Patreon is rolling out new automated features for creators to convert free members to paid ones.
Last year, Patreon introduced e-commerce features and free memberships, which allow fans to subscribe to a creator’s public posts without having to pay for paywalled content. Now that creators have become more accustomed to these tools, Patreon is adding the Autopilot feature, which predicts which free members are most likely to upgrade, then offers them discounts via email. This feature also works to offer discounts on items a creator’s Patreon shop.
Every month, 400,000 free members upgrade to paid memberships, the company says. According to Patreon, Autopilot improved the rate of free-to-paid membership upgrades by an average of 19% in testing.
Patreon founder and CEO Jack Conte has been particularly outspoken about how algorithmic feeds can hurt creators: When creators post something on Instagram or TikTok, there’s no guarantee that the post will actually reach their followers. So, it’s a bit surprising that Patreon revamped its search feed into an Explore tab, which uses fans’ existing subscriptions to predict what other creators they might be interested in supporting. But Patreon still acknowledges that word-of-mouth growth is a necessity for creators. For the past few months, creators have been able to recommend other Patreon pages to their followers, which might be even more useful than an Explore tab.
Though monthly memberships are Patreon’s bread and butter, the platform has also been exploring one-off monetization opportunities. Since June, creators have been able to offer individual posts — or bundles of posts — for a one-time payment, rather than a recurring monthly fee. In testing, the company found that over 45% of these one-off purchases came from new fans. Patreon cites that the music teacher Gracie Terzian started selling music classes, which are normally part of her monthly membership program, as one-time purchases, yielding a 20% boost in her monthly earnings.
The feature is too new to indicate whether it will actually push more fans toward making one-time purchases, rather than pledging a recurring monthly payment. For creators, these monthly payments are hugely important, because it helps them predict their income in a more stable manner. But, if this feature weren’t advantageous to creators, Patreon probably wouldn’t have launched it more broadly. Patreon’s financial incentives are pretty aligned with its creators; the company gets a cut of all payments made to creators, so if creators are making less money, Patreon would make less too.