A YouTube mental-health creator and licensed therapist explains why Patreon gives her the 'most return on investment'

• Kati Morton is a licensed marriage and family therapist in California. 
• In 2011, Morton began sharing mental health videos to YouTube and now has a popular channel with 826,000 subscribers. 
• Since Morton discusses sensitive topics like eating disorders within her videos on YouTube, she said oftentimes she is unable to monetize a video with ads. 
• Because of this, and as a way to build out her online community, Morton said she created a Patreon page, which allows her followers to pay a monthly rate through a tiered system for exclusive content like videos, chats, and live streams.
• She broke down how she earns money through the platform.
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Kati Morton is a licensed marriage and family therapist who built a community online by sharing information about mental health.

In 2011, Morton hung a white sheet in her living room as a backdrop, sat in front of it, and filmed a few videos for YouTube like, "Making your first therapy appointment" and "What is an eating disorder?" Today, she has gained 826,000 subscribers on YouTube, a sizeable audience, with views averaging between 25,000 and 100,000 a video.

But since Morton discusses sensitive topics like eating disorders on her YouTube channel, she said oftentimes she is unable to monetize a video with ads.

On YouTube, creators can earn money directly through ads placed by Google on their videos. How much an influencer earns from Google's AdSense program on a YouTube video depends on a number of factors. Some videos that contain swearing, sensitive material, or copyrighted music can be flagged by YouTube and demonetized, earning hardly any money for the creator (or none at all).

This is what Morton ran into.

But around five years ago, after working two jobs on top of posting weekly content to YouTube, Morton said she began experiencing burnout, and decided she wanted to quit her day job to focus on her channel full time. To do so, she needed to establish a more consistent income stream for her digital business, and Morton said that's when she decided to start a Patreon. 

"I needed to have a more consistent income," Morton told Business Insider. "My goal has always been to deliver helpful, safe, and accurate mental health information. My worry – and I think Patreon hears this a lot, is I didn't want to ask my followers for money. I wanted to offer these resources for free, but the truth is, my followers wanted a way to support my content."

Patreon is an online membership platform built for creators in areas like podcasting, video, music, and more. The platform was built in 2013 by YouTube musician Jack Conte, and today has over 100,000 creators and more than 3 million paying members, according to Patreon. 

Morton now has 401 paying subscribers on Patreon and uses the platform to deliver content on sensitive topics.  

Here's a breakdown from Morton of the ways she uses Patreon to earn revenue:  

How Morton built a tiered reward system 

Within three months of launching her account, Morton said Patreon has become her most consistent form of income. 

To effectively bring a community from one platform (like YouTube) over to Patreon, Morton said it's key to offer exclusive content. 

On Patreon, memberships are tiered and creators like Morton have the ability to build a system and price points that they think will work for their audience. Morton said she has edited the tiers throughout the years, and recently she removed her lowest tier because there wasn't enough value provided to the subscriber, she said.

She offers exclusive content, or "rewards" on her Patreon like videos, chats, and live streams. Every time a subscriber goes up a tier, they will always be offered the rewards in the tiers below as well. 

"I start off at the $5 tier, and that is essentially their entry into the community, with access to any of the posts, live streams, and then we move up from there," she said. 

Here's a breakdown of Morton's Patreon tiers: 

• Tier 1: "$5 a month, access to all "patron only" posts & Livestreams."
• Tier 2: "$10 a month, all lower tier rewards, plus your name will be in the credits of one video each month."
• Tier 3: "$20 a month, all lower tier rewards, and your question will be answered in a monthly livestream!"
• Tier 4: "$50 a month, all lower tier rewards, and each month Morton  will send you a personal thank you note AND you can now ask up to 2 questions for the monthly "patron only" livestream!"
• Tier 5: "$100 a month, all lower tier rewards, and you will get access to the monthly 1 hour hangout with Morton and up to 9 (max) other patrons."
• Tier 6: "$250 a month, all lower tier rewards, one hour one-on-one hangout with Morton."
• Tier 7: "$500 a month, all lower tier rewards, you can ask Morton up to 4 mental health questions and she will answer them in a private video linked out to the subscriber directly."

Morton's fifth tier, which offers a one-hour "group hangout" on Skype (at $100 a month), currently has seven paying subscribers and can have a max of nine, she said. 

"That's turned out to be honestly really cool," Morton said. "They've become friends as a result. They check in with each other as well and it's like an extension of the community in a more personal way." 

Patreon receives a percentage of the income creators earn through the membership, "plus an industry standard rate for processing payments from your patrons" according to its pricing page.

Patreon creators like Morton have partner managers who assist with their pages and the backend of the platform, and Patreon offers some in-house services like developing branded merchandise.

Morton said that her content on Patreon shouldn't be seen as a replacement for therapy, but rather a place to hang out and ask questions. She said she's always interacting with her audience, whether that's through Patreon lens (which is like Instagram Stories) or to the patrons directly.

"For the amount of time I have to spend, it's actually the most return on investment," she said.  

For more on the economics of an influencer career, according to YouTube and Instagram stars, check out these Business Insider Prime posts:

• A TikTok star with 880,000 followers explains the ways she earns money and how much she makes: 22-year-old college student Salina, known as "Salinakilla" online, began uploading videos to TikTok about four months ago and now has 882,000 followers. She broke down how she earns money through the app. 
• How much money a YouTube video with 1 million views makes, according to 4 creators: Business Insider spoke with four YouTube creators — Marina Mogilko, Kevin David, Austen Alexander, and Shelby Church — about how much each of them earned from videos with 1 million views.
• An Instagram influencer with 166,000 followers breaks down how much money she earns from a sponsored post: Katy Bellotte, a YouTube creator and Instagram influencer, broke down how much she earns per sponsored Instagram post.  

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