Creative Funding Show

Bestselling author Rachael Herron shares her journey from hobby writer to full-time author, discussing her success with Patreon. Topics include NaNoWriMo challenges, Amazon affiliates, Black Friday promotions, and building a loyal audience for crowdfunding. She emphasizes personalized communication, exclusive content, and maximizing patron engagement on Patreon.

Joanna Penn is an award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers under J.F.Penn and also writes non-fiction for authors. She’s an award-winning creative entrepreneur, podcaster, and YouTuber. Her site, TheCreativePenn.com has been voted in the Top 100 sites for writers by Writer’s Digest. Joanna Penn Links: Website Patreon JF Penn Website Facebook Twitter Other Links: Society6 ACX.com Questions What do you write and how did you get started writing? What was it like writing in the early days of the indie revolution? Why is it important for creators to have multiple sources of income? What does it mean for an author to “go wide”? Why would an author go wide? You are more than just a writer, though. As a creator, where does your money come from? Tell us about your podcast. Why start a podcast for writers? How do you monetize your podcast? (Sponsorship, Patreon, Cross Promotion) Walk us through your Patreon Rewards: $1 Silver $3 Gold $5 Platinum Why a per episode rather than per month model? In closing, what advice do you have for starving creators? The post 007 Diversifying Your Income as a Creator With Joanna Penn appeared first on Creative Funding Show.

This is the Creative Funding Show, a podcast for authors, YouTubers, and podcasters who want to fund the work they love without selling out. I’m Thomas Umstattd Jr., and with me is Mary DeMuth, an international speaker, podcaster, novelist, nonfiction author, and more. She lives in Texas with her husband of 28 years and is the mom of three adult children.  How did you get started writing? Thomas: So how did you get started writing? Mary: I’ve always been writing, but as a career, it started after I had my first child. I felt a strong need to be published, not to validate myself, but because I had so much inside me I wanted to share, especially to help people heal from trauma. I spent about 10 years in the ’90s writing for myself. In the mid-2000s, I landed an agent, had a newspaper column, and kept working on my craft. Since about 2005, I’ve been writing three books a year for 13 years now. What is your favorite book you’ve written? Thomas: You started off the traditional way. Of your traditionally published books, my favorite is Thin Places. Tell us about it. Mary: That’s my favorite, too. It’s my memoir, and it was hard to write. It tells the story of my upbringing, and when family members are still alive, writing a memoir is not easy. I knew there was power in telling the story so others could say, “I’m not alone.” I wanted to speak to those neglected, abused, or dealing with loss, divorce, or addiction in the home, which were things I experienced as a child. What was the reaction from readers? Thomas: You wrote about surviving sexual abuse and your healing journey. I’ll admit, I cried while reading it. It’s powerful. Did readers ask for a follow-up? Mary: Yes, but they wanted more of the process. Thin Places (affiliate link) was simply storytelling. People wanted to know, “How do I heal from sexual abuse? What does that process look like?” I also wrote a viral post called “I’m Sick of Hearing About Your Smoking Hot Wife.” It expressed my frustration at hearing messages that wives should always be sexually available, knowing many women in the room had been sexually abused. For them, there are huge hurdles. That shame was hurting victims, and I wanted to address it. From that, I decided to write Not Marked, which began my crowdfunding journey. Why didn’t you publish traditionally? Thomas: You were successfully traditionally published, had an agent, and wrote a viral blog post. I bet publishers were eager to take this book. Mary: Maybe in the #MeToo era, but not then. I pitched it to several publishers, and all of them said no. One even told me, “We don’t believe there’s an audience for this book.” I thought, “Almost half the world has experienced this, and you think there’s no market? Fine. I’ll do it myself.” How did crowdfunding become the plan? Thomas: Twenty years ago, that would’ve been the end of the story. But that’s not what happened. What happened next? Mary: You’d done crowdfunding and suggested I try it. We’re both in a mastermind group, and together we figured out that crowdfunding was the way to go. I didn’t want to ask for money, but you convinced me. We set a $10,000 goal to cover editing, the cover, and a 5,000-copy print run. Thomas: And we put it on Kickstarter because that’s what I recommended. But Kickstarter rejected you. Mary: Yes. At the time, they didn’t allow self-help books, and mine qualified. So we switched to Indiegogo. I moved all the content over, and we did a do-or-die campaign. If it didn’t fund in a month, it wouldn’t happen. That urgency was important. Thomas: Indiegogo is like Kickstarter’s laidback older brother. You launched the campaign and we worked out the rewards. What happened in the first week? Mary: Besides a nervous breakdown, it went very well. Within a few days, it funded to $10,000.  Thomas: Take that, publishers! Proof there’s an audience for this book. Mary: Exactly. We had stretch goals ready. At $25,000, we’d produce an audiobook, which is expensive. In the end, we raised just over $25,000. I poured all of it back into the project and took no personal income, but that’s fine.  Why choose offset printing over print on demand? Thomas: You went with offset printing instead of print on demand. What’s the difference, and why? Mary: If I had used CreateSpace, my cost per copy would have been $6–$7. Donating books to ministries would be costly. With a print run, it dropped to $1 per copy. I have a friend with a warehouse who handles shipping, so donating 500 books costs $500 plus shipping, instead of six times that. Thomas: So sending books to a women’s shelter isn’t bank-breaking. Mary: I just sent two cases to a church where I spoke. My heart for this book is to let people know they’re not alone and to help them heal. My husband also wrote part of it, sharing his perspective on living with and supporting a sexual abuse survivor. It’s also a good resource for anyone helping a friend through this journey. What are you creating now? Thomas: Let’s talk about what happened after that. Once you got a taste of crowdfunding, maybe traditional publishing didn’t seem as great as everyone says it is. What are you creating currently? Mary: Right now, I’m creating art. This came about because of my audience. During the Lent season, I created art every day for four or five years. People kept asking if I would sell my art online. I thought it was silly, but this year I finally listened and started selling on Etsy. It’s another creative income stream; it’s not the same as crowdfunding, but it’s still valuable. The takeaway is to listen to your audience. If they want something from you, give it to them. It was the same with Not Marked (affiliate link). My audience wanted that book, so I wrote it. How do you choose rewards your audience wants? Thomas: That’s a powerful principle. When you’re putting together rewards for Indiegogo or Patreon, the best ones are what your audience is already asking for. Sometimes we think of something complicated, but they don’t care about it. Then there’s something easy for us that makes them say, “Give me more.” The curse of knowledge makes it hard to see what others don’t know or value, like the math teacher who forgets how confusing math can be for a freshman. It can be the same with our backers. Mary: True. To answer your question more fully, I’m also podcasting. I hosted The Restory Show for several years, interviewing people about the difficult stories in their lives and the turning points that brought change. That show is winding down. Now, I’m doing Pray Every Day, where I walk through a book or chapter of the Bible verse by verse and then pray for listeners for five minutes. I fund the editing through Patreon, at least partially. Patreon is new for me, so I’m surprised and grateful that people are backing it. What rewards do you offer patrons? Thomas: Walk us through your Patreon rewards. Mary: I wasn’t sure what to give people at first, but it connected with my art. If you support me at $5 or more, I send you an original piece of digital art each month. At $20, you get a monthly audio from me that’s not available anywhere else. I’m also considering a $10 level where your name appears on every Pray Every Day blog post 365 days of the year. Thomas: That’s an easy reward for you and exciting for supporters. Universities have done this for centuries: give us a large donation, we’ll name a building after you; a smaller one, we’ll engrave your name on a brick. Everything is named and sponsored. How do patrons respond to changes? Thomas: You’ve pivoted from one podcast to another. Have you gotten any pushback? Mary: None at all. I updated the page and made a new video, and more people joined. I mention Patreon on the podcast every 7–10 episodes since it’s a daily show. I had an idea to create a brick graphic for each post with patrons’ names on it. When someone joins at the $10 level, I’ll add their name to a brick and upload it to the page. Thomas: That’s great. People back your art, but more than that, they back you. Changing your creative work doesn’t necessarily mean losing supporters, especially if the new work is consistent with your brand. Many creators fear that changing direction will make them start over, but that’s not always true. Mary: Exactly. You also need to follow your joy. I loved The Restory Show for years, but recently the joy drained away, and it became a chore. I can’t fully explain it, but when I started Pray Every Day, I thought, “This is what I need to be doing.” It’s fun again. The patronage feels different too. For Restory, it was about sharing people’s stories. For Pray Every Day, it’s about getting these prayers to the world. That’s why we used funds to add the show to Alexa Skills for the Amazon Echo, which has been a major source of traffic. Thomas: The Echo platform is growing faster than smartphones did. If you create content, think about how it can work on an Echo. Buy an inexpensive Echo Dot so you understand the platform.  Why should creators consider crowdfunding? Thomas: Now, what advice would you give to someone thinking about writing a book but unsure where the funding will come from? They’re considering Kickstarter, Patreon, or Indiegogo. Mary: For a book, I recommend a larger platform like Indiegogo or Kickstarter. It’s one and done: raise the money, make the book. My friend Erin Kincaid is currently funding a children’s book with amazing illustrations for $5,000, and I know it will succeed. For ongoing creative work like a podcast, use Patreon. Sponsor a few people yourself to experience the process. Look at many campaigns to see what works. Thomas: The best way to learn is to spend a little supporting other campaigns. On Kickstarter, you can pledge as little as $1 and get no reward, just the updates. That lets you watch the process from start to finish and see how creators adapt. There’s a strong correlation between backing campaigns and running successful ones. Creators who have backed over 50 Kickstarter projects have a 60% success rate, compared to 16% for those who’ve backed only one. Mary: And if you don’t have the time to learn, hire someone who understands it. I came into crowdfunding naive, and his help made our campaign very successful. If you can’t pay cash up front, offer a percentage of what comes in. That way, you get expert guidance without the initial expense. Connect with Mary DeMuth MaryDeMuth.com Pray Every Day Patreon About Mary Mary DeMuth is an international speaker and podcaster, and she’s the novelist and nonfiction author of over thirty-five books, including the latest: The Seven Deadly Friendships (Harvest House Publishers 2018). She loves to help people re-story their lives. She lives in Texas with her husband of 28 years and is the mom to three adult children. Find out more at marydemuth.com. Links: Restory Show  Pray Every Day Podcast Mary’s Website Mary’s Patreon Campaign The post 006 How Mary DeMuth Went From Rejected Author to Crowdfunding Success appeared first on Creative Funding Show.

