Patreon Reward Ideas For Artists

Ideas for membership perks

A great way to monetize your YouTube channel is by creating a community for your biggest fans and supporters.

In exchange for a monthly payment, they receive access to different membership perks such as extra content, behind-the-scenes access, and other membership perks.

With the right perks, benefits, and rewards you can create your own, a highly profitable membership site for your YouTube channel.

Before you start, you have to ask yourself a very important question:

How do you want to organize your membership tiers, pricing, as well as the rewards & benefits that you're offering your community in exchange for their monthly financial contribution?

The answer to all of these questions comes to figuring out the best trade-off between effort and monetary impact.

In this article, you'll learn:

The benefits of different reward types
How creators like you can implement them
Real-life examples of successful membership benefits

Ideas for membership perks
Insight Rewards
- Example ideas for insights
Access & Engagement Rewards
- Engaging with fans
- Reviewing something your fans have created
- Q&A session
- Asking your fans to share ideas for future content
- Asking your fans for advice
- In-person events
- One-to-one sessions where you work with a fan directly on a specific challenge
Fan Recognition Rewards
- How to say thank you to your fans
Digital Rewards
- Examples for digital bonuses and rewards
Physical Rewards
- Examples for physical goods and merchandise
Conclusion

Insight Rewards

This reward type allows your fans who feel more connected with you by giving them additional insights into what's happening in your life and what's going on behind the scenes of your business.

To make this benefit work, you have to be comfortable with the fact that you're going to have significantly less privacy than with other rewards.

It doesn't require hours and hours of additional work. Think of documenting, rather than creating something from scratch. In most cases, you just have to turn your camera on and point it at yourself while you do your work.

Example ideas for insights

Answering fan question.
Anything behind the scenes.
Anything having fun.
Anything that's humanizing you.
Behind the scenes compilations.
Behind the scenes content (informative).
Behind the scenes content (personal).
Behind the scenes of a collaboration.
Bloopers.
Brainstorming session for your next video.
Buying new furniture.
Challenges.
Collaborate with another YouTuber.
Cooking.
Day in the life of your intern, videographer, etc..
Decorating your home or office.
Deleted scenes.
Demonstrating your processes and systems.
Director commentary of the latest video.
Draw my life.
Eating out.
Events you're going to.
Facts about you that not many people know about you.
Frequently asked questions about your life.
Future channel plans.
Gym workout.
House, apartment or room tour.
How you met your bf/gf/partner.
How you met your friends.
How you overcame a personal struggle.
Ideas of your viewers.
Interview your staff and helpers about the work they do.
Lessons you have learned.
Making-of video of your recent work.
Meet your bf/gf/partner.
Meet your family.
Meet your friends.
Methods that you used to produce specific content.
Mini documentary of you creating a new piece of content.
Morning routine.
Movie reviews.
Parody.
Parties.
People who inspired you.
Personal finance and budgeting.
Planning of your next video.
Playing video games.
Pranks.
Q&A.
Rant.
Reacting to.
Relationship advice.
Renting/buying a new apartment/office.
Replying to fan comments.
Researching new topic ideas.
Review.
Screencast of how you edit your videos.
Share a talent or skill.
Share your goals.
Shopping trip.
Talk about your next or previous trip.
Tell a story.
This happened to me.
Tour of your home.
Tour of your office or studio.
Transformational video.
Travel stories.
Travel tips.
Traveling.
Uncut material.
What are you currently listing to.
What are you currently reading, listening or watching?.
What you eat in a day.
What's in your bag pack?.
Worst or least favorite x.
Your bucket-list for this/next year.
Your favorite fictional character.
Your favorite games.
Your favorite movies.
Your favorite music.
Your favorite product.
Your favorite TV shows.
Your night routine.
Your Spotify playlist.

Access & Engagement Rewards

Many fans are happy to take out their wallet for an opportunity to interact with their favorite creator directly. This can happen in form of virtual chats, video conferences, live-streaming and in-person events.

It deepens the creator-fan relationship more than most other benefits and results in lower churn and increased fan loyalty.

To make this work you have to be able to set clear boundaries with your fans, and mustn't be afraid to enforce your rules. This includes but is not limited to cutting someone off if necessary, bringing conversations back on topic and redirecting awkward questions.

If you're ready to get to know your fans on a more personal level, engagement benefits are a great way to do it. Added benefit, it gives you better insight into what your fans care about and want.

Engaging with fans

Following them on social media
General support
Prioritizing communication with patrons
Prioritizing customer service or support for patrons
Prioritizing patron content requests
Private community
Peplying and answering direct messages from fans

Reviewing something your fans have created

3D models
Ad campaign results
Art critiques
Books
Composition
Designs
Fan fiction
Gameplay commentary
Home office setup
Homepage
Landing page
Marketing strategy
Mods
Music
Newsletter
Online store
Performance
Photos
Revenue
Sales copy
Sales funnel
Save games
Social media profiles
Software
Songs
Videos

Q&A session

AMA sessions
Ask questions and participate in Q&As
Ask-me-anythings
Conference phone call
Discord
Join patron-only live chats
Live chat
Live chat via Discord or Slack channel
Live chats & hangouts
Live event VIP
Live Q&As
Live-stream on YouTube
Livestreams
Video group chat via Zoom or Google Hangout
Webinars

Become a beta tester
Deciding certain elements of your next creation
Exclusive voting power
Focus groups
Help shape creative work with patron-only polls
Naming characters in stories
Participate in the creative process with patron-only polls
Questions and challenges that they're facing in their own life or business
Topic ideas for future videos
What kind of content format they love most
Which product you should review next
Who you should interview next

Asking your fans for advice

Nobody is perfect. By allowing your fans to "pay you back" with their knowledge you are creating a very satisfying reward for your fans.

