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As a blogger, you might be wondering if you can use Patreon to earn money. You can use Patreon, but there are a few requirements that are needed. There are also a few BIG mistakes you should try to avoid. Anyone can use Patreon to market other creative work! Mistakes to avoid would be having your starting donation be too small, not charging someone as soon as they enroll, never talking about Patreon, not having a higher-end product, and not creating FOMO. Keep reading and I will share 3 ideas on how a blog can use Patreon to earn money. I'll also share the #1 requirement that is needed for a blog. Plus how someone can use FOMO to earn money! What is Creativity? One of my favorite sayings came from Steve Jobs who created the "very" successful company Apple. "Creativity is just combining things." Steve Jobs This saying is "really" awesome because it takes the pressure off creating something from scratch. In fact, I was listening to a Daymond John interview who is a shark on the show "Shark Tank" and he said nothing is completely original. All products are about taking something and making it better. With a blog, I try to take ideas from multiple places and combine them into a post. With a Youtube video or podcast, it's the same thing. You could say it's art. The value of it is in the eyes of who sees it and that is what makes art interesting and hard to put a price on. Music is the same thing, movies and you could even say creating phones can pass as a creative art. To be creative all you have to do is put the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle. Why Patreon? Creating art is one thing, but earning money from it is a "whole other" topic. I know, because I struggled to earn money with an old Youtube channel I started probably 10 years ago. What is "really" cool about creating content on the internet is there are "many" different ways to earn income from it. Patreon is "just" one of those ways. You don't have to use Patreon, but it's a tool in your toolbox that is good to know about. All Patreon does is give you the option to market other creative work to people who follow you. Some people use Patreon as a charity, such as give me money if you like me, but I don't think that is healthy for you or the people supporting you. My blog content, Youtube videos are free and will always be free, but if someone wants more there can be an option for that using Patreon. Another reason to use Patreon is that it's a more established brand name that people do trust and a lot of people know of the name. Patreon does charge a fee to use the service, but for this fee, they take care of all the billing, customer service and make things as easy as possible. The fee to use the service is around 10% of the money you would get. Another option is having a Youtube Membership and they take around 30% of the money you would get. The advantage of the Youtube Membership is the join button is on Youtube and it's easy to see and click on. Oh, and lastly there is a website called Buymeacoffee.com that you can view HERE they used to just have a 1-time donation, but they do have a membership now and they charge 5%. In the end, Patreon is still the leader when it comes to getting donations for your creative work. If you want you could use 2, such as buymeacoffee.com and Patreon, and they are all free to join. Using just Patreon is probably the best choice to keep things simple. How to Use Patreon for a Blog Even though Patreon is "very" popular with YouTubers and vlogs a written blog can use the service. There is one requirement that Patreon really should have. Can you guess what this requirement is? You should have an audience first before you start using Patreon! A blog with around 10-20 thousand pageviews a month is a good start. The reason you want an audience is that it's hard to market extra content if nobody is viewing your original content. It's like crawling before you walk. First focus on getting as many views as you can then worry about monetizing the views. You might be wondering what extra content should I give my readers? The main thing you can give your audience is content they will not get anywhere else, this is the content your market to them. It could also be "more" personal such as behind-the-scenes videos that you don't show on the internet. It could be personal hobbies that you're into. Lastly, it could be just something you have been thinking about during the week. Patreon just gives you the ability to market personal access to YOU. Whatever this personal access is - the fun part you can decide. It just has to be different than the free content you give the internet. I know it sounds crazy that people would purchase this, but people do. There are over 200,000 Patreons using the platform to earn money. Total all these creators are earning around 1 billion dollars a year. That is a lot of money! If they can do it - you can too! Another idea on what to give Patreons that support you is another form of communication. If you have a blog and then send someone who pays you money more written content they may not see the value in it. Maybe it's a video or audio then it's a different form of media and much different than what they are getting. Someone may more easily see the value if the content is in another media. This is good news for a blog because if your Patreon is a video, pictures, or audio it could be perceived to be more valuable and justify the cost of the Patreon service. In conclusion, Patreon can "for sure" be used with a blog and might even be easier than with a YouTube channel. Mistakes You Want to