It’s a funny thing, but over the past years since launching The Creative Curator (all the way back in 2016!) I’ve been asked many times if I have a Patreon. This is mostly by readers who wanted to support me for the content I’ve provided here on my website for free, but also for those who wanted to work more closely with me.
I’d heard negative things about Patreon including how they take a greater cut of income earned by Creators and so it was not something I ever really considered…
Positive Impact of Patreon On My Life
But then late in 2021 I lost my mum. My way of ‘dealing’ with this was to submerge myself in a new art hobby, and I ended up joining the Patreon of an artist whose work I admired.
Fast forward to the end of 2023 and I was in no less than 10(!) Patreon memberships supporting artists and a corset maker with the monthly fees… but also getting so much more in return.
Not only did my confidence and skills in my creative hobby improve, but my loneliness dissipated too – I am always ‘early’ for scheduled Zoom sessions and chatting with fellow members in the calls and in the community chats has really enriched my life and led to friendships forming all around the world.
Why I’m Launching My Own Patreon
Last year a big opportunity came my way, and I’ve been hard at work on that – we’ll call it my ‘secret project’. This has required a LOT of my time and so there has been less time for me to focus on this website, my YouTube channel and my own line of sewing patterns.
The affect of this is that my website is not updated as often as it should be, and so the number of people finding it in search engines and social media is much smaller. Which has a knock on effect in lowering my income too. Quite substantially in fact, with March being 20% of what I earned in September 2023. Thanks Google! 🤪
So, I sat and thought hard about what I could do that would increase my monthly income so that I could continue to pay my rent – and save for our wedding too!
Whatever I decided upon had to meet the following criteria:
- Provide value to those who invested in it
- Provide some financial security to me
- Be fun and enjoyable
- Match my ‘skillset’ so to speak
And then I came back to a chat I had in January with my friend Claire-Louise Hardie (you can find her over at The Thrifty Stitcher) in which she’d asked me about having my own membership. And it dawned on me that I could take all the bits that I loved as a Patreon member and make my own brilliant version for my peeps! Genius!
A Patreon of my own would:
- Provide value to all members, even the free ones!
- Provide financial security to me with monthly income to the business so I could pay myself
- Be fun and enjoyable for me
- Match my skillset if I tailored the tiers based upon what I ‘do’
My Patreon Tiers
It took me a little while to come up with the perfect ‘tiers’ for my Patreon. In fact I created them very quickly and then ended up rejigging two and deleting two a couple days later, after I had revisited what I’d decided upon!
Dress Making Darlings
This is the tier for you if you want ad-free sewing tutorials and sewing sessions where you’re sewing with friends for the ride.
Included in this tier are:
- Behind the scenes of TCC
- Early access and discounts on any new products
- Sewing tutorials and lessons (ad free, and NOT the versions seen on YouTube!)
- Private community chats (inside Patreon, so no need for social media! 🎉)
- Let’s Sew Together sessions – at least two per month where we rock up online and work on our sewing projects together
- As well, I am very open to adding in other sewing related sessions if that’s what peeps would like, I just don’t want to overwhelm anyone at the start!
Pattern Hacking Buddies
I suspect this will be the favorite tier for most, as its where I get most creative and have the most fun – pattern hacking!
The perks of this tier are:
- All the perks of the Dressmaking Darlings tier plus
- Pattern hacking tutorials and videos
- Pattern Hack-a-Longs
- Insider info on ‘secret project’
- Again, there will be other bonus elements added in over time, but that will be based upon member feedback!
Fashion Design Lover
This tier is priced significantly higher, in part because I suspect there will be fewer people interested, but the ‘work’ involved will be more time consuming. The perks for the Fashion Design Lover tier are:
- Fashion design Q&A calls (they will take place twice per month, at the start and mid way through, allowing for time in between for work to be done. This allows us to spend more of my time helping you.)
- Fashion design tutorials / mini-projects: one new tutorial / process video and mini project brief added each month to help you develop your design skills. This is a great way to build up your portfolio of work if you’re thinking of applying for a fashion program in the future.
- Community chat: a completely separate space from the other chats so that there are no distractions from the the design process.
