113: Starting a Photography Patreon with Sam Hurd

Episodes The Bearded Tog

July 15, 2020

Sam Hurd is a professional photographer who has built and sustained a successful platform on Patreon. Through growing his following on Patreon, he’s definitely learned what works and what doesn’t. We were thrilled to have him share his knowledge on the Bearded Tog!

Starting a Photography Patreon with Sam Hurd

Patreon is sustainable. Instead of always having to come up with new courses or ideas, you can focus on just adding value and content to your patreon each month.
It’s a good metric to see how you’re doing as an educator when you can see how many people are leaving and coming each month.
Spread out your content. People can only keep up with so much and you also need to look at the ratio of what people are paying vs. the content you’re putting out.
You just need a starting point. Once you get one or two people and get feedback from them, it plays into new content.
Give people rewards for being loyal and hopping on the Patreon early. You can play around with the business side of it.
Patreon doesn’t do a ton to cater to the photography niche, so it’s helpful to play around with it and figure out what works for you.
There will always be free content, but there’s value in a slow burn and staying creative with your sources of revenue.
“There is a danger in getting too set in your ways in terms of how you operate and how you do your thing. You have to be constantly evolving.”
Things like presets have a lifespan. You can’t sell new ones each year, where as with starting a photography Patreon you can continue adding value and content.
Giveaways have not been successful for Sam in how he wants to advertise his Patreon.
Make sure you don’t get distracted by the next big thing. Sometimes too many ideas can be overwhelming and you need to follow up on your original idea.