To be honest, it was a tip that I passed along, but personally dismissed. Patreon had been insisting that they had a simple way I could improve my ability to earn backers, but it was so simple, I decided it couldn’t be that important. I was wrong.

Improved design means improved results

For months, I was hearing that improving the design of my rewards tiers would bring a bump in the number of backers I was earning. Specifically, I was hearing — from Patreon themselves as well as peers whose work I admired — that adding images to my reward tiers would have a pronounced effect on my pledge numbers. Shortening the explanations under those tiers — down to bullet-point-style blurbs — would also improve my standing.

So, with a little time I found myself with over the holiday break, I created some images to represent each reward tier and added them to my Patreon page. (These should be 460 x 200 pixels.) I also shortened the explainers under each tier significantly. What used to be paragraphs now became a list of bullet points.

I was, frankly, shocked at the immediate response — especially in my $1- and $5-tiers, which had underperformed over the past few months.

I also recommend carrying that same mentality over to the body text of my Patreon page. Again, I use bullet points to convey large amounts of information quickly. I’m also a big fan of using an informational graphic to elaborate on reward-tier details.