- On occasion, I may also arrange for online co-working sessions, if this is something members would use to get work on their design projects completed.
How Patreon Works
Now that I’ve shared all that will be included in my Patreon, I’ll give a quick overview of how it’ll work, so that anyone completely new to Patreon isn’t left with a surprise.
Selecting A Membership Tier
When you head over to my Patreon page, you will be prompted to select a membership tier. There’s also a ‘free’ option as a big black button, and this will be where you’ll see general updates for the month, that aren’t hidden for paying members.
Changing Your Preferred Currency
The page should show the pricing based on your local currency, but if it doesn’t, you can select the currency you wish to pay in by scrolling down to the bottom of the page, and changing it there. You’ll see where it says ‘€EUR’ – that can be clicked and an ‘update your currency’ box will pop up for you. 😎
The benefit to you in changing your currency is that you will always know how much you’ll be charged each month. The exchange fees and transaction fees come out of my portion, so there are no additional costs to you.
Also, the date you join is the date your recurring payment will be charged. So if you sign up on the 29th April, your next charge will be 29th May and so on, so forth. Patreon used to do this thing where if you signed up on the 29th you’d be charged then and again on the 1st of the following month – ask me how I know! 👀
Why Is There VAT Included?
Within the UK and EU, we have to charge VAT for anything considered to be a digital product. (We can thank tech giants like Apple and Amazon for that.) The benefit of me using Patreon is that they deal with the VAT, which is an accounting headache for me here in the Netherlands.
If you’re not in the UK or the EU, I don’t think there are additional taxes included, but I’m not 100% so I can’t guarantee that. I do know that I don’t want to get done for tax evasion, so I am making sure that the VAT is handled for me.
Accessing The Content
Once you’ve confirmed payment you’ll be able to access the content. Initially you’ll see the main ‘wall’ of recent posts. As you can see in the image below, posts can be filtered based upon type (image, link, poll, text, video), tier (public, Snips, Darlings, Buddies, Lovers, Posts in Your Membership, All Posts) and date (This month, per year). So it should be easy enough for you to find exactly what you’re looking for.
I have been a member of a variety of Patreons the past two years, and I have for a long time had a ‘content category’ here on my website, so from the get go I will be using ‘collections’ and ‘tags’ so that you can find what you need more easily.
This is what that looks like when you click on the Collections tab – but you won’t have the ‘create collection’ or ‘create collection with tags’ option.
So, if you hadn’t logged in for the whole of June 2024, you could click on that tag, and all the content added to Patreon in that month will be served to you, and what you’re able to ‘access’ will be based upon the tier you’re in. Phew, that should make sense?
Content will be added in the following formats and unless otherwise stated will not be downloadable, but hosted within the Patreon members area.:
- Text / photo updates: these will likely be for the behind the scenes updates, and basic tutorials not needing video.
- Video updates: these will be for tutorials and projects that require more explanation. My monthly intro video will also be in video format and I’ll also add the recordings of any demos or helpful Q&A calls too.
- Audio updates: for those videos where it’s voice and not visual, I’ll add an audio file – which I believe can be loaded in your favorite Podcast app, if I set it up properly!
- I’ll also have polls running for the hack-a-long’s and for some bonus content that is created on an ad-hoc basis
- Digital downloads: saved as PDFs for the most part, digital downloads will be part of the membership where applicable – and can be downloaded to your device – and also within the shop area too for those who are on the free tier.
Using The Shop
Finally, all my products will now be listed inside the shop section of my Patreon rather than their current home on Shopify. This will help to keep everything more streamlined and manageable for this one-person business.
One thing to note is that if you purchase any products from my Patreon shop, then it’s better to do so via your web browser rather than the Patreon App – this is because Apple adds a 30% iOS fee to all purchases made via the app, and then holds the funds for 60 days on top! If I could turn off in-app purchases, I would, but it’s not an option. Sigh.
Right oh, that’s all for today. I’ll be sharing a little each month on what we get up to inside the Patreon members area, so do stay tuned for those monthly updates, and if you’d like to join me you can do so right here!