Insights dashboards

  • Updated

This article explains how our Insights dashboards work and how to use them to understand your earnings and membership trends. 

Creator earnings funnel

The following chart identifies the four main steps in the process and the associated dashboards that describe them:

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Membership insights

Your Membership insights dashboard provides a detailed breakdown of key membership metrics, including total members, new members, downgrades, upgrades and cancellations. This guide will help you navigate and analyse your membership data efficiently. 

When you access the Membership Insights dashboard, it will automatically display data from the past 30 days with a daily trend line. The default view offers a comprehensive summary of your membership activity, but you can drill down further to explore specific details:

Membership insights filters:

You can customise the insights view by:

  • Date range: You can view data from the past 30 days, 6 months, year (past 12 months), all time or you can set a custom range
  • Free or Paid member view: Select either the free or paid member view at the top of the dashboard to filter insights accordingly
  • Daily or Monthly view: Select from Daily or Monthly views to monitor day-to-day changes or identify broader monthly trends
  • Overall or tier view: Toggle between an overall membership summary or a detailed tier breakdown to see how specific membership tiers are performing

Key sections in membership insights

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The following sections will be available depending on whether you are viewing data for free members or paid members.

  • Active members: Active members refer to paid members who have not cancelled. Click on the Active members link to view the list of paid members in your Relationship Manager. From your Relationship Manager, you can send bulk messages to communicate with paid members
  • Free members: Free members refer to members that currently have a free membership on your page and that have not cancelled. Click on the Free members link to view the list of free members in your Relationship Manager
  • New: This view shows memberships by join date, with options to adjust the range to the past 30 days, 6 months, year, all time or a custom range. You can also aggregate data by daily or monthly trends based on the selected time frame. Click on the New link to get a list of members included in the count of joins in your Relationship Manager
  • Upgraded to paid: You can easily see how many free members upgrade to paid in total, giving you an accurate representation of new paid memberships 
  • Cancelled: The cancelled view of the dashboard shows membership cancellations by date. You can adjust the range to view cancellations over 30 days, 6 months, a year, all time or a custom range, and you can aggregate data by daily or monthly patterns depending on the time frame. Click on the Cancelled link to get a list of members who’ve cancelled in the time range you’ve selected

You can also hover over points on the graph to view detailed information for specific snapshots. The data card will display insights based on your selected aggregation level (e.g. daily, monthly, etc.), allowing for quick analysis of trends.

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The data on your Membership dashboard updates every hour.

Tier activity dashboard

The tier activity dashboard displays total upgrades and downgrades for your selected time range (30 days, 6 months, a year or all time).

When you click the Upgrades and Downgrades buttons, you’ll get a tier-by-tier breakdown of membership changes. The left-hand column lists the original tier, and the right-hand column lists the tier the member(s) switched to. That right-hand column will include the number of members who made that change.

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Term Definition
Upgrades The number of memberships that have increased in value. In the Tier activity section, we’ll show you the number of increases by tier. The left-hand column lists the original tier, and the right-hand column lists the upgraded tier and the number of memberships that made that move.
Downgrades The number of memberships that have decreased in value. Click the Downgrades button on the Tier activity section to review downgrades by tier. The left-hand column lists the original tier, and the right-hand column lists the downgraded tier and the number of memberships that moved down.

Free member activity dashboard

The free member activity dashboard tracks free members who upgrade to a paid tier for your selected time range (30 days, 6 months, a year or all time). 

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The right side of the report shows the number of free members who have upgraded and the specific tiers they’ve chosen. This helps you track how many free members are becoming paying supporters and which tiers are most popular for upgrades.

Reviewing the membership summary

This summary includes your total member count, including free and paid members. These numbers estimate your per-month earnings and members count – this number fluctuates depending on your paid member count, adjustments to membership amounts, declines and cancellations. We display annual memberships as their monthly equivalent (annual amount divided by 12).

While the other dashboards on your Membership page can toggle between time ranges, your Membership summary dashboard is the current estimate.

Checking paid members by charge frequency

If annual memberships are enabled, your membership page will include a Members by charge frequency section. This section lets you know the number of paid members who have an annual membership and how many have a monthly membership in the time range you’ve selected (using the time range selector at the top of the page).