Shemer Kuznits is a LitRPG author who is using Patreon to fund his writing. He was recently able to move from working 5 days a week to 4 days a week giving him another day dedicated to writing.  Links Shemer’s Website Shemer’s Patreon Page Shemer’s Facebook Questions: What kind of writing do you do? What kind of books do you write? What is LitRPG? Why did you decide to start using Patreon? Tell us about setting up the Patreon page. How did that process go? How did you promote it? Walk us through your rewards. What are they and why did you pick them? What advice do you have for people thinking about launching a Patreon campaign? Maintain a email list Wix Email. Other than Patreon, how do you fund your writing? Where can people find you online?     The post 005 Funding Publishing on Patreon with Shemer Kuznits appeared first on Creative Funding Show.

Tom Boruta is a Software Engineer who created Graphtreon because he wanted to follow the progress of Patreon creators. In this episode, we talk about how to use Graphtreon to track your Patreon’s progress.  Links: Graphtreon Website Graphtreon Patreon Graphtreon Twitter   Questions What is Graphtreon.com? Why did you start Graphtreon? What are some interesting things you’ve seen in the data? What advice do you have for someone considering Patreon? What advice do you have for someone who is wanting to get more patrons? How much money does the Median Patreon page make per month? A lot of your audience doesn’t know what Patreon is, Tell us about the Graphtreon Patreon Page. Why create a Patreon account for your site? Walk us through your rewards. What are they and why did you pick them?   Transcript Transcription generated algorithmically by Sonix (Affiliate Link) Intro: [00:00:03] This is the creative fun show podcast for YouTube podcasters who want to fund the work they love. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:00:13] So we now welcome to the creative funding show. Today we’re joined by Tom Baruta who is a software engineer who created Graefe Triano because he wanted to follow the progress of patriotic creators. So Tom welcome to the show. Tom Boruta: [00:00:29] Thanks for having me. It’s good to be here. Yes. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:00:31] Tell us a little bit about Graphtreon. What is it. Tom Boruta: [00:00:33] Sure it’s a Web site that just clicks daily statistics on all the playground campaigns. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:00:39] So in some ways it’s kind of like kicktrack but for patriotic to kicktraq is a third party service for Kickstarter that has all this really cool analytics that tells you how many backers and it even has some projections on how you’re going to do. And when I stumbled across Graphtreon I was like Oh my goodness this is perfect. I’m so glad this exists. So but why did you create Graphtreon. Why. Why you and why this. Tom Boruta: [00:01:05] Yeah I was actually funding some people on Patreon in late 2014 early 2015. And I literally would go to all their pages every single day to see how they were doing. And since I’m a software engineer I was. I was like well this is dumb. I should just build something that tracks this stuff for me and that I’m sure other people would want to see that. So I made it a public website and that’s where it started and I really love graphs so I made them all on the graphs. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:01:35] So a lot of people think oh the only kind of person who’d use a service like graphtreon to see charts and graphs and progress of a page rampage would be the patreon on page creator. And what you don’t realize is that there are super backers out there super patrons who are just as passionate about your success as you are and who would actually build a software program to just track how well you’re doing. Tom Boruta: [00:01:56] Oh yeah for sure. And so me. I keep trying to tell that to the creators I talk to is your patrons want to know that stuff your patrons would love to see this kind of stuff. And some of them had to take my advice and share their Graphtreon pages with their patrons and some of them don’t think their patrons want to see it. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:02:15] Yes. Walk us through what sorts of things are tracked by graphtreon. Tom Boruta: [00:02:18] Sure the number of patron patrons your campaign has and if your earnings are public the earnings they have and it’s every day I collect that data every day. And also if they the creator links their YouTube channel for their Facebook page or their Twitter profile I track. The followers and likes to all those pages as well. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:02:44] Yeah and it’s really cool because you can see like how many Facebook fans somebody has. Do you see a correlation between like how popular somebody is on Facebook Twitter YouTube with how much money they bring in. Actually I get that question a lot and no there is very little if any correlation Tom Boruta: [00:03:02] Between like the success of a patreon page and the quote unquote success of a social media profile. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:03:08] See this is what I’ve been saying for a long time. On my other show the novel marketing podcast. Social media is not this powerful tool for marketing that a lot of people think that it is. It’s a good place to go and have a good time but it’s not going to drive money like you would think so. So what does correlate of Twitter and Facebook don’t correlate with how many patrons somebody has. What does correlate that you’ve seen. Tom Boruta: [00:03:31] It’s pretty much the engagement with your patrons or your audience who can then become patrons. It seems like if you’re more personable you just talk directly to them using whatever means of conversation you want to use. A lot of people used to use Facebook or Twitter or YouTube or dischord. Tom Boruta: [00:03:54] You just need to keep an engagement with people and then ask them ask them for support. Ask them for to become patron and that helps more than anything I’ve ever seen. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:04:05] So it’s really about that human connection. Tom Boruta: [00:04:07] Yeah. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:04:08] So you’re saying that the solution to a technology problem is actually a human one. Tom Boruta: [00:04:14] Kind of yeah I guess it is. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:04:16] If a software engineer is saying it folks it must be true. So that’s awesome. So what other sorts of things just does graftreon track. Tom Boruta: [00:04:25] We just have top lists of like all the different categories. Actually it is not easy or super possible to get patriarchies categories Intergraph trans so I didn’t come up with a method of trying to determine what a category a patreon campaign is in and that I put them into those categories and rank them based on the number of patrons and I do it by number of patrons. For a variety of reasons mostly because a lot of creators hide their earnings nowadays. So ranking them by earnings doesn’t really work that well anymore. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:05:00] That’s right. And patrons are the most certain thing. And it does correlate the number of patrons you have correlates pretty strongly with how much money you have. It’s not a one to one correlation but it has a strong correlation. What advice do you have for somebody who’s thinking about starting pitcher think you’re like the king of data. You get all the data and you’re a little like magical castle of data. What’s the advice that you give somebody who’s thinking about getting started on Patreon. Tom Boruta: [00:05:25] Sure. Well first a lot of people just make a patriotic campaign when they’re starting out just starting creating. That’s OK but you’re not going to get any payments for a while. You should have an audience. And you should make something that people want and people want to. Quote unquote pay for. They think it’s your patrons should hire your audience should think it’s something worthwhile to pay you to continue to create. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:05:54] And what about for somebody who’s who’s already being tracked by you. They’ve been using pitch around for six months or so and they’re wanting to grow their page what sorts of things do you see works well at building that revenue. Tom Boruta: [00:06:06] Engagement with your audience. Like I said earlier also a lot of creators you just need to ask most of your audience might not even know you have a Patreon on page. They might not know what Patreon is. So like if you make videos you should ask either at the beginning or the end of all your videos links in your scripts and let your audience know because I think its creators will be surprised at how many people don’t know that they have a page rampage. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:06:38] It’s the grandma test. If you going see your grandma she doesn’t know what something is. There’s a good chance probably half the population is more like your grandma than like you. And a lot of people don’t know what Patreon is and they hear it. What’s sad is that you often hear it at the end of YouTube videos like go back me on Patreon on you know and they hear that over and over again but they never are curious enough to look into what that is and they don’t know. And so it’s up to you as a creator to do that education and get the word out because once someone backs one patron patreon page it’s a lot easier for them to back number two through infinity because they’re to have an account there to have a password they have their credit card information in there. If that first page. That’s such the challenge. And that’s your job as a creator is to get get the first ones. Tom Boruta: [00:07:23] Absolutely. Yeah. Getting people onboard is the hard part. But once they’re in their data shows that patrons start patronizing other creators quite quickly. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:07:37] Yeah. Yeah you do see that data specifically like how many how many how many people does the average backer back. Tom Boruta: [00:07:44] So I’m not able to get that specific sort of data. I get kinda know it anecdotally from talking to people from patreon. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:07:54] You can give us gossip that’s OK we accept gossip on the creative funny show yeah get OK. Tom Boruta: [00:07:59] Gossip is like the average patron pledges like five campaigns. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:08:05] Ok so that’s that’s not bad. And that’s. So one application of this is that if there are several other campaigns that are similar to yours already on Patreon there may be a base of support of folks who may be willing to throw you a buck or two. I feel like patron is now where Kickstarter was five or six years ago. Tom Boruta: [00:08:24] I agree. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:08:24] When I first got started with Kickstarter you know a campaign made twenty thousand dollars. It was this huge deal is like oh my gosh these people raise 20000 dollars on Kickstarter these people raised a 100 thousand dollars on Kickstarter and now no one blinks twice. Somebody is raising a million dollars or 5 million dollars for a project and I feel like the money the real money that’s going to be made with people using patreon hasn’t really been realized yet. And the top creators haven’t been realized like the top 10 are probably not going to be the top 10. A year from now and not because they are making less money it’s because new people have come in that are making even more money than that. Tom Boruta: [00:09:00] Yeah I’ve seen lots of creators that used to be in the top 10 are not in the top 10 anymore and not because like you said they’re not losing support. It’s just these other creators have even more support. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:09:12] That’s right and that’s really good for the community because they’re bringing more users who have patriae on accounts. So that’s one of the big advantages now kickstarter is that a lot of people have a kickstarter account. Kickstarter has their credit card and it’s a lot easier to back a campaign than it used to be although it’s still probably 50 percent of the population doesn’t know what Kickstarter is so you forget what your grandparents know and people like your grandparents who love to give you money or to back something they just need to know how to do it. Tom Boruta: [00:09:39] Absolutely and I’ve actually done the Google Trends thing of comparing Kickstarter versus Patreon and actually Patreon is starting to pass Kickstarter on a regular basis for Google searches. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:09:52] I believe it and it has. You know people may mention their Kickstarter for a month or two or doing it right. Six months right five months leading up to the campaign than during the one huge blitz. But then they hardly ever mentioned it. Whereas if somebody is a blogger. They may be mentioning Patreon every day or every week for years because it’s this kind of constant rhythm. And I think that’s a much better model especially for people who are trying to make a living because you’re getting revenue in a much more even way. Speaking of which you have your own patreon paid for it supports Graphtreon. So tell us about that. Tom Boruta: [00:10:28] Sure. I collecting all this data. It gets quite expensive quite quickly. So I create a patreon campaign and I see I have like 120 patrons now supporting me and supporting the website and all the data I collect. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:10:48] That’s awesome. I’d like for you to walk us through your rewards. I feel like the biggest opportunity for learning is to see what other people are doing with their rewards. Because there’s a lot of ideas that we can get for our own patreon campaign. So what are your rewards and what are your most popular rewards. Tom Boruta: [00:11:03] Sure. I guess I’ll preface this saying like I’m a little bit I would think I’m a little bit of an outlier because I’m sort of a meta creator. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:11:11] There’s nothing wrong with meta creators my friends. Nothing wrong with that but I just want to leave that caveat in there. Tom Boruta: [00:11:18] I started my of my lowest year at two dollars just to support graftreon and to get access to I usually post like images or ideas of new features I’m going to create. I tried to pick reward levels where I thought it was worth it for the patron for the type of rewards I was giving out and then the next one is the names for draft five dollars and you get your name post on the website on this supporters page. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:11:51] And just just to jump in real quick. People love that. So as a creator often it’s easy to take for granted having your name on the internet or your face on the Internet in a public way. Right not just on social media but for normal people that’s really exciting to have them their face or their name featured on a website. And I find that this is a super common reward regardless of category is you know I will feature your name somewhere in the most popular shows like authors here. Like you get to be the name of a character who dies people love that. Tom Boruta: [00:12:25] Oh yeah I know it’s awesome I’ve seen a lot of creators use that really creatively like Peter Howland’s. I want to see like a year and a half ago. Did a campaign where he’s like everybody who is in my dollar above tier gets their name printed on the leaflet inside my CD. He got a huge surge of support just because your name is going to be permanently on the leaflet on all those CDs. However many he ends up selling like hundred thousand or whatever. And people love that stuff having their name at the end of YouTube videos all sorts of stuff like that. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:13:04] Yeah. All right so tell us about the ten dollar level sure that you get like a banner on the sports page. Usually at this point the people that want to pledge to me are other creators so we link to their patriotic page so hopefully they get some some pork from people perusing my site in this in a sense is using Patreon as an advertised advertising platform to sell advertising. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:13:30] So this is what historically to like buy a banner ad on my Web site and it’s really hard to get people to buy that but when you put it in the context of Hey you’re helping keep the site together. It’s a lot easier to do this. We actually have the same thing with Novel Marketing where people get to feature their book on the website. The link to Amazon is a very popular level. Tell us about the 25 dollar level. Tom Boruta: [00:13:50] So everybody in this group and the next group have their name on a banner and it rotates between all of them on all pages and graphtreon. So same thing sort of advertising and helping out graphtreon and now everybody is obviously going to go to the supporters page and see your name or your banner. So this is even more exposure. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:14:12] So the more you pay the more exposure. So twenty five dollars gets you on all the pages. Fifty dollars gets you on the home page and you have these limited. Is there a certain number that you’ll max out at or is that how many you can sell. Tom Boruta: [00:14:25] It’s how many I can sell at the moment. Yeah I have it set up so I should be able to handle as many as as many as I can get. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:14:35] All right. Very cool. Final question what do you have any trade secrets for our listeners have special tricks or tips that we haven’t asked you so far of ways to raise more money for their art. Tom Boruta: [00:14:50] Every creator seems to be different. And all the Creative solutions that get really big bumps are usually specific to what that creator is doing. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:15:03] I think that’s a powerful principle actually which is play to your strengths. Tom Boruta: [00:15:06] Yes Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:15:07] So there’s not one silver bullet. You know there’s things that everybody does together a lot of people do which is you know putting backers names places which is an inexpensive thing for you to do and has a lot of hope for the backer. But other than that you have to look at what you’re doing and how it connects with your audience which I realize is hard to be like oh here’s how to do it for a random person you have to look at what they’re doing specifically. Any cool trends that you’ve seen. What’s changed in those statistics from the beginning when you started and now have you seen anything change. Tom Boruta: [00:15:39] Not really just more and more people are jumping on the platform and ending up at different points on the top thousand list and stuff get lots of different like things I would never think of jumping of patreon like. It’s called Knitty Knitting Magazine magazine is quite popular. There’s a Nintendo magazine that’s quite popular. It just things I would never think of are popping up on there and finding success. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:16:11] It’s not being about popular generally. It’s about being very popular with a small motivated group of people. Tom Boruta: [00:16:17] Yep Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:16:17] And it’s you know you don’t have to be HBO you can be some creative access you know TV shows long a passionate audience. So Tom thank you so much for coming on the show. Where can our listeners find out more about you and about graphtreon. Tom Boruta: [00:16:31] Pretty much just go to Grasstree and calm. And I also post on Twitter at Grasstree on if there is a new feature to the website. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:16:40] All right we will have a link to Graphtreon and two digraph Tian Patreon on page in the show notes. If you are listening on a podcast app you can just swipe either up or to the side depending on the app in that link will be right there and go straight to those sites right there in your mobile device of use. I know most of you listen to iPhone’s but hopefully more of you will be listening on Androids in the future as Android embraces podcasting. Which is a conversation for another day. Tom thank you so much for joining us on the creative funding show. Tom Boruta: [00:17:10] Thanks for having me. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:17:12] Very happy to have Tom Baruta on the show and I know talking about graphs may not be that exciting but there is a really powerful principle that what gets measured gets managed and the better you understand how many subscribers you have how many patrons you have how quickly you’re adding them how much they’re backing at the better you have an understanding of those numbers the better you can adapt and tweak your patreon page to the backers that you have and to encourage more people to become your patron in the future. So I really do encourage you to go and check out graphtreon you can look up not just your own page your on page but any other picture on page you can look it up and see how they’re doing and compare and contrast and see what the best folks in the industry are doing and I will say I’m using graphtreon to find guests for the show to see who the top players are in various categories. Thomas Umstattd Jr.: [00:18:03] Thank you so much for listening today to the creative funding show you can find out more creative funding dot show. And as always please leave us a review on iTunes. We so appreciate your views on iTunes they are helping to spread the word about the Creative Funding Show. The post 004 Patreon Stats with Graphtreon Founder Tom Boruta appeared first on Creative Funding Show.

