What is Joining Patronage Like? | Your Questions, Bonus Day!

Appreciate your transparency and vulnerability (in this post). Would love to know the terms & onboarding of your own “patron system”.

Sure thing! First, the link to the Patronage page so you can kind of follow along: https://www.katehackett.com/patronage/

I have two videos that offer a little guided tour and explain exactly what it is and I’ll put them at the end of this post. Basically, it’s like Patreon: but I own it and I control it.

As for terms… When a patron joins me, we establish a mutual trust. I don’t have codified “rules” but if you’re being a dick to me or to anyone in our community, I’ll be emailing you posthaste. If the behavior continues without reflection, we’ll part ways. I have a very “forgive & let die” mentality though, so if we chat & there is contrition, I’m a big ol shrug about the whole thing. I think I’ve only had one or two real incidents at this point (because this crew is so damn awesome!) and I’m satisfied with how both things shook out.

little sneak peek of what the welcome kit looks like

THAT out of the way… Onboarding a new Patron is one of my favorite things. After a Patron joins, they get a social media shout out and I add them to the appropriate secret Discord server. They also get a personal email welcoming them to the team and pointing them to their Welcome Kit and appropriate tier database.

There are some exclusive goodies in the welcome kit, but truth be told, in my many years of Patronage, I’ve found that virtually every single person on my crew is here to support me, not to get ‘stuff’. For a while, I really focused on trying to provide cool THINGS but– y’all don’t want that. If that changes, if tides shift, I’ll refocus again but for now, I’ve been trying to give myself the liberty of creation rather than execution of “goodies”.

Everything is powered on the back end by WooCommerce (for now) and I run on WordPress. I don’t have to really deal too much with payments and I am small enough currently that any issues I just handle personally.

behold, the menu tree

So for the PATRON, for YOU, you get access to a lot of extra stuff + me and the team in Discord, on private accounts, and so on. You also immediately get access to all posts for your tier, the appropriate menu tree opens up for you, and you’re included in any Patron-only mailings, you see scripts and videos instantly, etc. It’s access to all that fun stuff.

For me, I gain financial security — even if it’s only a dollar a month, seeing the number tick up, seeing the Patron count grow, it makes me breathe easier. I also, more significantly, gain emotional stability: more people found me and more people like me enough to pay me to keep going. That’s an immeasurable benefit; in a town so very built on dumb luck, knowing people are pushing to get me IN ROOMS and ON SCREENS is– I can’t communicate it in words. It’s something that genuinely makes me teary-eyed. I love my team. I’m so grateful for every one of them and I’m so glad I can count them as true friends, not just supporters.

Thank you, to you, my Patrons.

And welcome to 2020.

Leave a Reply