Shop insights

The Shop dashboard shows up for creators selling digital products with Commerce on Patreon. Commerce enables creators to sell digital products like downloadable videos, images and other files directly to customers, whether they are paid members or not.

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If you are using Commerce, you can learn more about how to use Shop insights in this guide.

Earnings insights

After processing a payment, fees and refunds are deducted, with the remaining amount going to your Creator Balance. This dashboard summarises the flow of funds based on when the transactions occurred. 

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Earnings insights filters:

Customise your earnings view by:

  • Date range: You can view data from the past 6 months, the past year (past 12 months), all time or you can set a custom range
  • Earnings type: You can filter by All earnings, Membership or Shop
  • Free or Paid member view: Select either the free or paid member view at the top of the dashboard to filter insights accordingly
  • Daily or Monthly view: Switch between Monthly or Daily views to track earnings trends over different time frames

Key sections in earnings insights

The earnings dashboard summarises the income associated with your Patreon. We organise data by the time transactions occur. The Gross revenue column on your Earnings dashboard may display a different amount from your total memberships calculated from your Relationship Manager due to mid-month tier switches and refunds.

Refund example:

  • Paid member A joins your community on 16 February but isn’t charged until 1 March. The earnings from that transaction will appear in March.
  • If a refund is processed in October for a transaction that initially occurred in July, the refund will appear in October.
Column Summary
Month The month in which you received money to your creator balance.
Gross revenue

All of the charges we attempted that month before declines, refunds and fees. You can click on the drop-down menu next to the amount for a detailed breakdown of your gross earnings by:

  • Membership: The amount earned from your memberships before any fees, refunds and declines
  • Shop (Web and Android): The amount earned from purchases made through your shop on both Web and Android, before subtracting any fees, refunds or declines
  • Shop (iOS): The amount earned from purchases made through your shop on the iOS App Store, before the deduction of any fees, refunds or declines. Please note that purchases on iOS are subject to an Apple App Store fee. Learn more about iOS pricing here
  • Declines: The value of attempted charges declined this month. This column value will likely decrease as we retry your declined members and process them to your creator balance
  • Refunds: The amount of any refunds issued in that month. This column only includes the creator’s share of any refunds; Patreon’s fee, processing fees and taxes are refunded by Patreon and therefore do not appear here. This also does not include fraud refunds. Here’s an article with more information on fraud refunds
Payment fees Payment-processing fees cover the cost of processing payments from your paid members. You can click on the drop-down menu next to the amount, to review your earnings by; payment-processing fee and currency conversion fee. Please visit our article to learn more about fees.
Platform fees The sum of Patreon’s platform fee is applied to the memberships. Please visit our pricing page for detailed information.
Merch items & shipping If you use Patreon merch, this column shows each month’s merch cost.
Earnings

This column indicates the net amount you earned after all fees. This is the amount that goes into your creator balance.
You can click on the drop-down menu next to the amount for a detailed breakdown of your net earnings by:

  • Membership: The amount earned from your memberships after any fees, refunds and declines
  • Shop (Web and Android): The amount earned from purchases made through your shop on both Web and Android, after subtracting any fees, refunds or declines
  • Shop (iOS): The amount earned from purchases made through your shop on the iOS App Store, after the deduction of any fees, refunds or declines. Please note that purchases on iOS are subject to an Apple App Store fee. Learn more about iOS pricing here

If you have annual paid members, their payments will populate in the month in which they paid – meaning that in the month we process their payment, we’ll show the total yearly amount. We don’t spread the earnings from an annual membership across the year.

Posts insights

Reviewing the Posts dashboard

This section of your dashboard shows your post impressions in graph form over the past two weeks. It’s a nice visual aid to show you which days of the week your posts tend to receive the most impressions.

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Top and latest posts

Switch between the Top and Latest filters to see which of your posts are performing best or to review your most recent updates. The Top view highlights your highest-engagement content, while the Latest view shows recent posts, making it easy to track engagement trends over time.

Posts dashboard glossary

The Posts dashboard shows how engaged your posts are. Below are the terms that you’ll find on the dashboard:

Term
Definition
Impressions

 The number of times your post was seen across Patreon on web and mobile. This includes when the post is displayed on its direct URL, your Patreon and member’s home feeds. 

