#28 - Why people REALLY support creators
It's not altruism😐
Welcome back readers! ☕
Most of us will support a creator, artist, or community builder in our lifetime. Why do we choose to spend our hard earned money this way?
Take a quick look at the tweet below from The Yard, a successful creator podcast from Ludwig and friends that generates >$200K a month.
What motivations do you think they appeal to? We’ll come back to this later.
Over the past decade, I’ve worked on numerous products that enable community building and fan funding. Through observing hundreds of communities, I’ve found four primary motivations that drive fans to support and financially contribute to their favorite creators.
Recognition & status
Access (e.g. to content, community, attention)
Identity & expression
Tangible value
Recognition & status
Fans want to be seen and elevated above the crowd for their contributions. It is easy to see why this is the most commonly desired benefit that incentivize fans to support creators.
Creators and community leaders dole out recognition in numerous ways, some examples are:
Status symbols — Creators can assign special roles to their supporters on platforms like Discord. These often come with unique colors or badges that help supporters stand out in the community. Symbols can be further differentiated based on how much the fan contributed or how long they’ve been a supporter.
Shoutouts — Creators take time in their live stream or VOD to thank supporters for making it all possible. This can be a simple mention of their username, or a more personalized thank you message to acknowledge supporters’ contribution.
Super Eyepatch Wolf thanks Patrons in each video, sometimes spending >1 minute on this. He emphasizes McDojoLife here for their extra contributions. Leaderboards - A public display of the top supporters, ranked by contributions or engagement within a community. Giving an elevated presence to the most active and generous supporters.
Creators also pull on a few levers to vary the recognition they give.
Consistency — How reliably do fans feel they are recognized and elevated for supporting the creator? e.g. Recognizing one person but not another for the same contribution can lead fans to perceive things as inconsistent, or even unfair.
Immediacy — How quickly do fans feel a sense of recognition and status after they support the creator? e.g. A live streamer can respond to fan support actions in real-time to immediately reinforce that action, which also incentivizes other viewers to do the same.
Magnitude — How significant is the recognition / status that fans are rewarded when they support the creator? e.g. Creators tailor the status they give based on the contribution. $1 may get a “thank you” from the creator, while $500 may result in a happy dance, a heartfelt appreciation speech, a VIP role in the community, and a 30 sec recognition segment in the next video upload.
Frequency — How often are fans rewarded with the recognition and status from creators? e.g. A daily video poster has an opportunity each day to recognize their supporters in their content. A monthly newsletter writer doesn’t have the same option to recognize supporters within content as frequently.
Access
Desiring access implies that people want more from creators beyond their content. Why is that?
Creators represent “goals”, something fans aspire to be / have. Fans may also value creators’ skills / knowledge because they need that skill set to reach their own goals.
For these fans, free content from creators is not enough to satisfy their curiosity and personal goals. They want deep dives, exclusive insights, interactive discussions with other fans, and more.
That’s a lot to ask for! But they’re willing to pay, which is good since it can be costly for creators to offer additional access.
Today, creators offer access in a variety of ways:
Content — This includes unreleased, bonus, or behind the scenes material. This could also be drafts of written work, earlier versions of songs or videos, or archived content not available to the public. Creators also offer extensive course content that dives deeper into topics that is covered at a surface level in free content. For creators, the lowest effort version of content access is to offer an early preview of content that will eventually be available publicly.
Community — Creators might set up exclusive spaces for fans to connect on a community platform such as Discord. These spaces allow for more intimate and direct conversations. Additionally, while fans may be drawn to a community because of a creator, a long term benefit is fostering meaningful connections with each other. You’ll know the community is thriving when rituals (shared repeated activities that feel like “play”) emerge that members run on their own.
Attention — Every interaction requires creators to give unscalable attention / time. That can be a big opportunity cost. If they deem it worthwhile to offer unscalable interactions, creators may offer private Q&As, messaging, and other forms of small group / individual interactions. Some creators even tap into commissioned videos as a way to earn. These options are not for every creator, but these experiences can provide fans with a memorable experience that truly acknowledges their support.
Most commonly, creators give access to attention by responding to a few fan comments. Then there’s Taylor Swift, who jumped at the opportunity to chat with fans for two hours ahead of her music video premiere.
