Welcome to Patreon! In this guide, we’ll help you quickly get started as a creator and then take you through additional settings and customisations you can make to your Patreon before you launch.
Before you get started
We recommend thinking about and gathering the following before you start your Patreon community:
- What are 3 benefits you can offer your members? Here’s a great resource to get your wheels turning 👉 How to structure your membership and price your benefits
- What will your Patreon name be? This is generally what members will know you as
- Get a cover photo (1600px by 400px)
- Get a creator profile photo (1024px by 1024px)
- Here’s an example of a launched Patreon creator
Sign up
If you don’t have a Patreon account:
- Visit patreon.com and click the Create on Patreon button
- From here, you can sign up with your email and create a password, or you can sign up with Facebook or Google
- Introduce yourself: enter your first and surname – this information is not shown publicly, and it’s used to send you payouts and tax-related documents (if applicable), so be sure to use your legal name
- Name your Patreon and let us know if your work contains or depicts explicit sexual situations, including nudity in sexual contexts
- Welcome to Patreon! Click the Get started button to start building your Patreon
If you have an existing Patreon account:
If you already have an account, you can log in, click the profile switcher with your name at the bottom left of the page and click the Create on Patreon button.
Next steps:
- Name your Patreon and let us know if your work contains or depicts explicit sexual situations, including nudity in sexual contexts
- Welcome to Patreon! Click the Get started button to start building your Patreon
Customise your Patreon
Launch checklist
As a new creator, there are a lot of features you can update as part of building your Patreon. To help make the process smoother, we’ve created a launch checklist.
On your creator home page, you’ll find your launch checklist with some key steps to get you started. Clicking on each task will take you to the product area where you can complete it:
- Add a profile photo: Add a profile photo to make it easier for people to find you and your Patreon (We recommend a 1024px by 1024px image)
- Share your waitlist page: Share your waitlist with your audience so they can get notified as soon as the Patreon launches. This option is limited to eligible creators. To learn more, check out our waitlists FAQ
- Describe your Patreon: Let your audience know about you and your Patreon. Here are some tips for writing a description
- Create your first post: Give people a taste of what they can expect from your Patreon. Check out some tips to write your first post
- Set your price: All you need to get started is the monthly price and tier description, but you can click the More options button to customise your tier further and add structured benefits – feel free to check out some tips for pricing or skip to the section Choose what you offer to learn more about benefits and other tier options
By completing the recommended previous steps, you will have the essentials ready, so if you want, you can go ahead and:
- Publish your Patreon: If you’re ready to go live, click directly on the Publish your page button from the checklist. We recommend that you continue reading through this help centre article before publishing it to ensure you have not overlooked anything. Feel free to skip to the Preview your page and Launch section below for more information on publishing your Patreon
- Tell people: Share your Patreon with your audience so people can start joining! Note that you can only share your Patreon once it goes live
Podcaster checklist
If you sign up for Patreon through www.patreon.com/spotify, you will see the Podcaster checklist instead. This checklist is very similar to the Launch checklist, but some of the steps are specific to podcasters, such as:
- Set your cover art: Make it easier for people to discover your Patreon by setting your podcasts’ cover art. (Recommended: 3000x3000px square image). This image will not replace your Patreon profile photo.
- Enable podcast settings: Turn your audio posts into a podcast so members can listen on podcast apps. Learn more about setting up a podcast on Patreon
- Sync to Spotify: Sync your podcast so members can listen to your exclusive content on Spotify. Learn more how to Deliver podcasts with Spotify
Once you complete each task, it will be automatically marked with a green tick and minimised. You can also minimise the entire list – the minimised checklist displays a progress bar showing how many tasks have been completed.
Creator page editor
You can take advantage of many features to build your Patreon and make it unique. Below we list each page editor section with a description of what you can edit there:
| Edit page settings ⬇ |
Description⬇ |
|
You can use this section to add/update the following:
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| Merch |
Our Merch solution offers an easy way to deliver physical benefits backed by Patreon support. Interested in setting up Merch? Learn how to add Merch to your Patreon page to get started! |
| Getting paid |
In this section, you’ll be able to:
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| Page settings |
In your Page settings, you can update:
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| Welcome notes | You can use this section to set up a custom welcome note that appears after members join your membership and even add a thank you video to this section. This isn’t required to launch your Patreon so you can come back to this again at any time |
| Posts |
You can use collections and tags to organise your work however you want to. You can think of collections as your own content library and tags as a way to catalogue your work. Learn more about creating a collection and organising your work. |
| Offers | Special Offers are a way to set up a one-time deal for new members in specific tiers |
Choose what to offer!
Tiers are how you set your membership price. Start with a single tier or create multiple tier offerings for fans to choose from. If you don’t set up membership tiers, you can still go live with your Patreon so fans can join your community for free.
You can create your first tier by clicking Set your price from the Launch checklist or going directly to the Membership tab on your Patreon page.
All you need to create your first tier is the monthly price and tier description – these are pre-filled with $5 and access to exclusive content and more, which you can keep or edit.
From this page, you can click the More options button to add things like a name for your tier and structured benefits; however, these settings are optional and are not required to start getting paid.
If you’re unsure how to structure your tiers, read through our guide, How to structure your membership and price your benefits to get started.
More tier options:
- A name
- An image (optional) (460px by 200px)
- A list of benefits for joining the tier. Not quite sure of what to offer? We’ve got you covered with this great resources ➡️ Combine exclusive content and community to delight your fans
- You can also connect a Discord server to your Patreon page to build community with your members
Here’s how you can edit and add tiers:
- While logged in to your creator profile, click the My Page link from the left sidebar navigation
- Click on the Membership tab
- Click the button to Add tier or Edit tier, depending on what you’d like to do
Preview your Patreon and Launch!
✨ We recommend going through our Launch day checklist to get the most out of your launch day!
When you feel like your Patreon is ready, click on the option to preview by clicking on the Preview link in the top right corner. If you’re feeling good about your Patreon, click on the Launch button. Our Trust & Safety team will review your content to ensure it’s within our Community Guidelines before you launch.
Once your Patreon has been launched, you will receive an email letting you know that your Patreon is live.
Now that your Patreon is live, send it to your friends, family, fans, neighbours and anyone else you think would be interested in what you’re creating.
If you need extra guidance with launching, we have many great resources for creators on our blog!
Welcome to Patreon – we’re so happy to have you here!
The search feature for creators marked as NSFW will populate very limited results at any given time so that Patreon remains a safe place for members of all ages. You can still select a unique URL and share it with your network!