In this episode, I am going to sign up for a Patreon Account and share about the process and what I’ve learned along the way.  Links: Creative Funding Show Patreon Patreon Affiliate Link (we both each $50+ with this link) TLDR What is Patreon? Patreon is a rewards-based patronage platform where your fans can contribute to the creation of your future work. How do rewards work? Patrons back either monthly or per creation. The level of their patronage influences the level of the rewards they get. The more you back the creation, the more rewards. How do goals work? As the campaign raises more money overall, the individual rewards will get better and better. Transcript Transcription generated algorithmically by Sonix (Affiliate Link) [00:00:03] This is the Creative Funding Show, a podcast for YouTubers and podcasters who want the work they love without selling them to the creative funny show in this episode we’re going to talk about how to set up a patriotic page. [00:00:20] I’m of course Thomas Umstattd and this episode’s going to be a little bit different because I’m going to record it in stages as I go through the process of creating the Patreon page for [00:00:30] the Creative Funding Show. [00:00:31] I realize this is a bit meta but I’m going to go through this step myself and then rerecord on this track. What I’ve learned what my thoughts were what the process was like. So you can go along the journey with me as I create a Patreon page. Now I’ve kind of done this before when we did the novel Marketing Podcast. James Rhubart. My cohost did a lot of the set up I did some of the set up and so this will be my first time to create a Patreon page from scratch. So you’re going to get to go through that [00:01:00] process with me. So we’ll see how this goes. I hope it will be fun. I hope you enjoy it and I hope we all learn something. [00:01:08] All right this is Thomas from the future. I assume at this point when I first recorded it that you already have a patriotic account so I just go straight into editing my patron account. If you don’t have a patron account already and the first step is to go and create one which you can do. I actually have an affiliate link if you create an account through my link you’ll get some bonus [00:01:30] money so it’s creative funding that show forward slash Patreon on affiliate link I’ll have a link to it in the show notes in how this works. Is that based off how many patrons you get in the first 30 days. We both get a bonus. So it starts off fifty dollars. You get an extra 50 bucks. I get an extra 50 bucks and goes all the way up to 500 if you have a super successful show. So this is one of the ways that I’m funding this shows with affiliates one of which is with patriot and you can create that new account using [00:02:00] the affiliate link by going to creative funding show forward slash patreon affiliate link. [00:02:07] Okay. The first thing I did was I went to settings for my profile and changed my name so I’ve changed my name from Thomas Umstattd to Creative Funding Show and I’m on the settings page and so far it’s pretty straightforward. Uploaded my album artwork. I need to create a cover image of left that blank for now. I uploaded the Facebook URL and the Twitter handle in the [00:02:30] category of putting podcasting. It’s pretty straightforward and I’ve reserved patreon dot com slash creative funding show for the URL no adult content. And yes we’re going to have a custom RSS feed. So so far it’s pretty straightforward. It’s just kind of paint by numbers filling in the gaps. We’ll see if things get a little more complicated here in a second. [00:02:51] Alright I just finished the about section. This is probably the shortest page so far and remember correctly the paid period. But [00:03:00] that doesn’t make it easy since is where you describe your podcast or your project or whatever it is. And you know this is always so hard. You know how do you describe your own work and how do you do that efficiently. So I just put the creative funny show as a podcast for creators who want to make a living doing what they love using platforms like Patreon Kickstarter. This patreon page will be how we funded the show and it will also be where we experiment with ideas and suggestions of our guests. If you want to learn how to use patreon and better consider [00:03:30] backing this page. [00:03:31] Thank you so much. This isn’t great text that I just wrote. I’ll probably make it better. Moving forward and I think that’s an important point now with all of this I think it’s really easy for us to allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. And with a lot of the projects I’ve found it’s better to just launch with what you have and then improve it based off of feedback and analytics rather than keeping it to yourself. So to speak. [00:03:54] And then the second part and this again plays to probably my biggest weakness with this whole process [00:04:00] is the intro video. I’m very comfortable on audio I’ve done radio before. Video is not a strength for me so some of you listening are YouTube yours. You’ll be just the opposite. Right the video will be the easiest part of a patron because you’re on camera every day or or all the time. For me I’m not on camera that often. Mostly what I record are courses and so this is a little uncomfortable. I’ll play the audio from the video I kept it very short and you can listen to it but again I’m not seeing this video as something that I’m committed to I’m probably going to update it in [00:04:30] the future. You’ll notice I don’t really talk about the rewards all that carefully and that’s because 1 I want to be able to change the rewards as we experiment with stuff and 2 as I’m recording this I don’t know what the rewards are going to be. I’m a little vague on purpose so let’s roll the audio for the YouTube video. [00:04:49] I’m Thomas Umstattd that junior with the creative funding show and you have reached our patreon page. That’s right. The show about patreon has a page on patreon so we can prank it’s [00:05:00] what we preach. This page is where we’re going to give you some really cool rewards which you can see below but it’s also we’re we’re going to be experimenting with the ideas and suggestions from the guests who come on the show. This is our laboratory for excellent patreon and there’s one thing I’ve learned about experimentation is that some experiments fail. If you want to watch the adventure to see what works and what doesn’t work I encourage you to back this page and join us on the wild ride that is funding creativity. We’ll be doing it for our podcast helping you do [00:05:30] it for your YouTube channel your book or maybe a podcast of your own. Thank you so much for checking out this page for backing the show. [00:05:38] You’ll notice that that’s very similar to the text that I had on the page. I see these as being kind of the same message told different ways. Not everyone’s going to watch the video. Not everyone is going to read the text so I didn’t want to put any critical information in one that wasn’t also in the other. [00:05:55] So now I’m on the rewards tab. I had to make some decisions when it came [00:06:00] to rewards and this is really where I recommend that you don’t start to patreon with the start of your show. Normally how I would pick rewards is based off of listener feedback and what people like and you know we’d survey our listeners and give them more of that. Since I’m doing this before a single show is going live. I have no idea what you like and what you don’t like. So I’m doing this the hard way. But I have two levels to start off. One is watch the experience called Watch the experiment and it’s one dollar per creation. This [00:06:30] can be one dollar per episode or about four dollars a month for the text I have get the patron only updates and the patrons only Q&A episode. Now part of me wants to put the Q&A episode like that behind a goal. So like once we have a hundred dollars a month then we all mock the patrons only Q&A episode and the reason for that is if only 5 people back this or one person. Like if my mom my only backer I’m not going to have enough questions for Q&A episode. [00:06:57] That’s a lot of work for not a lot of reward. So I think [00:07:00] I’m going to retool this and add plus additional rewards to come. I realize that’s not a lot of incentive but our second level I think is a little more appealing and it’s the featured patron level and it’s everything in the 1 dollar level plus having your patreon page featured on the creative hunting show. So you’re wanting to get the word out about your patreon page. This is the way to do it. I’ve had this one limited so it’s limited to 16 patrons at this level. We had a level like this within Novel Marketing Podcast. It was a very popular [00:07:30] level and the way we’re doing it there and I’m doing the same way here is that it’s once per quarter we will have if you want your page featured and that’s 20 dollars and I think that will help us to get to our goal. One of the things I’ve learned about patreon is that often a lot of your money comes from a handful of people and so it’s important to have high level reward levels that encourage people to donate and you’ll have people donate beyond your highest level tier. So right now we are top patron at novel marketing and turned it over twice [00:08:00] what the highest tier currently available is. This is kind of a higher tier twenty dollars per podcast’s episode that’s going to be 80 dollars a month. That’s a lot of money but I’m hoping that some folks will want to look back at that to help make the podcast a reality. [00:08:13] Also patrons can limit the monthly amount so that’s 20 dollars per podcast’s they can limited say forty dollars a month and we’ll explore kind of how that works. That’s all I have for the rewards page. I’d love to have your ideas what kind of [00:08:30] rewards you’d love to