An Open Letter to My Patreon Creators

I’m sending you money. This is what I ask in return:

• Do stuff.
• Use this money for you
• Work in public

I’m paying you because I want you to be able to keep doing what you’re doing, or do something new!

I expect you to use this money to eat. To go to the doctor. To buy your bus pass. To pay for web hosting. To go on vacation. To pay for whatever you need to be yourself and keep creating what you want to create.

I would prefer that you continue to do your work in public. If you don’t, I probably won’t see it. I’m not on Patreon for the incentives. In fact I almost never log into Patreon. I almost certainly won’t see the posts you make there. I probably won’t look at your Discord.

If you use all or most of the money I gave you to make something just for your paid subscribers, or just for me, something has gone horribly wrong. That was certainly not the original vision of Patreon, and it isn’t what I signed up for.

I understand that this is not a normal stance. People will expect you to offer incentives. Timed exclusivity is a great move. Give your paid subscribers access to your creations a few days or weeks early. Give it away, or offer your creation for pay in a shop later.

When a creator has locked a bunch of their content behind some login page online it sucks for me. I don’t log into Patreon, and I don’t even have accounts for Instagram, Medium, Facebook, or whatever else. That means that I probably won’t even have a chance to see what you’re making. And that sucks for both of us.

This approach to Patreon, and other Patreon-like systems, seems to be somewhat incompatible with the way that Patreon normally operates. Someone at Patreon desperately wants it to be a platform, or social media, or something. For me, it is a payment system, and I will continue to use it that way.

Please remember, I’m here for what you were already doing. I don’t expect more.

Edit: This is version 2. My girlfriend told me the original was too harsh. So I reworked some things! My hope is that this feels like a good thing - removal of an obligation, not an admonition.