Patreon vs Blog

For the past year or so, I had been toying with creating a paid subscription, sharing my thoughts and experiences and skills of running a small business for five years.

Initially I was looking at doing it on this blog, but wasn't 100% sure it would work, plus I had it in my head I wanted to have an option where I could offer physical goodies as part of the rewards, something that I can't do through the blog.

So earlier in the year I decided that I would set up Patreon. I was a bit unsure if it would work, but I thought it was worth a shot. I know it takes time for things to gain traction, but after nearly 4 months, I just wasn't feeling it. I had 7 paid subscribers, 4 of them being for the tier with physical rewards, and to be honest, it was kind of disheartening creating these products for four people to enjoy. Don't get me wrong, I am immensely grateful for those who subscribed, but it's a lot of work to do for only a few to enjoy, I guess is what I'm saying. I initially wasn't going to add the exclusive products to my shop, and keep them as Patreon exclusives, but because the amount of subscribers were so low, for products like the foil print, which I ordered more than I actually needed because of costs, it meant that I ended up being out of pocket, and when sales in my shop are low, it isn't feasible to carry on like that.

So, I thought I'd share a little more of why I am moving back to this blog:

Gaining subscribers was hard

I was relying pretty much solely on social media to try and drive customers to subscribe to Patreon, and when social media apps are not quite what they were at the moment (I'm sure you've all seen a lot of people commenting on how bad reach is on Instagram for example), so it makes it really hard to gain subscribers. I had links to Patreon on my website and would post about it on Instagram and Facebook, but those posts in particular got spectacularly low reach (sometimes I do wonder if there is truth to certain words being sort of shadow banned... 🤔), and I didn't gain any interest when posting about it in my newsletter either.

The blog however, having pinned a couple of posts on Pinterest a couple of years ago, I've had a few people sign up without even trying! Which leads me on to...

People finding my posts

The biggy: SEO! I can write blog posts on here and google (and other search engines) will find them. The same posts won't be found on Patreon. I can also link the blog posts to websites like Pinterest, to try and get new eyes on my content, where they may in turn decide to subscribe. It wasn't an option to do that with Patreon as they'd be met with a pay wall/log in page, and I don't know about you, but that would make me just click the back button!

The beauty also with this blog is that I can include part of the post before you need to subscribe, so you can at least get a good idea on whether the post might be something you'd like to read.

Patreon is not as well known as I thought.

I naively thought more people would know what Patreon is. Turns out a lot of people don't! But you can bet that way more people know what a blog is, and I think that will make people more likely to have a look, because it's something that they know of. Signing up to a service that you don't know can be daunting and a lot of people won't do it.

So, what do you get for the paid subscription on here?

So a paid subscription is £5 a month. No extra VAT or any other fees, just £5. For that, you'll get access to blog posts only available for paid subscribers, which include (and will include) how to guides, in depth behind the scenes (aka studio tour), posts about my experiences and so on! You'll also get 20% off all shop orders (the code will change each month!), as well as access to digital downloads which include monthly calendars, wallpapers, colouring pages and more. Plus mt ifinite gratitude for supporting me.

So if you like the sound of that, hit the subscribe button and sign up!