see. This will be an iterative process but I’m kind of letting you peek under the hood of the very beginnings so you can learn with me. [00:08:40] So I’m on the next tab that says goals. This is where you set goals for the patreon. The closest thing to this in kickstarter world will be like a stretch goal so once we reach a certain earning level or a certain number of patrons everyone gets this special prize or gift or what have you. So I set [00:09:00] up three goals to start off the first ones a 100 dollar goal and it’s patrons only monthly Q&A episode so I rework that reward and I said plus the Q&A episode once it’s unlocked so this way we’ll have enough people to ask questions before we start doing the Q and A episode. The second goal is a 250 dollar goal and it’s a community Slack channel. So once we reach 250 dollars funding and I actually think about changing this from a earnings goal to a person goal in fact that many of us I’m going to say once [00:09:30] we get to 100 patrons create the slack channel. We have a handful of people who are donating a lot of money. [00:09:36] I don’t want to have a slack channel that will be an empty room so I’m making changes as I’m explaining it to you live on the air but the idea with slack you can talk with other patrons of the show you can ask questions you can get feedback on your patreon pages if you’re wanting to get feedback from the community. This will be a way to do that and that will unlock once we have 100 patrons and then I have a five hundred dollar a month goal [00:10:00] which is episode transcript so I’ve gone through this with many other podcasts transcripts or a bit of a pain. There’s two ways to do it. You can have a human do it or you can have a computer to it. When you have the computer do it you still have to have a human touch it and it’s work and it’s hassle so this one’s at five hundred dollars a month. The advantage of transcripts are not everyone likes to listen to podcasts. This is going to open up the show for them if they want to be able to glance through it. It also will make the show more findable on google and it will make it more searchable turn to look up the answer to a certain thing they heard a few episodes ago. Once [00:10:30] there’s transcripts it makes that easier. 500 dollars may be too much for this level. I may lower it but right now mostly focused on that 100 dollar level and 300 patron reward level and I will add more goals as I get feedback from you. [00:10:45] So again this is the initial launch early and iterate often model so I’m launching the thing mostly broken and as I get feedback from you I’m going to make it better. I realized this isn’t the best way to do it but it’s the most transparent way I can do [00:11:00] it and hopefully it’s helpful. [00:11:02] I just finished the thank you Page. At first I was thinking that I’d be like oh you have to back the Petreon on for a dollar to see the video or whatever but I’m not going to do that. I think that in the purpose of full disclosure I’ll go ahead and post the audio also the audio of the video here in a second. The idea with the thank you page is to give a heartfelt thank you to your patrons and typically patreon. Campaigns that I’ve backed in the past. This is not [00:11:30] a super polished video. So typically you get a little bit more of a behind the scenes view. So while the other videos I shot in my podcasting studio so to speak. This one I shot while I was going to get the mail with my wife trashed today while I’m recording this. Trash cans all over our neighborhoods it’s not super fancy but having my wife on the video is a big deal because she’s not typically one who likes to be on camera So that’s kind of like the special thank you for my patrons is that you get to see my wife and get a little glimpse behind the scenes. It’s [00:12:00] not amazing I realize but it’s where I’m starting. So let me roll the audio for that real quick. [00:12:09] Thomas Umstattd i’m walking to get the mail with my lovely wife is expecting our first baby I just wanted to say thank you so much for backing this patreon page. This is very scary to do especially since a lot of you are also patreon patron on in doing this and learning [00:12:30] in front of you and trying to be as transparent as possible. And I just want to say thank you from the bottom my heart for helping to make this possible and for joining us on this adventure and we’ll see you online. [00:12:41] So that was the video and I just shot that on my iPhone. I don’t have a fancy iPhone I’ve got a kind of an older iPhone but the video quality is great and I just had it held it while I was walking along the road. So it works. And another thing real quick is that you get to write some text here. I just put thank you. The creative [00:13:00] funding show would not be possible without you. You are an insider now and your voice is especially important in influencing where the show goes in the future. If you have a topic you’d like us to discuss. I guess you want us to interview or a question you want me to answer please let me know and then I sign it. Thomas and with all three of these videos or the intro video and the thank you video. Also while I was coding videos created a video for the website kind of introduced the show. Figured why not. They recorded them in Camtasia which is the same software that I use when I’m putting together a course [00:13:30] for Mac. I like it it’s pretty easy to use while being fairly powerful it’s not as powerful as like adobe premiere but I’m able to very very quickly make video recorder on my Web cam the video quality is meh those of you who are you tubers are going to cringe. I’m sorry but I invested in lightings at least the lightning is good and I’ve got a good microphone the focus goes in and out. [00:13:50] I’m not sure why but again it’s a starting point. And then what I do is I uploaded the videos to YouTube. Now the Thank You Video. I want to keep private. So it’s an unlisted YouTube video. So really the [00:14:00] only good way to get this video is to back the page you paste in the URL on the thank you page her on patreon. And then we are good to go. So that’s it. There’s just one more page the payments page and then it’s time to launch this thing. I’m still on the same day. I think I’ve spent maybe 30 minutes on them pages and probably an hour or so on the video so far so I’m still on day one here of launching this campaign. [00:14:28] All right. So the payments tab [00:14:30] and patreon creation process is actually pretty straightforward. So the first thing and ask is do I want to get paid monthly or per creation and I’m selecting the per creation here partly because I’m doing the Novel Marketing Podcast monthly and I want to do this one differently partly for the educations I’m doing it both ways and then it asks you to type in kind of per what you’re creating. So I just typed weekly podcast episode so charged my patrons only when I make a paid post per weekly podcast [00:15:00] episode. So create certain paid posts that I’ll have the podcast episode in them and that will trigger the payments and then the next question is earnings visibility so you can be transparent with how much money you are making or you can keep that private. [00:15:14] I’ve opted for public a lot of YouTubers do this certain really popular ones don’t. It can make sense in some cases to keep it private if you think that it will inspire envy in that it will cause people to hate you. I’m this is a no brainer for me because the whole [00:15:30] point of this process is to be super transparent with you as you know how patron works patreon works and how making money and how much money making so I’m selecting public event then this is an interesting change I don’t think this is the case. Last time I went through a patreon payment creation but it’s not asking me for my employee identification number or any the tax info as it just says we’ll ask you this information once you make some money which is really cool. [00:15:54] So now I’m going to go ahead and quick preview and launch. This [00:16:00] is really scary. In some ways it’s actually scary and a lot of ways because I know that you guys are wise in the ways of patreon and I’m opening myself up to a lot of criticism when I posted about this on the podcast or groups there like you know what do you know about patreon and doing it for a month. [00:16:17] I mean I’ve been backing patreon pages for almost as patron was created but I’ve only been a creator for a month on my other channel or at this point two months. That’s not a lot of history but you know I’m hoping it will be [00:16:30] nice to hope that this episode is interesting to you. I’m going to go ahead while we’re live and click go live. Quick yet give me a pop up if you want to leave the site leave. I don’t know why it asked me that it gave me a check box of what I’d done and what I had done. Most of the things were checked. [00:16:47] So now we’re live creative funding shows live on patriation so anyone can come in back now which is pretty crazy. I’m going to come back and start tweaking this almost immediately. But [00:17:00] you know I cannot create posts I can see a list of patrons. I’ve got a dashboard where I can see donations and what’s come in notifications messages and invite creators which is what gives me the affiliate link that I use on the show. So this is kind of a shorter show. I realize it’s a little weird. Normally this would be like screencast but I will say as a huge podcast listener I really love it when people create audio things that normally would be visual. [00:17:29] So I’ll see [00:17:30] you next episode thank you all so much for listening to the creative funding show and feel free to check out the patreon Page for creative funding show and you can see what it looks like and you can see what I look like. The post 003 How to Start a Patreon Page appeared first on Creative Funding Show.

