Patreon is a site that was started several years ago that helps creators raise support to do the things that they love to do. For example, if you are an artist, and want to find supporters to help you make a full-time career out of artistry, then you could set up a Patreon account.
In this article, we’ll be looking the question, is Patreon a scam? We’ll also look at how specifically most people make money with it.
Website: https://www.patreon.com/
Product: Patreon
Creator(s): Jack Conte and Sam Yam
Description: A site you can use to raise support for those who are creating things – people give you money, and you give them something in return.
Price: Free!
Recommended? Yes, depending on who you are, and what you do!
Rating: 10 out of 10
Back in 2013, there was this guy named Jack Conte. Doing stuff on YouTube, specifically musical stuff, he noticed that while he got a lot of views for his music, he never quite got a lot of money from it.
Because of this, he started thinking about how to raise more money to support him as he continued making music videos. Out of this, came the idea of Patreon.
Jack took his idea to his roommate and friend, Sam Yam, and together they built Patreon to what it is now.
What Exactly Is Patreon
Patreon works like this: You set up a page where you’ll give your supporters something, called benefits, if they give a certain amount of money, which they term as a tier.
For example, if you’re making videos, one of your benefits could be giving people all the uncut versions of your videos, or a weekly behind-the-scenes view of what goes on. You could put this benefit under a tier, and if they paid into that tier, they would receive the benefits of that tier.
Patreon was specifically set up for creators – ones who could share their work for the support they need. And you don’t just have to be a video creator to use Patreon. You can be a writer, blogger, coder, podcaster, etc, to be able to effectively use Patreon.
Patreon works differently than other support programs, as most others don’t have a way that you can give something to those who support you.
For example, if you were to raise support through a PayPal donation, or through the process of a GoFundMe account, you don’t really give anything to those who support you.
Patreon, on the flip side, offers you a way to receive support from others, but offers an incentive to be a supporter as well. With the incentives, those benefits, you’ll have more people becoming your partner, especially if your incentives are something your supporters and followers want.
What’s the Cost?
Patreon is completely free to use! You don’t need to pay for anything to use their platform. All you need, as said above, is to be a creator and willing to give you stuff away in exchange for support.
Having said that, Patreon does take a certain amount of money from what you make, so that they can keep Patreon running, as well as deal with all those unfortunate problems when money is passing from one person to another.
As you can see from the screenshot above, you’ll be able to keep 90% of what people pay to support you. They personally keep 5% for themselves, and then use the other 5% for any of those transaction fees that come up.
Keeping 90% is actually pretty good for a support campaign. Other sites, like YouTube and Twitch ( a popular streaming website) keep much more than 5% when you receive support from those respective companies’. So Patreon does allow you to keep the most money for your troubles.
Help and Support
Patreon doesn’t just give you a page for you to set up, and then leave you to it. They are just as supportive as your most loyal fans.
When you go to set up a page, Patreon will help show you what works best, and what doesn’t work. Giving you tips and tricks along the way, Patreon really does want to see you succeed within finding ways for people to support you.
They even have a page, that is strictly for helping out people using patreon, known as Patreon U.
Within the page, you’ll find all kinds of hints as to how to build a successful Patreon page, as well as getting to see a glimpse of pages from others who use Patreon (and are making a lot from it).
Within Patreon U, they’ll walk you through six different steps:
- Get To Know Patreon
- Start Building Your Patreon Page
- Launch Your Patreon Page
- Grow Your Patreon Membership Business
- Live The Life Of A Creator
- Get More Help
If you are serious about Patreon and finding support there, then I would highly recommend that you check out Patreon U.
Is Patreon A Scam?
Patreon can all appear good on paper, and seem like a legit company. But sometimes, looks can be deceiving. So is Patreon legit, or do they just have the appearance of looking legit?
SSL and Copyright Notices
When going to their website, you’ll find that they have their own SSL and encryption. What this means is that when you use their website, all your data that you send to them, as well as anything they send to you, will all be encrypted. This is helpful as then hackers can’t easily get their hands on that info.
Also, if you scroll down to the bottom of their site, you’ll find that they have a copyright notice of 2019. You might not believe it, but I’ve found people with sites that have a copyright notice of 2010, while it is the year 2019!
Are things being updated regularly?
Another way to check if something is a scam, or if it is no longer being properly supported, is to look at the companies’ blog, and social media accounts.
Basically, if they have those things, but if they don’t seem to be publishing new content regularly, or if they seem to not be answering questions, then there could be a good chance that the site is no longer a legit site.
Quite the opposite of the above, Patreon seems to be publishing new content daily, as well as keeping everything up-to-date, and well maintained.
Currently, Patreon is on three different social media platforms; Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. All three of them show that Patreon is being updated regularly.
As you can see from the screenshot below, Patreon’s Facebook last post was roughly 2 hours since writing this:
Patreon’s blog, on their own website, seems to be updated regularly as well.
As you can see from the image above, the latest post was less than a week ago. With this, and their social being actively updated, you can clearly tell that the people behind Patreon want to keep things well-maintained.
What about all the legality pages?
Often-times, scammers will create pages, like terms of use, or a privacy policy, and add in extra clauses where they say that they’ll take as much of your info, and use it for their owns means.
But Patreon isn’t like that. In fact, they go above and beyond to help try to not make those pages boring.
Patreon tries to help keep these legal pages fairly simple and even entertaining. I actually enjoyed reading through their Terms Of Use page, and understood the majority of it.
Also, as you read them, you’ll find that they aren’t hiding anything, and are being as transparent as possible. They tell you clearly how you can use their site, as well as what data they collect and keep.
Is Patreon Recommended?
Patreon is recommended if you are a creator who is looking for a way to have people support you. But if you’re just a normal person, looking for a way to make money, then Patreon probably isn’t for you.
Here at We Get Scammed For You, we took the liberty of setting up a Patreon page, and would recommend it to those who are interested in raising your own support.
As you can see from the photo above, our page is pretty basic, and doesn’t have any supporters yet, though we haven’t quite actively promoted it.
But overall, if you have a passion about something, and are interested in creating things for your loyal fans, then we would highly recommend that you check out Patreon!
Patreon is a Scam, they make lots of money misrepresenting who they are and what they do. They get “others” to offer their membership as part of a third party come-on. They grab what dollars they can and call it an “active billing agreement”. Pure Dishonesty!
This “Patreon” is a total scam! I never, ever signed up for a reoccurring charge every month. I have no idea how they were able to scam me. It had to be through PayPal and Facebook. BEWARE!!!!
Thanks for letting us know Michelle,
Patreon is a complete scam – I have been posting for nearly two months in relation to our kitten rescue work – and nobody can even search for my account!
I can see what you say, I was thinking such sites will likely never promote people for free. you can see their startup page, is full of crap. you need to promote yourself by other ways or means. for example, have a facebook page, or instagram or somewhere actually people will find you, and where you can search people to make them join you. With that said, people who is wanting to spend their money in something on the net is hard to find, mostly because patreon apparently takes money from pateron as a subscription, much like netflix or something like that will do. and really, not all people is up to that.