As an independent content creator in today‘s digital landscape, you likely spend significant time and effort producing high-quality writing, videos, podcasts, newsletters or other media. Monetizing that content and building a sustainable income is often the bigger challenge.
Platforms like Substack and Patreon provide creators ways to monetize original content while retaining ownership and creative freedom. They both facilitate recurring payments from fans and subscribers in exchange for access to exclusive content. But there are some key differences that may make one platform better suited for your specific needs.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the core offerings of Substack and Patreon and dive into the details across key factors that matter most to creators – content formats, pricing models, discovery features, analytics, tools and more. By the end, you‘ll have the insights to determine which platform aligns closest to your creator goals.
Overview of the Core Platform Offerings
Substack positions itself first and foremost as a newsletter platform designed specifically for writers and podcasters. The core offering is an email newsletter tied to a website built specifically for your audience. You can publish both free posts visible to all, as well as paid posts exclusively for paying subscribers.
Beyond newsletters, Substack provides podcast distribution to all major platforms. And they recently launched Substack Spaces, allowing creators to hold live audio conversations.
Patreon serves a broader range of content creators including video creators, musicians, illustrators, photographers and more. The focus is on membership, with creators offering exclusive member benefits and perks for those that pay monthly recurring subscriptions. Core offerings are member profiles, posts and community features like private messaging.
Now let‘s take a deeper look at some of the key factors creators should consider when choosing between these platforms.
Content Formats & Post Options
Substack caters heavily towards writers and podcasters. The email newsletter tied to your Substack site forms the basis for all content. You can publish blog-style articles, send plain text emails, embed images, audio, video and more within both free and paid newsletters. Podcast distribution is directly integrated as well.
While Substack‘s bread and butter is the written word, recent additions like Spaces expand possibilities for audio conversations. But capabilities for video, live streaming and visualization remain limited.
Patreon accommodates a far wider range of content formats. Core offerings center around text, photo, audio and video posts within your creator page and community feed. You can share written blogs, videos, songs, paintings, photography and any visual media.
Patreon also supports live streaming capability directly to members through a partnership with Crowdcast. And they offer integration with platforms like Discord for creators managing their own community spaces outside Patreon.
Verdict: Patreon has broader flexibility for creators producing visual and multimedia content. But Substack excels for writers focused on email newsletters and podcasts.
Pricing Models & Revenue Shares
Monetization model flexibility and revenue share rates weigh heavily in any creator‘s decision making. Here‘s how Substack and Patreon compare.
The Substack pricing model is simple – a single subscription tier priced at your discretion. Typically this ranges from $5-$10 monthly. Substack takes a 10% cut of all subscription revenue as their platform fee. So with a $5 subscription, you keep $4.50 per subscriber per month.
There are no caps on subscriber counts and earnings. Once you pass $500 per month in subscription revenue, payouts shift from monthly to weekly.
Patreon provides more flexibility but added complexity with pricing plans. Creators can configure multiple subscription tiers at different access levels and price points. A "basics" tier might be $3 per month or an "insider" tier $10 per month. Patreon also supports one-time payments.
Revenue share rates scale from 5-12% depending on tier. For subscriptions below $7, Patreon takes 12%. Between $7-$100, it‘s an 8% fee. Over $100 it drops to 5%. So the more money you make, the lower the share Patreon takes.
Verdict: Patreon has more versatile monetization options but Substack’s single tier offers simplicity. Both are competitively priced by industry standards.
Discovery Features & Audience Growth
Gaining a core base of paying subscribers is predicated on creators ability to reach target audiences likely to convert to fans. Both platforms offer discovery features, but effectiveness can vary.
The main avenue for discovery on Substack is their general homepage highlighting trending writers across categories like news, politics, humor and more. Featuring here draws visibility but rotations are limited. Additional options include getting shared in Substack’s weekly recommendation newsletter, integration with Twitter’s new newsletter revamp, and generally leveraging your own social media presence.
Patreon discovery relies less on internal platform features. Some categories highlight top creators, but rotations are limited. Patreon encourages creators to drive most member acquisition through external channels like social media, collaborations with other creators and word of mouth from current fan bases. Occasional pledge drives, fan funding campaigns and creator-led initiatives also help spur growth.
For both platforms, creators retaining ownership of email subscriber data and direct fan relationships remains a huge appeal and value.
Verdict: Substack discovery features show potential but remain limited. Patreon puts burden fully on creator to drive traffic and acquisition. Self-promotion is critical across both.
Analytics & Data Offerings
Access to rich subscriber data and analytics helps creators understand audience demand and optimize both content and business models.