In-person events

Meetups
workshops
masterclasses

One-to-one sessions where you work with a fan directly on a specific challenge

Direct contact
Phone calls
Video conferences
In-person meetings

Fan Recognition Rewards

There are many ways how you can recognize your fans who have made your creator business possible beyond thanking them.

For some fans, recognition is all the motivation they need to be more active in your community.

How to say thank you to your fans

Answering random question by one of your fans at the end of your video.
Birthday wishes.
Designing printable certificate of appreciation for fans.
Exclusive emojis or GIFs for paying members.
Fan requests
Fanart
Get VIP access for live events
Giving fans a shout out at the end of your videos.
Giving patrons priority during Q&A sessions
Guest appearances
Holiday greeting card.
Including the names of all paying members on your website.
Including the names of fans in the rolling end credits of your videos.
Listing contributors in your video description of pinned comment.
Mailing physical merchandise to fans.
Patron shout-out
Printing the names of high-paying fans on your products or art, for example inside a music CD sleeve.
Receive a personal shout-out
Recording personal video messages for each paying fan.
Sending handwritten thank-you notes.
Shout out on social media / etc.
Social media follow
Special badge in your community forum or membership site.
Thanking fans for specific ideas and contributions.
The feels
VIP experience
Your dedicated support keeps this work going

Digital Rewards

One of the most powerful rewards are offering digital bonuses.

No matter what you create, there's always a way how you can create engaging bonus content from it.

Digital benefit can be anything that you can digitally distribute to your fans. If it's extra, exclusive, and interesting, it'll make a great digital benefit.

Digital benefits help members to justify their monthly investment.

Examples for digital bonuses and rewards

3D models
Access to educational content
Access to live event ticketing before everyone else
Access to the archive
Access to work before it's available publicly
Action alerts
Ad placement
Ad-free content
Ad-free episodes
Ad-free versions of your videos
Ad-free videos
Additional videos
Alternate endings
Audio courses
Audio recordings
Audio version of your videos
Audiobooks
Blooper collection
Blue prints
Bonus art
Bonus content available only to patrons
Calendar invites
Calendar planner
Case studies
Challenges
Chat and connect over the phone
Cheat sheets
Cliff notes
Code snippets
Color profiles
Commissions (digital)
Community only podcast episodes
Complete post archive
Coupons
Digital assets
Digital downloads
Digital thank-you cards
Digital workshops
Downloadable files only available to patrons
E-books
E-mail courses
Early access
Early ticket access
Early updates
Examples
Exclusive content
Exclusive Facebook group
Exclusive look at the creative process
Exclusive news
Exclusive newsletter
Exercise material
Extended cuts of your videos
Extra episodes
Gated library of content
Gated video courses
Generators
Git repositories of demo projects
Guides
High-quality/full-size images & wallpaper
Immediate access to patron-only posts
Infographics
Join patron-only livestreams
Learning content
Lessons
Libraries
Listen to episodes ad-free
Manifesto
Masterclasses
Members-only Slack or Discord channel
Mind Map
Mini-series
Music albums
New content
New shows
Online courses
Online events
PDF documents
PDF version
Photos
Planner
Podcast episodes
podcast version of your videos
Predictions
Premium podcasts
Printable
Promo codes
Prompts
Quiz
Reading bucket list
Receive updates with rough drafts and snippets
Recordings
Replays
Reports
Resources list
Roundups
Sample chapters
Save games
Scripts
Shopping list
Slideshows
Songs that you used in your videos including a cappella and vocal-only version (only use your own, original content where you own 100% of the rights)
Special segments
Sponsorship
Sponsorships
Spreadsheet
State of the industry report
Summaries
Supplemental materials
Swipe files
Templates
Toolkits
Transcripts
Travel itinerary
Tutorials
Vault
Video tutorials & lessons
Voice-over tutorials/process videos
Vouchers
wallpapers
Watch videos ad-free
Webinars
Work sheets
Work-in-progress updates (digital)
Workbooks
Worksheets

Physical Rewards

Merchandise such as t-shirts and other wearables are popular forms of physical good, but you are not limited to these. Any materials that you can send to your fans in exchange for their monthly membership works fine.

The challenge with physical goods is the extended effort and cost for products, logistics and shipment. To maintain a profitable membership site I highly recommend tieing physical goods to specific minimal membership durations.

As an example, you might send a t-shirt to everyone in your highest tier, if they pay for at least 3 months. If someone cancels their membership after one month, they don't receive anything and you're not losing money in the process.

Examples for physical goods and merchandise

Autographs
Beach towels
Beanies
Blushes
Books
Calendar
Cell phone case
Coloring pages
Commissions (delivered by mail)
Handwritten notes
Hoodie
Jewelry
Lanyard
Music CDs
One-time merch
Organic tote bag
Pillow
Pins
Pins
Planner
Post cards
Poster
Printed mugs
Printout of any digital bonus
Prints
Receive a commissioned piece just for you
Receive discount codes for the merch store
Recurring merch
Snail mail
Socks
Stickers
Store discounts
T-shirts
Thank-you cards
Time-release merch
Travel mug
Work-in-progress updates (delivered by mail)

Conclusion

There is no right or wrong way for how to pick the perfect benefits and rewards for your membership. Evaluate how much time, money, and effort you want to invest in your YouTube business, and then select those rewards that best fit your situation.

If you want to learn more about how to create a profitable YouTube business, make sure to join my YouTube Mastermind Group on Patreon.