Merchandise is hard to get right, especially for podcasters. It is easy to waste a lot of money on boxes of shirts that collect dust in your garage. In this episode, I break down the recent fundraising episode from the Revolutions Podcast for takeaways for podcasters and YouTubers. Mike Duncan is one of the top history podcasters in the world and he knows how to do a good fundraising episode. Leave a Review on iTunes. Transcription Transcription generated algorithmically by Sonix (Affiliate Link) Intro: [00:00:03] This is the creative show podcast for Authors YouTubers, and podcasters who want to fund the work they love without selling out. Thomas Umstattd: [00:00:15] I’m Thomas Umstattd Jr. The Patreon Patriot. Thank you for joining me today. We’re not going to be talking about Patreon though. We’re going to be talking about some other ways of fund raising. This episode of the creative funding show I would like to experiment with something a little [00:00:30] bit different. Thomas Umstattd: [00:00:31] The show is brand new and so we’re still looking for our format. And one of the things I like to experiment with is taking a really great example of somebody funding their creativity a creative use of creative funding and breaking it apart kind of blow by blow and giving it an evaluation or analysis and kind of taking away takeaways in the first show. I’d like to do this with the revolutions podcast. So for those who don’t know Mike Duncan [00:01:00] many years ago started the history of Rome podcast which is one of the first successful history podcasts and he went on to write a book about it which was very successful and now he’s doing the revolutions podcast where he takes different revolutions in history and tells those revolution’s stories and how he funds the podcast he is advertising in each episode. But another way that he funds the podcast is with a periodic fundraiser. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to play some snippets [00:01:30] from his show and then I will kind of jump in from time to time with commentary. Please let me know what you think of this show format if you hate this. This may be the only time I do it. And if you like it let me know because I want this show to be helpful to you. Also if you like it and you find somebody else doing something really creative please send me a link to that video on YouTube or that podcast recording and I may do a similar show like this in the future. So without any further ado let me roll the [00:02:00] first bit of Mike Dunkin’s revolutions podcast fundraiser episode. Hello and welcome to revolutions. 2018 fundraiser announcement Mike Duncan: [00:02:24] Hello. This is your official 2018 fundraiser announcement. If you’ve been around [00:02:30] this is the third one of these fundraisers that we’ve done and it’s all going to be working exactly the same way if you’re new well you’ve probably heard me talking about it before and now is your chance to get in on the action this fundraiser will run from tonight. April the 29th to Sunday June the 9th. So for just about six weeks it’s going to close up on June 9th. So the phone lines are now open and man is that ever an anachronistic way to put it that the kids even know that phrase I don’t think they do. Thomas Umstattd: [00:03:00] All [00:03:00] right so the first thing I want to point out here is that he has this fundraiser for a limited period of time that may seem like a bad idea. You’re like well why wouldn’t he want this fundraiser to run all the time. Why not always be selling merchandising and things were going to be hearing about in just a second but running it for limited period of time just several really key things. One it allows him to focus his energy in dealing with fund raising related activities into a period of time and which when it’s done allows him then to focus [00:03:30] fully on his podcast. But the other and this is I think an even more important principle is that it creates urgency. It’s really easy with the podcast to say oh I’ll buy that T-shirt later I’ll buy that hat later. But when you’re like we know there’s a certain date and if you miss that date you will miss out. Suddenly you’re triggering FOMO. So not only does it help him with his creation. Also I think he’s going to ultimately help him sell more products and more merchandise. So that’s a really creative strategy that he’s [00:04:00] using. One more thing that he’s doing here that I think is really clever is that this is a standalone episode so it keeps all of this explanation from crowding his core episodes where he’s telling stories of various events in history which means for people who are kind of moderate to mediocre fans of his. It’s very easy for them to skip this entire episode. You know if somebody is a moderate fan they’re not going to buy a T-shirt from him anyway. So it allows him to keep his audience large which supports his advertising revenue [00:04:30] while the core fans are going to totally listen to the six minute dedicated fundraising episode. All right. Now let’s go to the next item. Mike Duncan: [00:04:37] This year we feature four unisex t shirts. We have two new additions to the family and two rereleases shirts that are back by popular demand. The two classics are the Livia did it shirt and the gentleman Johnny’s party train North American tour 1777 shirt. Now these guys are both printed on slightly different colors. This time around to distinguish [00:05:00] them from the original run but now is your chance to snap them up. And when I went on the book tour one of the most frequently asked questions was when and how can I get a Livia did a shirt or a gentleman Johnny shirt. Now is your chance. Now added to the lineup is two new shirts. The first is to the barricades. Because it’s not like there wasn’t going to be a shirt about the barricades. And then finally there is one that is drawn from the Cato the Elder quote that I use to open [00:05:30] chapter 1 of this storm before the storm. Thieves of private property passed their lives in chains. The use of public property in riches and luxury. Thomas Umstattd: [00:05:40] All right so you’ve probably noticed these are super inside references which is really smart. You don’t want it to be overly popular. The sort of thing anybody else would be doing because the whole point of this is that it allows insiders to proclaim that they are insiders so if you’ve been listening to the history of Rome in the Lydia did it [00:06:00] shirt or Livia didit shirt you know Livia is presumably poisoned like everyone in Rome when she was alive and it was kind of an ongoing joke. Every time somebody died of mysterious causes even hundreds of years later Mike Duncan was joking. Oh I think Livia did it because she was just such a prolific poisoner. That’s the sort of inside reference if you’re not listening to his podcast you wouldn’t get and that’s that’s good. And think about that when you’re creating merch for your own podcast her YouTube channel what are my inside jokes that [00:06:30] people would be want to proclaim that they’re on the inside of. Now one other thing that he’s doing here and this is a bit of a risk and will be interesting to see how this plays out. Thomas Umstattd: [00:06:38] When he did this fundraiser earlier he said this shirt is for a limited time and once you miss out you’ll miss out and it’s your only chance to get this shirt. That created a great sense of urgency and scarcity made the shirt into a collector’s item. But then people were like oh I still want to buy the shirt. So what he’s doing here is he’s rereleasing the shirt. But in a different color. So it’s still exclusive the old [00:07:00] way he did it. I suspect no one will get after him for it. But this is a risk right. Some of the people would like I wanted my shirt to be a collectible and now you’re devaluing it. It will be interesting to watch. I don’t know how that’s going to play out. I don’t think it’s going to be a problem because of changing the color but just keep in mind when you make a promise about something being limited you really have to fulfill that promise or people will get unhappy. Mike Duncan: [00:07:21] But getting back to the fundraiser each T-shirt is thirty five dollars. And please remember I will post one giant bulk order after [00:07:30] all the orders have been taken. So around the second week of June I will place the order and then they’ll start shipping after that. Thomas Umstattd: [00:07:37] All right. This is a brilliant way to do t shirts. So by doing one big bulk order Mike Duncan is doing two things that’s really smart. One is he will know how many smalls and how many women Smalls to order for each shirt so he can order exactly the right number of shirts maybe a few extra to give away at events. And secondly it’s going to allow him to get his cost per shirt really low. So let’s [00:08:00] say he’s able to get the shirts for five dollars. That means that he is making potential in twenty five dollars per sale which is the whole point. The point here is that he’s got to make some money. There’s got to be some profitability here in his backers know that. And so you may like 35 dollars for a shirt. That’s a ton of money. It is. But really you’re making up 35 35 dollar donation to a show that you like and in exchange you’re getting this shirt that proclaims your insider access. So now the temptation would be again [00:08:30] like oh you can buy the shirt any time it’s on CafePress and he’s making only five dollars a shirt. This is a much much shrewder way of doing it if you’re wanting to really fund your lifestyle with Merch. All right let’s see what else he has. Thomas Umstattd: [00:08:44] So in addition to the t shirts there is also now Appendix 2 of the history of Rome a collection of five new History of Rome episodes covering Roman adventures or more accurately misadventures in Hispania during the second century B.C.. These [00:09:00] episodes are doing double work for me because for one I was still in the relatively early days of the history of Rome when this time period came around and I moved pretty swiftly from the Second Punic War to the third Punic War to the Grocii brothers and then when I finished the history of Rome and looked back the Iberian wars were a rather gaping hole in the narrative. And I was reminded of this again when I started working on the storm before the storm because the Roman campaigns on the Iberian Peninsula had a lot [00:09:30] to do with setting up the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic. But when it came time to actually write the book all of that material I had researched had to get compressed into about 250 words in the prologue. So I am presenting it all to you. Now each episode is about twenty five minutes and you can either buy them individually for five