How to get started on Patreon

No matter what you make, you can build your creative home on Patreon and invite your closest fans to join you. They’ll get every post you share, unfettered by an algorithm or ads, and you’ll be able to deepen your fan relationships and build community around your work. If and when you want, you can also start earning by selling digital products directly from your creator page, and adding paid membership to build your business on your own terms.

Here, you’ll find tips for how to start using Patreon to share your work, strengthen your community, and grow your creative business.

Establish your creative home base on Patreon

To start gathering your community on Patreon, you can use your customizable creator page to:

• Publish your creative work. Whether you share video or podcast episodes, behind-the-scenes clips, illustrations, printable 3D characters, or newsletters, you can share your work directly with your fans in their Patreon feeds and inboxes. The team behind Worlds Beyond Number, for example, shares regular episodes of their podcast The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One with their whole community, and reserves a special “Fireside Feed” with paying members. And documentarian Danny O’Dwyer shares his monthly “Patron show,” featuring upcoming projects, with the whole Noclip community, and paying members get early access to documentaries, exclusive making-of videos, and Q&As.
• Poll your fans. You can engage your community (a.k.a. the people who love and know your work best) and get feedback using Patreon’s poll feature, right in your posts, and see the results in real-time. For example, you might ask members to vote on potential topics for a podcast episode or new characters for a video or game, like Mia Kay, the creator behind M3DM, did. She invited her members to vote on which Norse-inspired monsters she should design next for a tabletop role-playing game.
• Make decisions with data. On your Patreon creator dashboard, you can manage member communications and view active members and related details (including your current member count, the date members joined your Patreon community, and insights into the content that they’re engaging with most). And, if you decide to add paid membership or sell digital products, you can tap into community insights and analytics so you have a true signal of what your most valuable fans want to see, and you can decide where to focus your creative efforts.

By building your creative home on Patreon, outside of social media, fans can join your community to access the work they love directly from you — and you’ll know that no matter what type of media you share, they’ll see it. With your creative work and fans all in one place, you’re in a good position to strengthen your community and build your business your way.

For early access to connect with fans outside of paid membership, join the waitlist.

Then, start growing your creative business

When you’re ready to start making money from your creative work, you can easily add on to your Patreon, with two built-in ways to earn:

• Sell digital products like podcast episodes, videos, high resolution images, music tracks, and downloadable files that anyone can buy directly from your Patreon shop.
• Offer paid membership tiers that give your members access to exclusive content and community experiences for a monthly or annual fee. Paid membership enables you to earn a reliable, regular income, directly from your fans. And it gives your fans more of what they love, including a deeper connection to you, your work, and a community built around shared interest.

With these approaches, what you make and what your audience loves blends beautifully together in growing your business. Bringing together your community on Patreon means you have seamless ways to share your paid offerings and build pathways for fans to upgrade, explore, buy, and enjoy more of your creative work. Patreon’s integrated promotion tools also let you easily share your digital products with fans elsewhere and give them a reason to visit your Patreon and see everything that you offer.

Ready to open a Patreon shop? For early access to Commerce, join the waitlist.

Ready to jump in? Here’s a quickstart guide for getting set up on Patreon

No matter where you’re at as a creator, you can start your Patreon journey quickly and easily, in just four steps:

1. Set up your creator page. If you haven’t already, sign up for Patreon. For more advice on how to get going, read how to start your creator page in Patreon’s Help Center.
2. Share with your fans. To connect with your audience, post news and updates from your creative world on your Patreon. For more ideas, read how to design a content strategy, based on your creative superpowers.
3. Spread the word. Let the world know about your Patreon and invite your fans to join. Looking for promotion and marketing tips? We got you: Read our guide for advice on how to promote your Patreon.
4. Connect with fellow creators. To find your people and hone your skills together, participate in Patreon’s creator community and attend interactive programs, events, and workshops.

You've got this!

As you get going, remember that you’ve already got what you need to get started: your special flavor of creative ingenuity, that certain something that makes what you do special. Whether you produce a comedy podcast, design character pieces for role-playing games, or host a themed book club, with Patreon’s tools, you can build a creative home that brings together what you do with the people who love it — all while growing your independent creative business. And if you feel like you don’t have it all figured out, don’t worry, that’s totally normal. Don’t let it stop you from starting; you can test and learn as you go. We can’t wait to see what you do next!

For more tips on determining what to share, read about how to use free content to grow your community on Patreon.