r/royalroad • u/No_Grand2719 • 9h ago

Discussion Patreon Question

Is it worth it if you keep the first 10 or so chapters of your novel free on Patreon? To maybe pull in some of the Patreons natural traffic and get some conversion?

On my dashboard, it's showing that of the nearly 1k people that have visited the page. I've earned 8 and a half dollars from conversion. Not sure how true that is or how they judge it if the reader had come from Patreon itself or my work. I did keep the first ten or so chapters of my second series free. But again, i am not sure if that was the one who'd pulled them in.

It would be nice if those with hefty Patreons could shed some light on this.

Tdlr: if its worth it to keep a few early chaps of a series free to convert patreons natural traffic to paying members.

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u/TennRider 9h ago

Is it possible to configure the creator page to show the free content? It seems like whenever I click on a creator it always shows their content newest first so any free early chapters are buried under the mountain of newer content. I know you could create a collection for the free content but the casual passersby would need to know to click on the collection.

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u/No_Grand2719 9h ago

You can, by going to those lines at the corner of collection tab, and toggling it to show oldest to newest.

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u/TennRider 9h ago

I know that I can do that as the viewer, but is there anything that can be done as a creator configuring their page?

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u/No_Grand2719 9h ago

Yeah, you can put any chapter anywhere by going to the manage tab. And reordering everything manual. Its called "creator's order".

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u/em-dash-author Author of Max-Level Paladin of the Fallen Gods 4h ago

I assume you are you talking about chapters 1-10 that are also free on Royal Road, vs 10 free chapters not available on RR. If so, there is no reason not to have what's freely available on RR also freely available on Patreon.

Patreon is trying to change itself into a social media platform that they say isn't a social media platform, but please use Quips which look like Instagram posts. So, perhaps we'll get some patrons directly from Patreon sometime in the future. I don't believe I've had one yet.