Co-creation — Super fans can be given the opportunity to influence the creator's work. This means access to exclusive surveys, polls, or brainstorming sessions with supporters, allowing them to have a say in upcoming content or projects.
Identity & expression
People have a basic need for social belonging. In communities, part of belonging is being perceived positively by other community members.
This is why fans want to establish a connection to others in a creator community; because there is significance behind their acknowledgement and approval.
So fans endeavor to signal to the tribe: “I am one of you!” To do so, they associate themselves with values / symbols that are known and appreciated by others in the group. Creators facilitate this in a few different ways:
Shared lexicon — Creators often indoctrinate shared language that are used to identify as part of a herd. This can be a greeting, verbal/written slang, or a name that an entire fandom proudly associates with. By gating the explicit association to valuable lexicon, creators can incentivize support (e.g. some titles are bestowed only to supporters, OR members are greeted with a certain phrase only if they are a financial supporter).
Symbols — Emojis and animated sticker are popular visual expression tools for all modern consumers. Creators often create custom emojis and stickers that only paid supporters can use. Gaining access to emojis is a very common reason for people to subscribe to Twitch streamers. The combination of exclusivity and being a meaningful symbol means custom emojis can be highly valued.
Inside Memes — Similar to symbols, memes are often born in strong community settings. Meme are modern hieroglyphics packed with unspoken reference to something that others can understand and relate to. Arguably, memes can be the most densely packed communication medium, and they are infinitely re-mixable with templates. To entice direct fan support, creators can offer exclusive templates for creating memes that reference “inside” stories from the community that fans fondly gravitate toward.
Branded merchandise — Whether clothes and bags, or stickers and digital items, creators want their fans to be walking billboards where ever they go (and to look good doing it). What we wear is an extension of who we are and a projection of our values. In the same way that sports fans rock their favorite player’s jersey, fans don their favorite creator’s apparel as a show of fandom.
Chamath wearing a MrBeast sweatshirt on the All-In Podcast
Note: Creators who want fame will want these expressions tools (often featuring their face) to be widely used. If fame is the only thing creators want to optimize for, then there is clear drawback to making expression tools “paid only”.
Tangible value
We are all consumers. Naturally, when we buy something, we want to feel like we are getting a good deal. This is why many creators try to bundle their subscription offering with other perks: to create more value for their paid supporters.
While fans care immensely about recognition, access, and identity, tangible value refers to the set of benefits that users could readily assign a dollar value to.
Merchandise pre-orders — If creators have enough demand for their merch that they get sold out, then clearly there is value in guaranteed access or pre-ordering. This rewards the biggest fans with limited-edition or high-demand items.
Discounted / free goods — Creator can offer subscriber-only discounts on other goods, which are effectively discounted bundles. Similarly, creators offer free trials on services, usually in partnership with brands.
Surprise gifts / mementos — Crafts and handwritten postcards / letters, which can be viewed as exclusive collectibles.
Raffle / giveaway — When creators organize merch raffles, paid subscribers can have a higher chance to win limited edition items and collectibles. This creates excitement for all, and gets more fans to consider becoming subscribers.
Ad-Free Experience — If this is offered, it’s offered by platforms. By providing subscribers with an ad-free experience, it appeals to consumers’ desire for a better experience when browsing and consuming content.
What about altruism?
On the surface, it looks like sometimes people contribute without expecting anything back. There are plenty of stories of anonymous donations for hundreds of dollars for artists and streamers.
However, donors are not doing so out of the goodness of their hearts. These acts of support happen because fans want to see the creator continue to produce valuable content for their consumption.
These fan actions are rooted in a few factors:
They perceive value from the creator’s past content.
They like the creator and what they stand for.
They feel the creator needs the help with financial support.
In other words, donors are back-paying for value they have received in the past. They are also expecting to receive similar such value in the future. In lieu of these factors, fans are unlikely to financially support a creator through donations.
The Yard
Let’s return to that tweet from The Yard.
It is clear that they lean into many key motivations, with a skew toward offering access to content, community, and attention.
By combining killer content and a host of perks that fans care about, these creators have grown The Yard into one of the most successful creator podcast ever.
Wrap up
In the future, even more creators will want to earn via direct fan contribution from an engaged fanbase. For these creators, simply publishing content will not be sufficient.
To motivate fans to support them, creators will need to offer more than widely available content. They will need to figure what they can offer in terms of status, access, identity & expression, and tangible value.
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