Open studio #8: Tier editing

[darby]

Welcome back to Open Studio number 8. You might remember me from such hits as templates for new creators. I’m returning to share some work on our tier editor !

We know that editing your tiers is currently a tedious process: click into a tier, remove a benefit, save, exit, click into another tier, add a different benefit, save, exit, repeat until your mouse clicking finger hurts.

We’re exploring an easier way to edit tiers. In this concept, you’d be able to drag and drop benefits , track them more easily, and duplicate them with one click.

Drag and drop

In our benefit card concept, benefits appear like cards that you can easily rearrange in a tier and even move between tiers!

Tracking

We hear you: adding, removing, and deleting benefits is confusing. Tracking, what’s that? Why do I have to rewrite all the work I just did into the tier description? We’re hoping this new interface makes all that more clear.

One click benefit copying

Most creators want to offer benefits in more than one tier but it means duplicating effort, especially if you want tracking! We’re looking at copying as a possible solution to this…less than fun process.

Feedback we’re looking for

How often do you edit your tiers?

What were some misconceptions you had about tiers when you started your Patreon?

How would these changes impact you?

Note: These are very early concepts and they don’t represent what we’ll roll out in the future. Your feedback can help make changes to the sign-up experience that will empower first-time creators to launch better pages.

[Th_Mole]

I’m still setting up my page, so I edit my tiers as often as I think they need correcting before I actually launch in earnest.

The one thing that confuses me about benefits as they are now is that per-creation creators can only set up benefits to be one time delivery. Does this mean a benefit could be delivered each time a creation is posted (which makes sense), or that Patreon would only inform me once then never again for multiple posts (which makes no sense to me – if I’m getting support for each post then I can’t imagine giving a benefit only once). I’ve tried digging through the resources Patreon provides, but I haven’t found an answer yet. I don’t want to assume one way or the other, I would prefer to be certain.

It doesn’t look like the new benefit system addresses my confusion.

[FutilityCloset]

We rarely edit our tiers, so this is not a priority for us. I do have one comment on this though. We’ve been using Patreon for several years now, and a couple of years ago a change was made to how the tiers were formatted, so that if we wanted to make the smallest change to a tier (a slight change in the wording of the description) it meant that we had to ENTIRELY re-do the whole tier (how the image and title was handled, etc) for all the tiers. Please do not have that happen again.

[Watsup]

I don’t often mess with my tiers, so I’m not how much use this will be to me, I think the whole system is and will continue to be (with these changes) pretty straight forward, and I doubt they’ll impact me much. I did have one question though.

When adding a new tier in the middle or end of your Patreon campaign tier list, it’s often an issue with creators with large amounts of posts that they have to go back through their catalogue and specifically give access to every single post through a very tedious process of editing every post and checking the new tier for access. One post at a time.

When using this new copy feature, is there any way that the tier we copy we could also copy access levels too?

So if I copied a $5 tier, this new tier would automatically have access to all of the posts that the $5 tier I’m copying from has access to. Without this, I don’t think these tier changes really do much.

Revamping the entire tier system so that 3 sentences don’t need to be retyped seems like a very strange thing to spend time on if you also don’t add functionality changes that make it easier to actually add tiers to a Patreon campaign. The real hard part of implementing a new tier right now is going back and making sure they have access to the content you’ve made.

[darby]

The one thing that confuses me about benefits as they are now is that per-creation creators can only set up benefits to be one time delivery. Does this mean a benefit could be delivered each time a creation is posted (which makes sense),

I think I might have an answer for you. “One time delivery” is designed to help you track benefits like shout-outs, thank you messages…things that creators tend to do once with a new patron and then never again. “Monthly benefits” are designed to help with recurring benefits like a monthly video call or livestream. It sounds like we don’t have a tracking option to help creators like you track benefits that need to be delivered whenever you make a post.

[darby]

Oof, it looks like we might be using terms differently. The mockups I’ve shared don’t have a copy tier feature. Can I ask some clarifying questions? When you say “tier” do you mean the individual reward you’re offering your patrons? Or is it a price level that has many rewards in it?

Example: if I’m offering a shout-out and a sticker for $5 patrons, are the shout-out and sticker a “tier”?

[Watsup]

No, the Tier is the pricing level itself, encompassing all of the rewards (to me, anyway).

The individual rewards would be “rewards” or “benefits” in my eyes, copying tiers implies you’re copying the tier and everything that goes with that tier (pricing levels, post access, benefits, discord roles, tier name, etc), and then letting people modify it.

I think having a quick way to copy over posting access when duplicating a tier would be a huge help, if it’s something you haven’t considered as part of this revamp you definitely should.

[darby]

Thanks for answering my clarifying questions! Here’s what I have noted:

• When revamping tiers, bulk editing posts is the most painful part
• When you edit your posts, access levels are what you want to edit

[Watsup]

When I edit posts for the purposes of adjusting tiers, access levels are what needs to be edited, yes.

I edit posts for all sorts of reasons outside of that, hah.

[angelafineart]

This looks awesome. I already have my tiers set up but this would have been very helpful. I like that it is tidy and easy to understand.

I would like to add one major need in this process of adding new tiers. There needs to be a way to give new tiers access to old posts. I have hundreds of posts containing images for download. Access to these older posts is essential for new tiers. Right now if I were to add a new tier I would have to manually go back and edit each and every old post to allow access. That is a huge problem and the #1 reason why I haven’t added new tiers this year.

[angelafineart]

Exactly! I have hundreds of posts and can’t add new tiers because I would have to manually give new tiers access to every old post. No way.

[Maarika]

I like the drag and drop feature. Very cool!
I don’t think I would use the tracking benefits feature since the rewards I want to track don’t fit those frequencies (I have a postcard reward that I send out every other month), so just monthly or one time tracking isn’t helpful to me.

“One click benefit copying” is actually three clicks If there was like a stash of benefits that you could drag to any tier you want, then that would be one click copying. By that I mean having a section for reusable benefit blocks that can be just dragged and dropped to whichever tiers we want and however many times we want, if that makes sense.

I never copy rewards to other tiers since I just write “all previous rewards” to tiers that have the same rewards as previous ones because having to read through the same thing multiple times is a waste of time. Instead I only highlight what’s the new benefit in every tier.

How often do you edit your tiers?
Every 3-4 months

What were some misconceptions you had about tiers when you started your Patreon?
I don’t remember having any?

How would these changes impact you?
It would make editing tiers much faster.

[evan_der_millner]

Agreed. This is the most pressing issue with adding new tiers.

[artbyemilyhare]

What would be REALLY great with the benefits is having the option to track something instead of ‘one time benefit’ or ‘monthly’ to have an option for every two months or every 3… etc. I NEED this so badly as I have some which come out every other month for my patrons…

[rubenfcid]

What I find tedious the most about editing tiers, is having to edit posts consequently.
Imagine I want to rise a tier from 30 to 35 dollars, and up to that moment, over 60 posts are included in that tier. I’d have to create a new tier at 35 dollars, disable the previous one, and editing all the posts one by one to match the new tier. This kind of pains in the ass, discourage tiers editing at least for me.