If you constantly hear YouTubers mentioning Patreon but you haven’t gotten around to seeing what it is yet, allow us to introduce you to the world of premium-level creation, enjoyable workspaces, and the transformation of dreams into reality.
Put simply, Patreon is a platform to share artistic and educational content with your community—for a price. This cuts the middle man, giving artists the freedom to express themselves fully while also avoiding the constant worry about funding.
Plus, Patreon users (also known as “patrons”) get to support artists in exchange for information and products.
It’s kind of like Netflix but for ordinary creators with smaller budgets.
Who are these creators and how much are they making?
We at Web Tribunal tell you all about it.
Mind-Blowing Patreon Statistics (Editor’s Choice)
- In 2022, Patreon hosts 8+ million active subscribers.
- So far, patrons have supported creators with over $3.5 billion.
- The number of patrons increased by 50% in 2020.
- Patreon’s revenue doubled in just a year, reaching $160 million in 2021.
- Over 30,000 new creators launched on Patreon in March 2020.
- True Crime Obsessed makes over $247,855 per month.
- A Patreon employee earns approximately $144,380 a year.
What Is Patreon?
Simply put, Patreon is a platform that helps creatives monetize their content—and if statistics are anything to go by, it’s pretty good at it.
Let’s start with the basics.
1. Patreon came to life in just six weeks.
(Source: Patreon)
The history of this platform goes back to 2013 when YouTube musician Jack Conte was looking for a solution to his financial mismatch. Millions of fans loved his art, but that wasn’t enough to keep him financially stable.
So, he came up with the idea and shared it with Sam Yam, who brought it to life in only six weeks.
Within 18 months, there were 125,000 Patreon users already.
2. Patreon hosts more than eight million active users.
(Source: Patreon)
Patreon’s business model is based on building a community—the greater the community, the greater the platform’s income level is.
As of 2022, Patreon has 250,000+ creators, 700 of which have more than 2,000 patrons each.
Fun fact: The platform is most popular in the United States, with 43.74% of its users located in the country. The UK comes a distant second, accounting for just 5% of Patreon’s user base.
3. More than seven million people visit Patreon’s website every month.
(Source: Semrush)
According to Patreon statistics, the site received 7.5 million visitors in March 2022. This makes Patreon the 321st most visited website in the world and the 163rd most visited site in the United States.
This is mostly due to creators’ efforts, though, as they are the ones responsible for attracting the users.
Fun fact: YouTube is the most visited site in the world, with 30 million people popping in every day. Google and Facebook take the next spots on the list.
4. Video is the most popular of Patreon’s categories.
(Source: Graphtreon)
There are more than 53,000 creators in that category. Furthermore, the estimated monthly payouts to video creators surpass $6 million.
Other popular Patreon categories include Podcasts (15,800+ creators, $6.3 million in monthly payouts), Music (15,200+, $1.1 million), and Games (13,300+, $1.8 million).
For comparison, Adult Crafts & DIY (aka the least popular category on Patreon) has only 77 creators, and its monthly payouts are around $3,800.
Patreon Revenue
During the pandemic, many creators turned to Patreon—which is hardly surprising, since any and all types of artistic events were extremely restricted.
What does this mean in financial terms?
Let’s see.
5. There are four different types of fees on Patreon.
(Source: Patreon support)
The first one is the Platform fee. If the creator makes money, Patreon takes a 5%-12% cut, depending on the plan the creator chose.
There’s also the Payment Processing fee (so you can get your patrons’ contributions in your account) and the Payout fees, which Patreon takes whenever the creators transfer their earnings to the bank or other payment processors, like PayPal or Payoneer.
There’s also a Conversion fee. This one also applies to creators, not Patreon’s users. If the currency patrons choose differs from the one creators selected, Patreon charges a 2.5% conversion fee.
6. Patreon’s revenue for 2021 was $160 million.
(Source: Backlinko)
In 2020, the platform generated around $80 million. By the end of the following year, that number had doubled.
But it’s not only revenue that went up, creators’ earnings skyrocketed, too. They went from $12.6 million at the beginning of 2020 to 23.6 million in September 2021.
Fun fact: Patreon has paid its creators a collective $3.5 billion since it started in 2013.
7. On average, a Patreon employee earns around $69/hour.
(Source: Glassdoor)
How much money, exactly, can you make on Patreon?
The average salary adds up to $144,380 a year, give or take. If we want to get down to specifics, though, customer service representatives can earn around $57,000 a year, whereas IT engineers can look forward to nearly $200,000 a year.
And, believe it or not, that’s not the highest-paid position within the company—there are senior developers, for instance, who earn $289,000 a year.
This, of course, is nothing compared to how much Patreon’s top creators can earn, but we’ll talk about that below.
8. Patreon plans to have a 1,000-strong team in 2022.
(Source: Techcrunch)
By the end of 2021, there were only 400 people on Patreon’s payroll, but that’s changing fast.
Patreon plans to hire aggressively in 2022 and, to that end, is offering about 600 new positions—particularly in the product, design, and engineering departments.
Fun fact: Patreon has a couple of tech whizzes on its team. The platform’s CEO, Julian Gutman, used to be head of products for Instagram. There’s also Utkarsh Srivastava, who used to be Senior VP of Engineering at Google and Twitter.
Top Patreon Earners
Presently, there are more than 250,000 creators on Patreon—though they don’t all enjoy the same popularity rates.
Let’s talk a bit about the people who make the magic happen.
9. The longest-running creator is Pomplamoose.
(Source: Graphteron)
The Pomplamoose platform actually belongs to one of Patreon’s founders, Jack Conte, and his wife, Nataly Dawn. They registered it in 2013 and use it to post mash-ups of famous songs and other music content.
Alas, Pomplamoose is far from being the most successful creator on the platform. It only has 2,519 patrons and earns about $13,595 a month.
10. Over 30,000 creators launched on Patreon in the first three weeks of March 2020.
(Source: Patreon Blog)
The pandemic played a big part in Patreon's growth. In just three weeks, the number of creators who registered on the platform surged by 40%.
That said, creators need to do more than just exist on the platform in order to succeed.
Each one is free to run their business as they see fit. Some only upload occasionally content while others are consistent in their engagement and share every step of their creative process.
Fun fact: Patreon statistics show that 213,000 out of 250,000 creators have at least one subscriber. This means that 37,000 have zero followers.
11. True Crime Obsessed is patrons’ favorite podcast.
(Source: Graphteron)
An incredibly entertaining mix of comedy and criminal documentaries, True Crime Obsessed holds the attention of nearly 50,000 users, earning itself first place among Patreon’s podcasts and earning its creators $133,000-$347,000 a month.
The second place on the list of top Patreon earners goes to The Tim Dillon Show, which boasts 40,000 patrons and about $210,000 in monthly revenue.
Chapo Trap House—a podcast that revolves around American politics—comes after, with 36,000 patrons paying an average of $4.42 per month for its content.
Fun fact: Projections suggest that the number of podcast listeners will surpass 132 million in 2022. Perhaps it’s time to finally create your own.
Wrap Up
Patreon has been around for nearly a decade and during this time it has achieved some fascinating results, becoming an undoubtedly successful venture.
However, its success is in grand part thanks to the community. Namely, the amazing creators who took matters into their own hands and transformed their passion into a business.
And, of course, let’s not forget about Patreon users, who have been the core contributors to this cause.
So, after reading this article, do you feel confident enough to take your hobby to the next level?
Sources
A wayfarer by heart, Jordan fancies journeying into foreign lands with a camera in hand almost as much as he enjoys roving the online world. He spends his time poking at letters and pixels, trying to transmogrify them into something cool.