dollars or get the whole set for twenty dollars which to be honest is what you should do. It’s about two total hours of new history of Rome material. It’s a steel. Thomas Umstattd: [00:09:59] Now [00:10:00] what he’s done is he’s transitioned from merchandise which is what a shirt is to creating a product. And the easiest simplest product to create is more of what you’ve been giving away for free people. Your fans are already in love with what you’re giving them away for free and so you’re giving them opportunity to buy some exclusive part of that podcast. This I find is a very common amongst history podcasters they’ll have the main part of the narrative. You know you get to that episode of The History podcast that’s free but [00:10:30] some special bonus content you pay for and that’s how they fund the whole thing. And again you may be like oh my gosh this is so boring. You’re not in the target audience right if you’re not a fan of history. The idea of getting two hours of what Rome was doing in Spain. Man that sounds really boring but for a fan of history like me I’m like man I’m really curious how Rome handled Spain. And so I’m in the target audience and I’m using an example of a podcast that I like but this is a really solid way and the benefit of this for Mike is that his cost [00:11:00] of delivering those two hours of audio is basically free it’s no more expensive than what he’s already doing through his podcast. And so all 20 dollars goes into his fundraising fund which is really smart. So the margins here are even better than on the T-shirt. So while he has good margins with the t shirts the margins on the products are even better. All right let’s get back to Mike. Mike Duncan: [00:11:22] Ok so the next thing is that if you listen to episode seven point thirty three already you know that Mrs. revolutions and I have embraced [00:11:30] the rather madcap scheme to move our family to Paris. This means moving into a very tiny apartment and we’re taking this opportunity to massively downsize and I’m moving on from most of my physical library books. So I thought that it would be cool if you wanted to own a piece of the show and support the show. I would do the same thing I did in the first fundraiser and put autographed copy of the books that I used to write the revolutions podcast up on the blocks so I have curated a collection of my favorite books [00:12:00] from each series and would be thrilled to move them onto a home where they would be loved instead of just having them wind up in some goodwill bargain bin. So it was a sort of bonus prize for donating at a hundred dollars. You get to pick out one of these books and it’s all yours. Thomas Umstattd: [00:12:15] This may not seem like a very reproducible strategy of giving away books but think about the ingredients that go into the creations that you do if you do sketch YouTube videos. Maybe some of the props that you use in those videos can be valuable and to give away to [00:12:30] patrons know at the top levels. This is very popular in Hollywood. Some of the artifacts used in popular movies and then sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. You may not be able to get a hundred thousand dollars for a prop that you use or some other ingredient into your creation but you may be able to get a few hundred dollars and you’re able to get your money back. Maybe on what you spent creating that prop. So just think about as you’re doing fundraisers. What do I have that to me is trash but to somebody else is a treasure. In a sense he’s using his podcast [00:13:00] listenership as hundreds of thousands of listeners to do a little bit of Craig’s listing and these products there are these books are far more valuable to his listeners than they will be to anybody else. His signature is only valuable to people who listen to him. But this is really clever. So think about some ways you can do this for your own. All right let’s get back to Mike. Mike Duncan: [00:13:19] So that’s the pitch for new shirts five new episodes of the history around to go along with the already existing five new episodes of The History of Rome. You can help support the move to Paris by buying up a piece [00:13:30] of my library and letting it go live in a better home and possibly win an autographed copy of the storm before the storm. Love you guys! Thomas Umstattd: [00:13:45] That’s the fundraising episode. I did a little trimming here and there but that’s the core essence of it. And it’s not very long episode in its entirety I think was six minutes and he just makes a direct pitch and it’s very unapologetic. Notice he’s not apologizing for [00:14:00] why he’s asking for money. He’s been doing good work and he’s expecting his superfans to help him out if they want to. It’s totally optional. He’s not holding anything for ransom so to speak are threatening to cancel the show and he’s being very transparent about what he’s needing the money for he explains in the main show that he’s writing his next book about Lafayette and he’s going to Paris to do the research. So you’re helping that book happen by funding his move to Paris so he’s not just going to Paris because he’s wanting to live the high life he’s connected. [00:14:30] His trip to Paris with his podcast and with his history work. He’s like No I need access to the archives there into the histories that are only available in French. And so he’s asking his backers to be a part of that journey. And I think this is a great example of doing a fund raising episode and we will see how it goes. And I do want to hear from you what you think of this episode. If this seems super boring you are like oh my gosh I don’t want this. Please let me know. Again this is the early days of the show and I’m wanting to make adaptations [00:15:00] based off of your feedback and one way you can get feedback is to leave a review on iTunes. This really helps. We’re really hoping to hit New and noteworthy and you can help spread the word about this show. All you have to do is leave a review or if you don’t want to leave or if you just leave a star rating between one and five stars I’m happy for any number of stars just give it a rating and I will continue to work to make this show more valuable for you. Thomas Umstattd: [00:15:25] Finding good examples of creators funding their art creatively. I’m Thomas Stan [00:15:30] Jr.. Thank you for listening. The post 002 How to Get Podcast Merch Right – Revolutions Podcast with Mike Duncan Deep Dive appeared first on Creative Funding Show.

Creators can make money through merch, affiliate revenue, advertising, sponsorship, crowdfunding, and patronage. The podcast discusses the importance of diversifying income sources and building community through merch sales. It also explores the benefits and challenges of advertising, sponsorship, and crowdfunding for creators.

In this episode, I introduce myself and the show. Thomas Umstattd is an author, speaker, and podcaster. The Creative Funding Show is a podcast where you will hear the stories of Authors, YouTubers, and Podcasters who are funding their creativity using platforms like Patreon, Kickstarter. You will also learn about making money with advertising, sponsorships, merch, and other creative ways to make a living as an artist. Links Leave a Review on iTunes Subscribe Ask Question Suggest a Guest Novel Marketing Podcast Transcription Transcription generated algorithmically by Sonix (Affiliate Link) [00:00:03] This is the creative funded show podcast for authors, YouTubers, and podcasters who want to fund the work they love without selling out. Welcome to the first ever creative funding show. So my name is Thomas Umstattd and in this episode 0, I’d like to introduce myself. So if you don’t care about me you’re welcome to skip this show. [00:00:32] But I just wanted to talk a little bit about my background and why I’m doing this show. So the creative funding shows a podcast for creators who want to make a living doing what they love using platforms like Patreon and Kickstarter sponsorships and more. And our goal is to be primarily an interview show talking with creators to learn how they fund their work. Talking with industry insiders about the tools that they’re making to make creators lives better and also doing deep dives individual episodes with me answering your questions about funding creating and thriving as a creator. So but in this episode, I’m going to talk about myself which is in general not a goal of the show. I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about me but I do want to kind of share my story of how I got to be talking into this microphone to you right now. So I’ve been buzzing on the outskirts of the creative community for a long time. The first video YouTube video of me went up in 2006. So as of this recording that was 12 years ago and I remember in 2006 being so surprised at YouTube as a platform and how seamless the experience was. I don’t know if any of you can remember before the days of YouTube we watched videos with real player and it was awful Real Player was the worst and the YouTube was 1 million times better. There’s a reason why you don’t install real player on your computer anymore it’s because everything has gotten better than that. [00:02:04] Since then I started my first podcast in 2007. It was about videogame addiction. It’s since Pod faded sadly. I don’t even know if I have the recording anymore but I had no idea what I was doing back then. But I did enjoy doing it. I’ve been listening to podcasts and I loved podcasting and I had fun buying my first equipment and I was doing the editing at garage band back garage band was actually good for podcasting. Those days were good. In 2013 I started my first Kickstarter campaign for a WordPress plugin that we were developing at the time called my book table. It’s a plugin that allows you to add a bookstore to your WordPress website if you’re an author. It’s very popular amongst authors in fact it’s still it’s tied for number one in the most popular bookstore plug in for authors and at the time we didn’t know if there was an audience for it. We’d been using a version of this plugin internally when we would build websites for authors. We used it to save ourselves time and we weren’t sure if there was a demand amongst authors generally for people who wanted to buy the plugin so we put it on Kickstarter. We had a goal of twenty five hundred dollars I believe and we ended up raising over twelve thousand dollars. So the answer to the question does the world want this plugin was a resounding yes. [00:03:20] Yes the world wants this plugin. So we launched my book table and it’s still an active plugin and active development for the last five years have gone through quite a few changes and improvements have added a lot of features and is now very robust and