Okay, so I’ve mentioned that I recently launched a Patreon for my studio, and today I have an announcement about new and exciting features on that platform!
As of today, anyone may join my community on Patreon for free, with the option to upgrade to a Friend of the Studio paid membership at any time for just $5.00 per month.
And in the near future, it will be possible for anyone to purchase digital downloads of select artworks and writings via Patreon, even without a paid membership.
Now, this is all brand-spanking new at Patreon, and I’m not entirely sure how it’s going to go. My hope is that these changes will fill certain key gaps in my creative set-up. For example:
Outreach:
Social media is not my scene. I’m sorry, I loathe all the platforms so much. I just cannot with the You-Twit-Face nonsense, and the hopeful competitors desperately winging it, and none of it makes any damn sense except that the algorithm thinks you’re posting the wrong stuff and not enough of it. Ugh.
Don’t get me wrong. Half of the very exclusive club of my beloved followers are on Facebook. But I’m pretty certain most of them know me offline and/or found me on that site from this site. I’m sure as hell not getting any visibility from FB itself because I don’t play to the algorithm.
Patreon doesn’t use an algorithm to dictate who gets seen and who doesn’t. I will rise or fall through my own outreach efforts. Sounds kinda like some old-school internet stuff. I like it.
Community:
This is another, ironic way social media fails me, because if you don’t feed the platforms the way they like, the algorithms will make it very hard for even a hand-built community to work, let alone grow.
WordPress, my gracious web hosts whom I adore, do offer chat and forum plug-ins, but I would need to purchase a higher service tier to add them to Jen Fries Arts, and I can’t afford it right now.
Patreon is charging nothing – a whopping $0.00 – for tools to build a community with people who like my work. And as a platform, it’s not full of extraneous junk, bots, and trolls. It is directed towards fans of the creative arts, so I am hoping it will be a lot less daunting and a lot more constructive to do outreach there than on social media.
A Helping Hand for Writer Jen:
Artrepreneur hosts my online shop for original artworks. It’s fantastic. I love it. You guys need to check it out.
But it’s just for the artwork side of the studio, especially, the physical pieces of art. (I will offer giclee prints once I (a) find a domestic, unionized, green printer I can afford and (b) learn how to prep images properly.)
I have had no similar outlet for my writing to connect with an audience, to promote my projects, and to earn some income. Patreon offers that, so the writing projects such as An Alchemy of Dragons will be prominent there.
Downloads:
It is surprisingly tricky to sell downloadable art and writing online – like, technically challenging. You end up with a lot of half-assed not-quite-right tools cobbled together with cyber-spit and string.
Patreon is now enabling me to sell art and writing in digital formats with, we hope, very few headaches. I’ve wanted to do this with some of my works for a long time but couldn’t get it set up right, with proper security, etc., on my own website. Artrepreneur doesn’t handle this kind of thing at all. So I’m eager to get started with this.
Be on the lookout for printable cards and booklets, images to use on your screens, etc.
I am building some redundancy into my system with Patreon. Its interface is very similar to social media and this very blog. There will be exclusive content on Patreon for paying Friends of the Studio, but most of the public content there will mirror or just link back to Jen Fries Arts, to reduce duplication of labor.
If you already follow this website, you don’t need also to join the Community on Patreon, unless you would like to sign up for a paid membership. But if you wish to sign up there for free to help me get the ball rolling, you might want to tweak your email notifications from this website. Patreon will automatically send you email notifications of new posts, and I don’t want you to get double notifications.
In any event, Patreon is a new addition to the JFA system, and I hope it will be fun and useful!
Visit my Patreon here or via the button at the bottom of the page, and see what you think.
-Jen
Jen Fries Arts 