Substack stands out with the depth of their analytics focused specifically on writers and newsletter performance. All core metrics on subscribers, engagement, posts, traffic sources, links and more allow fine tuning content strategy. Newsletter metrics like open rates, click through rates and conversion funnels help maximize audience value.
For example, top Substack newsletters like Popular Information and The Browser have publicly reported open rates between 50-60% – extremely high for digital newsletters. Benchmarking against comparable creators helps set goals and optimize performance.
Data can be exported for external analysis. And Substack recently launched Fathom Analytics providing additional website analytics for free to all Substack creators.
Patreon analytics are comparatively simpler for tracking subscriptions, new patrons and earnings. Some visibility into posts and community activity. But less robust metrics for assessing content performance and audience engagement at a deeper level.
Third-party integrations like Google Analytics can help supplement insights, but the on-platform analytics remain Patreon’s biggest weakness.
Verdict: For creators focused on optimizing content analytics, Substack has a clear edge. Patreon insights sufficient for tracking income, but lacking for assessing content formats.
Integrations & Additional Tools
Beyond core platform features, additional integrations with other apps and tools within the creator tech stack expands possibilities.
As a newsletter-first platform, Substack integrations cater heavily towards email marketing and newsletters. These include email service providers like Mailchimp, automation tools like Zapier, analytics suites like Fathom Analytics and social media scheduling apps like Buffer.
For podcasters, easy connections to hosting platforms like Transistor and distribution platforms like Spotify expand reach.
Patreon has fewer direct integrations but core partnerships with platforms like Discord for community building, Crowdcast for live streaming and Membership Pro for additional paywall capabilities and ecommerce.
Zapierdoes connect Patreon to 2000+ apps enabling creators to connect remarketing tools, CRMs, email marketing, merchandising and more based on their own tech stack needs.
Verdict: Substack’s email and podcast focus lends itself better to specialized integrations. But Patreon flexibility enables creators to build custom tech stacks for each use case.
Pros, Cons & Summary Recommendations
Taking stock of all aspects and options covered, we can summarize a few key advantages and limitations of each platform:
Substack Pros
- Email newsletter focus with turnkey site
- Streamlined pricing and good revenue share
- Strong podcast integration
- Robust analytics for writers
Substack Cons
- Less flexibility beyond newsletters and podcasts
- Relatively weak discovery features
- Self-promotion remains critical
Patreon Pros
- Wide range of content formats
- Flexible membership tiers and pricing
- Broad creator integrations enabled
Patreon Cons
- More complex monetization
- Creator responsible for audience growth
- Analytics lacking richness
For writers and podcasters focused on building an engaged email subscriber base, Substack provides a streamlined and specialized platform to create and optimize text and audio content while monetizing through subscriptions.
For video creators, artists and musicians producing visual or multimedia works, Patreon enables customizable memberships with flexible access tiers and robust integrations to share exclusive content while getting paid directly by fans.
Driving External Traffic and Discovery
While both platforms offer varying onboard discovery channels, creators consistently emphasize that self-directed promotion across social media and existing audiences drives the lion‘s share of platform growth.
Optimizing that external traffic and discovery rests on four core strategies relevant to both Substack and Patreon:
Leverage Existing Followings
Start promotion from current email lists, website traffic, social media followers or fellow creative collaborators. Even niche audiences in the hundreds can form a baseline of support.
Produce Shareable Content
Focus early content on themes and formats with innate viral potential and social sharing capability – surprising insights, counterintuitive takes, emotionally resonant stories.
Promote Aggressively
Share new content, subscriber milestones and platform updates consistently across all owned social channels. Paid ads can supplement organic reach. Email outreach and collaborations further expand visibility.
Provide Ongoing Value
Consistency retaining existing subscribers and giving them reasons to stay engaged long term ensures continual word of mouth that grows awareness and subscribers exponentially.
Casual crossover from free to paid converts at 5-20% for most creators. Ensuring high-quality content and conveying its value propels that flywheel effect.
Building Engaged Communities
Both Substack and Patreon place immense power in creators hands – to own content, control distribution, forge direct fan connections and enable paid experiences benefiting both creators and audiences.
But community building remains a craft itself. Beyond great content, creators have additional options to strengthen relationships.
Substack creators retain subscribers emails, enabling regular correspondence about updates driving engagement. Some use tools like MailerLite or Buttondown to send operational emails separate from content newsletters.
Group features allow hosting private discussions around niche topics or interests for a subset of paid subscribers. Comments facilitate reader conversations, though not all creators enable them.