fairly mature software in 2013 also started the Novel Marketing Podcast with James L. Robart still an active podcast in fact this was the podcast that led to me embracing this show. More on that in a bit. In 2014 I crowdfunded a course on crowdfunding on Indiegogo. So after I did my book table on Kickstarter in rapid succession I did a bunch of other crowdfunding campaigns both with myself and with others all of which success succeeded at 100 percent success rate on Kickstarter and people kept asking me for advice on crowdfunding. And so in the end part to get them to shut up. I basically took everything I knew and put that into a course in 2014 and that course I didn’t realize at the time but many people had tried crowdfunding courses on crowdfunding and they had all failed. So I was trying to do something that no one to that point had succeeded in doing. And with the help of Mary DeMuth my code teacher in the course we successfully funded crowdfunded a course on crowdfunding which was very meta. It was we have lots of Inception jokes it was lots of fun and we’ve gotten some great feedback from that course and it’s been fun getting. [00:04:50] Occasionally somebody will send me a book that they crowdfunded on either on Kickstarter or Indiegogo. It was of course primarily for authors and in 2014 I joined Patreon on as a patron. So I’ve been a fan of Pomplamoose for years. Back when Jack Conte was just a musician. I remember being impressed with all of the different instruments he could play in his Pomplamoose songs and I loved their music. I would buy their songs on iTunes and so when they went on Patreon it was a no-brainer and I very impressed with Patreon as a platform. So I’m a kickstarter person originally. That’s my background. But when I looked at patron like I get it I see the appeal of getting a little bit of money every month rather than a huge lump sum of money only after you do this exhausting Kickstarter campaign. So part of the reason I backed Pomplamoose was because I was fans of them but to be honest have a bigger reason I backed them was because I just wanted to observe Patreon and wanted to watch how was you know growing as a platform how people were using it and I slowly started backing different campaigns and different creators on Patreon that kind of seeing what they were doing in 2015 I crowdfunded my first book I crowdfunded and other people’s books but I did my own book on dating and relationships. [00:06:12] It was based off of a viral blog post that I wrote and I didn’t really want to write the book it kind of did. I was like “Okay world if you want this book make the money happen” and the readers of my blog made the money happen. So I spent most of 2015 writing the book that they wanted me to write and researching it and recovering from writing and it was lots of drama and great fun and they raised eleven thousand dollars to make the book possible. And it was another learning curve. You know learning how to crowdfund. And you know it’s a different world. Crowdfunding in 2015 was different from what it was in 2013. And it’s different than it is now. Kickstarter is maturing as a platform and backers are getting more sophisticated in 2016 2017 I guess hosted a radio show from time to time and in the summer of 2017 actually quit my job and did radio full time for a while which was a great experience I got to see how the traditional side of the industry worked and I also got to see that I’m much happier in indie digital world. Even in traditional terrestrial world so much happier behind a podcasting microphone than I am behind a radio microphone. But I do love radio and to love talk radio and in 2017 we kept podcasting on the Novel Marketing Show and I started thinking about funding the show Patreon. [00:07:29] I talked with my cohost about it James Rhubart and I went to look for a podcast about Patreon on and I couldn’t find it. So there had been the Patreon podcast and it had faded. It only had one or two episodes that were downloadable and it hadn’t had any new episodes in years. And I was like there needs to be a podcast primarily for Patreon. I kind of you know early 2018 I was like somebody needs to make this. And so finally I was like maybe this should be me. In the meantime I launched the novel marketing Patreon campaign and we’re currently around 150 175 dollars a month on that. It’s a brand new campaign launched it this year without the help of a podcast about Patreon. So this in a sense this show is what I wish I’d had when I launched our first Patreon campaign for a novel marketing. So I realized that all of the marketing pages nothing spectacular. It’s a very niche podcast it’s a marketing podcast for authors and primarily for fiction authors. My hope is that this show will just appeal to authors but also to you tubers and podcasters. And my goal is not just to focus on Patreon but also Kickstarter and also sponsorships and also other ways of bringing in revenue. If you have a creative way of funding your art. Shoot me an email or reach out to me and CreativeFunding.show. We just might have you on the show to talk about how you are funding your art and that’s where we are now. [00:08:58] I am launching this podcast. I don’t know if it will take off I don’t know if you will like it and I don’t know what you’re looking for. This is a brand new project for me and I haven’t launched a brand new project like this in a very long time so I’m looking forward to it. I’m having fun making these episodes. I am hoping that this show will be a blessing to you and help to you as you fund your art. I really do hope that together we can end up starving artists or at least reduce how much artists starve and keep them from feeling like they have to sell out in order to make a living. Now to be perfectly transparent while I’ve been buzzing around the community for a long time I am not right now an expert it patriotic. I’ve been a patriot on page owner for two months a little over two months with the novel marketing show. I’ve been a patron for years but I’ve just been starting out as a creator on patrons so I’m going to be learning along with you and I’m asking questions. I’m asking questions and trying to have that beginner’s mind. And yes I’ve been crowdfunding for a long time but patron is a different animal and I’m learning that I’m going to be learning alongside of you in terms of show format. [00:10:12] The goal is to shoot for between 20 and 30 minutes per show I want this to be the kind of show you can listen to while you’re working out at the gym or driving to work. And if you know someone using your honor Kickstarter. I really need help here at the beginning getting guests the longer the show goes and the more famous it becomes the easier. Guests can be defined in the early days. This is where you come in to be particularly helpful and I plan to interview both creators like you and industry professionals. So people who work at Patreon on our YouTube graph Triano really any tool that makes creating easier makes raising money easier. I’d love to talk to those industry professionals but I don’t want to just talk to them. I want to hear stories from creators and from stories from all kinds of creators so I don’t just want to talk to veterans who are making you know 10000 dollars a month I also want to talk to people who are just getting started and are making fifty dollars a month. You know they just got their first 20 backers and hearing their story. Hearing what they’re going through what their challenges are in the goal is to be encouraging would encourage you show you just how easy it is to start increasing your revenue on platforms like Pierron and Kickstarter and other ways of making money. So don’t think that this is just the patriae on show it’s going to be primarily the patrons show but it’s not going to only be about patriarchy. [00:11:34] There are other shows about Kickstarter and they are good. So I feel like there’s less need for me to talk about Kickstarter as Kickstarter rolls out its drip platform which is their direct competitor to Petrine we’ll be talking about that specifically. But right now there’s no one in the podcast potest fear that I can find he’s talking about patrons that’s going to be our primary emphasis at least in these early days. But the show’s going to evolve based off of your feedback and to kick things off a plane to do some introductory solo episodes. As I find guests I’ll be filling the backlog with shows that are just me but I plan to put into practice what I’m learning on the show. So in general you don’t necessarily want to launch a patriae on campaign right at the beginning of a new project when you have no audience. You need the crowd before you can fund. But I’m going to break that rule and launch this podcast along with a patriotic campaign partly so that those of you who are with me from the beginning can watch the process. So the early days were not going to have a lot but as we talked to people and as I learn I’ll be putting that advice directly into a patron campaign that will be like our testbed our guinea pig. And I think that’ll be fun. [00:12:46] I think it also helped fund this show. I think it’s important for the creative funding show to be funded itself. So we’ll talk more about that patriae on page in a future episode. I’m actually thinking about doing the show and creating the page and recording myself as I do adding giving my thoughts and feedback as I create a patron page from scratch. So listen for that in a future episode and just finally we’re going to be on social media. The page has a Facebook page and a Twitter page that will have those links in the show notes who you just scroll down you can find a link in the show notes or to the side. My goal is to have any link that we mention on this show. You don’t have to remember how to spell it. The link will be in the show notes which if you’re listening on an app on your phone you can just press with your finger and if you’re listening on the website you can just click the link so I’m hoping to make life easier for you in that way. And one final way that you can help. This show is asking questions on creative funding dot show and leaving a review on iTunes. I can’t tell you how helpful that is in the early days of a podcast if you have any hope of getting to new and noteworthy. You need reviews if you’re willing to leave a review can be positive it can be negative. [00:13:59] Feel free to give me feedback through the reviews on iTunes. And yeah. Thank you so much for listening. [00:14:05] I really appreciate what you do to make the world a better place with art that to connect with me go to create a funny show. Doc thanks for listening.   The post 000 Introducing the Creative Funding Show and Thomas Umstattd Jr. appeared first on Creative Funding Show.