough players from our friends). Wrap everything in beautiful text.
3. Something we don't know ...
4. Some unknown events ...
5. A bit of luck...
6. A full-fledged real-time game on the phone, sponsored exclusively by players. Each onlooker can take part in the development, and even become the person who will personally pay the developer’s salary, pointing out errors and taking part in discussions (a la daily scrum meeting).
7. A lot of subscribers and patrons who pay for development every month and constantly talk about us.
8. With ease on the soul and with the buck in the pocket, we continue leisurely development.
9. PROFIT!

Do not wishful thinking

But when forecasts and fantasies are trying to get a real state out of their heads, the devil comes out of the netherworld with his annoying details. Problems appeared already on point # 3.



In the modern world, it’s hard to stand out, and this state of affairs makes it a lot to pour a lot of money into “nobody-needed-and-hateful” advertising, so even the patreon does not want to take care of newly created projects.

The difficulties of patron for beginners can be expressed in several points:

• The resource is not able to review new projects.
• No search filters by category.

The only way to find a project without a direct search by name is to view the featured list. And to get on this list, of course, you have to sell the soul you-know-to whom.





If you look at the navigation bar of the site, there you can find 4 elements:

• Button - logo;
• Home;
• Featured;
• Search line;

The button - the logo and Home lead to the home page, where the list of what you ALREADY subscribe to and suggested projects that are generated only from featured is displayed. Like it or not, you can only live being featured.



As a result, we got a little less than 1 views. Users have no opportunity to browse new projects, even if they really want to. This leads to the complete absence of organic traffic from patreona. But it turned out nice to talk with those. support and even shared with us a delightful advice - to search for users for your project in the social. networks.

What to do and who is to blame?

• The idea of ​​Patreon is very original and good. But it should be perceived rather as a purse on which your name is written, and where users already well aware of you can periodically throw money.
• If you often write a lot in those. support for the strangeness of site navigation and the lack of opportunities to find new projects, then perhaps in the future something will change.
• Search for users in other places and send them to patreon.
• The very fact of creating the game, its pages in the social. networks and broadcasts via twitch will not do anything. This is an absolute emptiness without any quantum fluctuations. We must really make a lot of effort for promotion.
• Eat right and love your parents!

If you succeed in gathering loyal users on Patreon, I will be glad to hear your successful stories in the comments.