Aussies turn to Patreon for income during COVID-19 lockdown

Australian creators are turning to San Francisco-based crowdfunding and membership platform Patreon in record numbers to bolster income while they’re in lockdown.

The site allows musicians – as well as YouTube videographers, webcomic artists, writers, podcasters and adult content creators – to offer a subscription content service to fans.

This gives them a regular monthly income by providing exclusive rewards and perks to four million subscribers from 180 countries.

According to its head of data science Maura Church, Australians were among the 30,000 creators who signed up in the first three weeks of March.

Another high volume adds came from the US, UK, Canada, Germany and Italy.

“Fans are turning to Patreon to support creators during this tough time,” Church said.

Patron growth was up 36.2% from February, the highest rate since it launched in May 2013.

The new creators are also “acquiring patrons faster than usual”, many in their first 10 days.

“In the past week, an unprecedented number of fans are choosing to become patrons, and that number is strong enough to offset a slight increase in pledge deletion, resulting in net earnings expansion for creators on Patreon,"' the data scientist said.

The platform now has 171,426 creatives who have generated a total of US$1 billion.

Monthly pay-outs are about $15.7 million with individual pledges at $7.2 million.

About 9,200 creators make an average of $500 a month and 4,300 about $1,000 a month.

Some can make up to tens of thousands of dollars a month, but they are in the minority.

Among Patreon’s features and integrations, some which incur a cost is Discord, which allows creators to provide better rewards and allow patrons to communicate with each other; post-Vimeo videos; automatically add the latest patrons to the platform to the creator’s list, and crowd casting through live streaming or Q&As.

“Patreon exists to provide a stable, reliable source of income for creators, and that’s especially important in this time of global uncertainty,” according to Church.