Patreon places exclusive posts and private messaging capabilities with paying members at the core of community interaction. Tiers can provide differentiated access – entry levels seeing some content, higher tiers all. Integrations like Discord augment direct dialogue.
Both platforms enable "behind the scenes" perspective – on creative process, challenges, what motivates and inspires creators. Audiences value that authentic connection.
Successful creators also organize exclusive meetups, Q&As, workshops and other offline experiences tied to subscriptions. Superfans get further value.
Analyzing Content Performance
Understanding what content resonates most with audiences provides crucial insight for creators seeking to grow & retain subscribers.
Substack offers unparalleled analytics into the nitty gritty of newsletter engagement. Metrics like open rates, click-through rates on articles, scroll depth and links clicked indicate what content types perform best. Writers can experiment across first-person essays, reported features, advice columns, interviews and data journalism to benchmark engagement.
Site analytics additionally show trends across blog posts and enable A/B testing headline or styling changes to optimize appeal. Referral sources quantify social channel traction.
Comparisons against industry benchmarks helps creators set goals for metrics like:
- Targeting open rates over 50%
- Maximizing click-through-rates over 2.5%
- Shooting for over 50% scroll depth
- Achieving above average read completion rates
Continued testing then helps refine content formats for ideal audience response.
Patreon lacks robust analytics for assessing content formats. But creators can still employ tactics like:
- Posting different formats to detect differences in likes, comments
- Tracking growth rates after varied content upgrades
- Surveying patrons directly on their preferences
Multimedia artists might compare engagement on video vs. images, musicians on new songs vs. live concert footage. Niche interests can emerge to shape direction.
Maximizing Earnings on Each Platform
While creative purpose should steer creators more than money, achieving sustainable income often remains table stakes for committing time to original work.
Levels vary widely based on niche and audience size, but data provides ballpark benchmarks.
The 2022 Substack Creator Economy Survey revealed:
- Over 50% of Substack writers earn more than $5k annually
- The top 10% of writers generate over $97k per year
- Writers publishing 3-4x weekly generate 4x more revenue.
Substack writer Nick Bilton recently shared:
"I now have nearly 7,000 subscribers who pay $5 or $50 a month to subscribe to my column. My revenue is already the equivalent of what I was being paid by Conde Nast."
On Patreon, analytics firm Graphtreon tracks notable creators earnings. CinemaSins accrues over $56,000 per video in a comedy niche. Chapo Trap House earns $173,000 monthly for a subscriber base of 37,000 for their progressive podcast. But smaller niche podcasters like Some More News tout almost 4,000 patrons averaging $6 per month totaling $22k monthly income.
Across both platforms, even starting with a few hundred organic subscribers from existing followings can facilitate $1000+ in incremental monthly earnings for full time creators – enabling sustainable creative focus.
Creator Success Stories and Testimonials
First-hand experiences reveal most about what works in practice – where creators found success leveraging these platforms and which features provided the most value.
Prolific novelist and Substack writer Seth Abramson highlighted:
"Substack has given me total freedom as a writer. Some stories I‘ve broken have led to TV and podcast deals, a book contract, and speaking events. That‘s only possible when a writer owns their work."
Abramson leverages Groups to host exclusive Q&As that further superfans sense of access and affiliation.
Video essayist Lindsay Ellis built a thriving Patreon she credits with enabling creative autonomy after past media jobs:
"I have been able to take the experience and contacts from almost a decade of freelance and in-house production work and apply it to my own channel, owning my own content. I don‘t have to compromise my artistic vision."
With customized benefits like exclusive behind-the-scenes documentary access, Ellis structures content and community tailored to fan preferences.
Both examples illustrate that creative freedom need not preclude sustainable income for original high-quality work – when backed by audience value exchange.
Putting It All Together
Building a thriving creative business as an independent content creator means mastering both craft and commerce. Choosing the right platforms and technologies to effectively share your work while sustainably monetizing is a layered challenge with many variables.
Both Substack and Patreon present viable options for writers, podcasters, video creators and niche artists to own their content, build direct community relationships and get paid for their creative passions.
As with any fast-growing and evolving space, there are still open questions and uncertainty. But by focusing first on serving your core fans and subscribers with care and consistency, you put yourself in the best position to thrive on whichever platform makes the best technical and creative fit.
Evaluating your specific content formats, prospective audience appeal, ideal community engagement and options for long-term monetization reveals the right path. Master creators obsessed with the craft can find their place on both platforms. Give your fans quality worth paying for and revenue can give back creative freedom in turn.