Impressions was introduced in April 2023 as an expansion on the previous Views metric, which captured the number of people who have landed on the post’s page (but did not include mobile views, views on your Patreon or views on someone’s home feed).

Average view duration (video posts only)

The average amount of time viewers spend watching your episodes. This metric helps gauge how engaging your video content is based on how long people stick around to watch.

Preview views (video and audio posts only)

The number of times fans have previewed your episode. Preview views offer insight into how many people were intrigued enough to check out a sneak peek of your content.

Likes How many members or fans (if the post is for Everyone) have liked your post. Likes are a great indicator that people are finding your post.
Comments The number of comments left on an individual post.
Traffic sources Tells you how members are finding your post’s page. Traffic sources include Patreon, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and many more.

Export engagement data

Click the Export Engagement Data link to get a monthly breakdown of comments on likes.

Traffic insights

The Traffic dashboard can help you better understand where your visits are coming from and how often they occur, all presented in a visual graph format. You can view traffic data for the past 24 hours, the last 7 days, the previous 30 days or you can add a custom range. Hover over points on the graph to see detailed information about specific time frames and gain insights into traffic spikes or trends. Please note that this data is displayed in GMT/UTC.

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Here are the key terms you’ll encounter on the Traffic dashboard and their definitions:

Term Definition
Total visits Shows the total number of visits by members and non-members across your creator surfaces (post page, creator page and shop page).
Public visits Shows the total number of visits from non-members and free members. This is useful for you to understand how external promotions are bringing in new users and contributing to your membership growth.
Overall The graph offers a general overview of your Patreon’s traffic without going into specific traffic sources.
Sources

The graph provides a detailed breakdown of your traffic sources, offering insights into the specific platforms that contribute the most to your overall traffic volume. Traffic sources include Patreon, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and many more.

When checking Sources from Total visitors, you might notice that the Patreon percentage is significantly higher. This is because Total visitors include members and non-members, and this is likely why you might see elevated traffic from Patreon.

Within sources, you might also see Direct traffic: This is defined as the traffic that has arrived on your website with no source or data, e.g. a user typing in the URL directly or using Incognito mode.

Please note that visits are different from visitors. A single visitor can visit a page many times, so one visit does not equal one visitor. 

Surveys insights

Available to all creators, welcome surveys let you better understand what’s motivating paid members to join your Patreon. The welcome survey is enabled for all creators by default. You can turn off the welcome survey by navigating to the survey insights tab and clicking the turn off survey link. Follow the prompts to turn off the welcome survey.

This section is about the welcome survey. You can also analyse exit survey results from your settings.

What will members see?

Immediately after completing checkout, new paid and upgraded members will be presented with a multiple-choice survey, where they can select what they’re looking forward to most about their membership. Once they’ve selected their reason, they can add more details in a free-form response.

Members who rejoin your Patreon or join for free won’t be presented with the welcome survey upon sign-up.

Previewing the welcome survey

  1. Navigate to the surveys insights tab
  2. Click the Preview button to see all survey options
  3. Click the Next button for the free-form option where members can add more details

Since the welcome survey is intended to get insights from members, the multiple-choice options are disabled in the creator preview mode.

Currently, welcome survey customisation isn’t an option.

How do I use my welcome survey insights?

You can review survey results by navigating to the surveys insights tab. From here, you can drill into welcome survey results based on the past 30 days, 6 months, past year, all time or you can add a custom range of your choice. You can also use the tier filter, which defaults to all tiers, to better assess trends driving fans to join which tiers.

Hover over points on the graph to gain more information about specific snapshots, giving you a clearer picture of each moment’s impact on your survey results. Additionally, you can view free-form survey responses by clicking the comment link for a multiple-choice response.

Successfully using your welcome survey results:

  • You can leverage survey responses to tailor your offering to what fans want most. Understand what benefits resonate the most to adapt your benefits and promotion strategy
  • Use aggregated survey responses to spark creative ideas, discover trends and ensure your content strategy aligns with your fans’ expectations

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You can export welcome survey results as a CSV to review individual responses and further analyse responses with the visualisation tool you prefer.

Turning off the welcome survey

You can navigate to the surveys insights tab and click the designated link to turn off the welcome survey.

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