Patreon's Stephanie Smellie on Turning Fans Into a Sustainable Business

Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription software errors.

Jeff Umbro  This week on Podcast Perspectives, Stephanie Smellie, head of business development at Patreon, where she helps creators turn fandom into real businesses through memberships, community, and direct support.

Stephanie Smellie  Podcasters over index on how much work it will take to build a membership. Fans just want to see more of what you're doing and you probably have that content already. So why not just put the uncut, the extended versions, the bonus episodes behind a paywall and make a membership?

Jeff Umbro  After starting her career in finance and consulting, she moved into media and entertainment for girls at iHeart Media and Spotify, then jumped into emerging tech at Doppler Labs before landing at Patreon in 2024. Under her tenure, podcasts have become Patreon's highest earning category. The podcast is generating over $629 million in revenue on the platform in 2025 alone. That's a 33% year-over-year increase driven by more than 47,000 podcasters and 7.6 million paid memberships. Today, we're going to dig into how podcasters actually use Patreon, what Stephanie and her team are building in order to increase discovery on the platform, how Patreon compares to other membership platforms like Substack, Beehive, and Supporting Cast, and where Stephanie thinks audio memberships and video podcasts are headed next. Let's get to the show. So you started your career in financing consulting before moving through companies like Spotify, Under Armor, iHeart, Sony, Dapper Labs. How do you tell the pre-Patreon Steph story in a way that connects to what you're doing now for creators?

Stephanie Smellie  So I started my career on Wall Street and that was really my first foray into corporate America, just to achieve job security, but also flex my quantitative muscles of I'm a numbers person, I understand finance and can speak the language of sustainability. And so I think there was a turning point where I realized I'm too creative for. This box that I'm in right now and I was pursuing how can I intersect my quantitative background with creativity, with innovation, and where the digital world was going. Now this was way before creator economy was even a term, but I went and got my MBA and since then have been pursuing how to intersect my passion with making money for it. And I think that through line is really what creators wanna do too, right? They want to leverage their creativity and their art and their works to generate an income and hopefully live off of that. And so I took number of roles at iHeart, Spotify was head of creator partnerships and in that role, I think was my first start into thinking creator first and thinking how can we partner with platforms to provide tools to help creators thrive on Spotify. And that wasn't just podcasters, that was musicians as well. And since then, I transitioned into the NFT world. That was another way that we were pushing creator sustainability and removing the middleman and decentralizing financial economic success. And when that bubble burst, The passion still remained. How can I continue helping creators thrive independently and build sustainable lives for themselves? And so Patreon was just a natural next step and it marries all of my experiences from the financial side of evaluating how we can help creators grow their business and really understanding the numbers around that, all the way to the tech background and the digital media and innovation into what? And so I think. This is the perfect spot for me right now.

Jeff Umbro  Honestly, yes, I I'm with you on all of that. Was there like a particular moment where you like it clicked and you were kind of like the creator economy is a thing as opposed to just like people's side hustle?

Stephanie Smellie  For sure. Well, at Spotify, it wasn't as much of a thing yet. I think when I stepped into the Web3 world, I had the opportunity to witness creators build sustainable revenue, debatable whether you believe in the technology or the mechanisms or not. A lot of creators made a lot of money during the NFT space. And the real... Crux of it, the root of it was from building community around this piece of digital art. And I think that's when it clicked about how you can really convert top fans, people who are bought into your vision and are invested literally and figuratively into the success of that vision and make revenue off of that. And so I think that was really the turning point, whether we're in web three or web two, the logic still remains that top fans will pay for your work. And if you know how to monetize that relationship correctly or convert from not paid to paid, then you can have a future and success in your creativity.

Jeff Umbro  So when you were at Spotify and iHeart, a lot of the business there is still and was at the time driven by like major brands and ad revenue. Patreon is obviously fan funded. Was there like a mindset shift that you had to make in terms of thinking about advertiser first to like fan first models?

Stephanie Smellie  Yes and no. I think it's also shifting from just like big corporation to creator-led thinking. And at Patreon, we, it's not just talk, like we eat, breathe and sleep creators. And because we're providing just the tools for you to connect directly with your audience versus trying to play this like middleman role and leverage and add supported content to fund our company. The way we move, the way we execute is different. And it didn't, it wasn't like a drastic shift in how I work, how I behave, but it was more shifting to more mission-driven work and more passion-filled work where you really feel like you're impacting individual's lives and you're making a difference. It almost feels philanthropic of how like pure. The mission is and I think that is the most gratifying part of what I do.

Jeff Umbro  Yeah, we work with a lot of creators that have patreon accounts that are just like they blow up overnight And you know it to your point it really is just about giving your existing community a place where they can go and support you

Stephanie Smellie  Mm-hmm.

Jeff Umbro  So you're the head of business development at Patreon. What does that actually mean day to day?

