Kickstarter or Patreon can seem like a solution to an entertainer’s problems. The thinking goes, “I’m entertaining. People like what I do. I’ll ask them each for a small amount of money. I’ll have a large amount.”
The only problem with this thinking could be that… You’re not, people don’t, you will, you won’t.
The real problem is the “people”
Entertainers imagine the audience is out there and that they will give money for entertainment. That’s kinda true, but the audience is an actual group of people. They’re the group of people who will pay for something.
Sometimes you can locate those people, and sometimes they appear, but most likely (like very most likely) you own them already.
The way projects / people get funded by a crowd is they have the crowd, then they ask them for money that the crowd already wants to pay.
The success rate of a kickstarter goes up dramatically if it can be funded over 30% in the first 12 hours of running. How does that work? The audience knew about it before launch. They wanted it before launch. They just had to click a button at the right time.
Do you have a cash-in-hand audience?
Are there 1000 people who will pay you $10 tomorrow for whatever you throw at them? I mean people you can contact tomorrow for sure who will buy your $10 thing? No? How about 200 people who will pay $50? 100 for $100? This is such a simple way to look at what you can do with your audience in the modern world. For more on this way of thinking here’s an article 1000 true fans
Other thoughts…
Is your project worth it?
If you’re going with Patreon, how much time are you willing to put in for the budget per month to give your patrons the exclusive content you promise? Is $10,000 from the above example enough for you to dedicate enough time to fulfill the promise? Keep in mind, you’re not just gonna be making the content… a big part of it will be promoting to patrons, communicating with patrons, making new concepts, etc.
Max it out.
If you’re trying to grow and keep your audience, you’re gonna need to take it to the MAX! You want the smallest number of customers possible, offering the most service, at the lowest price. They’ll love you for it and they’ll be ready to pay for your next offering.
It’s not about you being entertaining.
I don’t believe people are entertaining. I mean, truly everyone is entertaining, so why would I pay for you when I can get entertaining from a park bench? The reason is you are making something that’s especially entertaining. It’s not you, it’s the product. Don’t think that people are just going to give YOU money. They give money to get something that, to them, is great!