So I pledged $10 to a fellow Patreon artist last night. His named is Ray Dillon and I briefly chatted with him the day I set up my own Patreon page. He seemed like a fellow worth pledging because he genuinely seems to want to help other artists. See, Patreon has a reward system for people that get involved and help support other artists, and my reward for pledging the $10 is to have some of my work shared online by Ray to help get “more eyes on your art”. It’s a pretty spectacular idea actually, and it’s definitely something I would LOVE to be able to do for someone else. Someday. When I have 9,000+ followers on social media like Ray does, perhaps.

Besides, the whole “You need to spend money to make money” motto kind of goes into effect here, I think. Even though Patreon is still a pretty new service/platform for artists, as well as those people that want to help support artists, the community seems to really want to “pay it forward”. You support one artist, and they support you right back. That’s such an exciting idea to me. I’m sure every artist remembers when they were extremely unknown. When it was just their family and friends visiting their website occasionally. Then one day, after achieving some semblance of success, you help other artists out that are in the same situation you used to be in.

The Internet needs much more of this; people that are willing to spend a little of their time supporting one another. Spending money is the easiest and time effective way of doing it, but you can always help support them by sharing their work, liking them on Facebook, or just sending some nice comments their way. It’s actually a pretty simple process, and it goes a long way to help keep an artist motivated and inspired to keep working.

Anyways, who knows where I’ll be in a year or so with Patreon. It could end up being a platform that changes my life, or something that just sits there and never amounts to anything. I’m reading more and more that to get started from zero is the hardest part. People don’t want to toss their money at something that starts at zero. Having a few paying patrons early on can make a world of difference. I’m not sure how I’m going to achieve that yet, but it’s been suggested to me that I should pay some friends to put my own money into my Patreon. I hate that idea. If that’s something I need to do to succeed, then I think something might be fundamentally wrong with this platform.