Monetizing a podcast using Patreon
Patreon has been a bit of buzz around the podcasting space for a few years now and it’s one of the staple go to’s for people looking for a quick way to monetize their show. The general vibe seems to be that it is easy option. And, in some ways, it is. It makes the whole process very simple. You don’t require a website, or to set up a membership site, or even a payment gateway. It’s user friendly. Naturally, it can seem like a bit of a no brainer.
If you’re not familiar with Patreon, it’s kind of like a mixture of crowdfunding and membership site. Essentially, your audience give you a either a monthly donation or a donation per episode (or ‘thing’). And in return, you are often expected to provide extra value content. Behind the scenes stuff, maybe some merch, or live calls, events, etc. It’s really a community building platform. I like the concept, but I want to be really honest in my representation of this option of monetization.
I’ve dipped my toe into Patreon and personally found it to be just as hard as having your own membership. I encouraged my listeners to support me on every episode. At the height of my success I think I was making about $130 from about 15 backers. But it kind of dwindled and I stopped promoting it. Plus creating more content just felt like a pressure I didn’t need, at the time. It’s still live, and I think I make about $35 a month these days. Thinking of giving it the boot, but it’s just another thing on my ‘to do’ list.
Let’s dive into some Patreon stats.
There are a small percentage of podcasters who make really good income through Patreon. Here’s a link to the Patreon podcast stats from Graphtreon — which shows the top podcasts on Patreon and how many backers they have (plus income, if it’s public).
I did a bit of math (not my strong point) to see if I could get my head around the reality of Patreon. Here’s what I found.
Patreon claim the average pledge is around $7.
Thanks to Graphtreon I ran some figures of my own. I looked at the top 50 creators in the podcasters space on Patreon. Then I divided the total figure (of those who had their income set to public) and found that the average of the top podcasts had an average pledge of approximately $4.50.
According to Graphtreon, the estimated monthly payout for podcasters on Patreon is $1,432,131.
So I added up the top 25 creators (podcast) on Patreon using either their public figure, or their patrons multiplied by $4.50 and that came to $981054.
According to Graphtreon there are approximately 10000 podcasters on Patreon. So if you take away the amount the top 25 Patreon Podcasters are making from the estimated monthly payout total, you are left with approximately $451,077. I divided that figure by the remaining 9990 of us and that brings down the average to $45.20 per month per podcaster.
It gets even sadder when we look at the top 50 podcasters on Patreon. The top 50 shows are (based on my calculations from Graphtreon) making $1,399,539 out of the $1,432,131 estimated monthly payouts. Leaving the remaining 9950 podcasters in Patreon with an average of $3.27 per podcaster.
Not great figures… and certainly not enough to pay the mortgage. Or maybe even a coffee (depending on where you live in the world). Though it clearly does work for some, so definitely not worth discounting completely.
And big download numbers are not the key to success. Take Tim Ferris for example. He moved away from ad sponsors to fan supported and he couldn’t make it work. So shortly after he moved back to ads. Here’s his reflections on that experiment. Though my interpretation is maybe a little different… he spins it as though his audience preferred ads, and reading between the lines that seems more to me like ‘I prefer ads over paying you directly’.
This is not an article written to dissuade you from getting behind Patreon. I love Patreon and I’m a supporter of some of my favourite artists there, like Amanda Palmer (who does Patreon EXTREMELY well — check her out if you want an example of really rocking it). But I do want you to go in with your eyes open.
The magic formula for Patreon success isn’t necessarily numbers based (as we can see with Tim Ferris — who had over 400 million downloads at the time he made that decision), but more about community and the value you bring them. If they want a way to return the favour, there are enough of them, and you are willing to continually promote your Patreon page, you can absolutely have success. It’s just unlikely to happen overnight.
Having considered Patreon from an unbiased and honest perspective, there may be a better option for you to make some $$$ from your podcast. Here are a few:
- Sponsorship
- Books
- Retreats and events
- Online courses
- Memberships
- Coaching, consulting or mentoring
- Public speaking
- Crowdfunding
- Donations
- Affiliate Marketing
- Merchandise
- Podcasting services
- Partnership and branded content
You can read the full epic post covering all these and more, here.
Go listen to more of Karly’s thoughts and insights on podcasting at Rock Your Mic Right and you can find out more about her work at karlynimmo.com.