Avoid with Patreon One mistake you can make is by having your starting donation too small. When I mean too small maybe it's $1. The reason this is a mistake is that a lot of people start with the smallest package. You could earn a few dollars and then the person leaves. All your hard work earns you less than few dollars after fees and it may not be worth it for you. I have seen someone charge $1 just to join the community such as a private Facebook group. This could work to get someone to join your tribe. Charging someone $1 to view your creative work is probably too cheap. The less you should charge is maybe $5 for it to be somewhat worth your time and effort. Another mistake you can make on Patreon is not charging someone as soon as they enroll. It's not fun to have someone look at all the private stuff that others pay for and leave before they are charged. The third mistake you can make with Patreon is NEVER talking about Patreon. If you have a Patreon account to market some of your creative work, but nobody knows you have it - then don't be surprised if nobody signs up. I know what you may be thinking "I don't want to sound like a salesperson." I don't want to annoy people. The hardest part about marketing "anything" is asking for "the sale." It's the same thing for a guy when he wants to go out with a girl. This is why I'm a big fan of "The Commission Machine" because the author trains you how to ask for the sale in a fun interesting way for both you and your prospect. The more you ask the more money you will make. It's like we become grownups and HATE to ask for money. It's probably one of the MOST valuable things you can learn if you want to market something online. You can learn more about "The Commission Machine" by clicking on the link HERE. Another reason some people don't talk about their Patreon is they are not excited about what they are offering on the platform. The blog posts or videos I create "I make for myself first."I like what I create and if the whole world thinks it sucks - well at least I like it and that is the most important thing. The fourth mistake you could make with Patreon is not having a higher-end product. Maybe it's a Zoom call you do once a week. All it takes is a few of these and it could really help you out financially. It's similar to NOT having a higher-end product on your sales funnel. These are called deep sales and they can earn you LOTS of money. I know because I've gotten some of these deep sales and they are nice. :) The fifth mistake to avoid is not creating FOMO. FOMO stands for Fear of Missing Out and it's a real thing. This is similar to mention your Patreon account, but you're teasing it. You could say something like "You won't believe that crazy day that happened to me." I share what happened to my Patreon tribe. You can learn more by clicking on the link below. FOMO is missing out on something that drives their curiosity. Think of FOMO as sprinkling some curiosity sprinkles that mention your paid content on your free content. Other Ways to Monetize your Blog There are many ways to monetize a blog. One of the easiest ways is by putting ads on your website. I used to think that advertisements were annoying and a waste of time because there is NO money in them. I'm admitting now, that I could be wrong because some ad networks pay more than others! Sure having ads from Adwords isn't the best idea because they pay the least. You can start to put ads on a website when you get at least $1,000 page views a month. You could earn $7 - $80 a month per 1,000 pageviews. Yea, not bad right? Most websites earn around $12 to $30 a month per 1,000 pageviews. The next BEST way to monetize a blog is with affiliate marketing. This is when you install a link and if someone clicks on that link and buys something you get paid. A more advanced way to do affiliate marketing is by using emails and what is called an autoresponder. Setting up an autoresponder, crafting the messages, and matching the products is a royal pain in the ass. Another option is to have the creator of The Commission Machine do it for you and you can learn more by clicking on the link HERE. The third way to earn money from your blog is by creating your own products. This is very similar to a Patreon account, The last way I know of is with lead generation. Lead generation is generating a lead for someone else and you get paid for the lead. Usually, these leads are for higher ticket items such as Real Estate or Insurance. Why do YouTubers do Patreon? Youtubes use Patreon because it's one of the easiest ways they can monetize their channel. You might be wondering, what about ads and don't Youtubers make a lot of money from them? On average someone with a Youtube channel earns $3 to $5 per 1,000 video views. Creating videos is also very time-consuming. Having a Patreon account with ads allows someone on Youtube to make a little more money. What I'm a fan of is to first start with a blog and monetize it with ads and affiliate products. The best thing about a blog is "you own the blog." With a Youtube channel you don't own the channel. Then you can take your blog posts and use them as an outline for a Youtube video. Heck, you could post your Youtube video on your blog. With your Youtube videos, you could then send your audience to your website to earn money from marketing products and ads. The rule of thumb is the channels "You don't own" you want to send people to the channels you do own! Patreon is just another tool in your toolbox when it comes to earning money from your creative work. I hope this blog post on how to use Patreon for a blog was helpful to you. Bye for now.