Stephanie Smellie  Yeah, great question because I've been a business development leader in different companies and they have completely different roles. I think the pendulum swings between sales to like product partnerships and I'm somewhere in the middle. So my focus is I will put it into two buckets, one being product partnerships. So looking at what are the innovative platforms out there? What are the new technologies that are coming out and how can we bring the benefits from innovation. To our suite of tools we offer creators. So whether that is clipping, AI clipping tools to commerce tools, to data insights to understand your audience data better. I'm constantly looking at what are the top creator platforms out there that we can work with and how we can offer those benefits to our creators, whether through integration or through exclusive offers to their platform. So that's one bucket.

Jeff Umbro  What are some examples of those folks that you've had partnerships with?

Stephanie Smellie  While we are soon to announce them. But think of even Spotify, you just mentioned, and my former employer. But we have an integration with Spotify where we are integrated into their open access programs so that fans on Spotify do not have to leave the platform to access their favorite Patreon paywall content. They can just put in their credentials from Patreon and unlock it on Spotify. So that's a... Example of a partnership where we leverage a platform to help with audience growth and to hopefully funnel back to Patreon for new member signups.

Jeff Umbro  That is quite literally how I became a paying member of Panic World.

Stephanie Smellie  That is amazing, we need to do a case study on you.

Jeff Umbro  That is one in particular that I think has been really effective. As I'm sure you know, I don't need to tell you that. That. You had a second piece of this. Oh, yeah, this.

Stephanie Smellie  Oh yeah, the second bucket. So channel partnerships. We have historically been known as a membership platform, but we have strategically been focusing on making Patreon a creativity network for creators and fans to mutually invest in culture. So we're looking at how can creators come to Patreon to discover new fans and build their audience and their membership, and how can fans come to patreon to discover new niches, to discover new creators, to engage with each other and build this kind of flywheel effect that works on its own. And so a lot of my focus this year is on building that fan and creator muscle and partnering with platforms that could funnel fan acquisition our way and then creator acquisition our way at scale. So we have a creator acquisitions team that's responsible for onboarding individual creators, but... My work is looking at where do fans live at scale and how does that overlap with some of the areas and genres of focus on our platform and how can we funnel that back to Patreon.

Jeff Umbro  Forgive me for saying this, but I think that's what Substack does so well, is they're able to build this whole ecosystem where if like I go in for newsletter X, then they're going to recommend newsletter, you know, A, B, and C that I may be interested in. It's clear you guys are building towards that historically though. And correct me if I'm wrong, like most of the people who are on Patreon have come because of like one or two individual like content creators. So like, what are some of the ways that you all are thinking about? That in the next year, five years, 10 years, in terms of how you can build out that flywheel.

Stephanie Smellie  Currently thinking about it a number of ways. So you're right, historically a fan would have to be a high intent fan and know exactly why they're coming to Patreon to subscribe. But we have developed a number of tools over the past couple years that are rolling out imminently. And so some of those are quips, for example. Those are short free posts that allow you to a creator and a fan soon to post. Quickly, whether it's words, photos, videos, but it kind of lowers the barrier of entry to sharing content and gives new fans and new creators a taste of what could potentially be behind the paywall, thus moving further up that funnel and increasing the chances of member acquisition. We also have invested heavily into our explore feed and our discovery feed and making that more of an enriched experience so that. If I like Dungeons and Dragons podcast, that's easier to find my tribe and my people and also find new creators. We also launched collab posts so that creators can then do a collab post with another creator and platform and hopefully cross-pollinate some audiences. That is some examples, but we are constantly investing and our whole company priority is focusing on how to enhance the platform and the experience for both fans and creators for Discovery.

Jeff Umbro  Will you all ever do any kind of like, you know, paid acquisition scenario there? Like my show's on Patreon. I have a thousand people following me and like, I buy an ad on Patreon to push people via targeting back to my feed. Is that like a thing you'll ever do?

Stephanie Smellie  I'll never say never. Okay.

Jeff Umbro  I didn't know if that was like if like ads are against the patreon ethos or something

Stephanie Smellie  I would say we hold the creator to fan relationship very dearly. We have the utmost respect for it, and we don't ever want to jeopardize that. So the moment that we see that fans are no longer seeing creators' works because of an ad-driven algorithm, we're not doing our job correctly. So ads aren't the villain. It's the result. Of having ads as a priority and a main driver and the impact to creators that we don't like. So if there's ways that we can get around that, who knows what can happen, but we'll always think creator to fan relationship first.

Jeff Umbro  Okay. I love that answer. You do not get that response when you're talking to some other folks in a similar space to yours. So I know that there is essentially a content acquisitions team that's focused specifically on podcasters. How does that hunting occur? Are they looking at the top creators on Apple and Spotify and say, oh, you could probably do something great over here, or is it more so that. Like they're just looking for people who have like super engaged fans on social or email or there is some of the, all of the above.

Stephanie Smellie  I would say it's all of the above, but I want to take a step back and caveat it with just because you have millions of followers on social media does not mean that you will necessarily succeed in a membership direct creator to fan business. It is really about the relationship you have with your audience. And I've been, if we're talking about previous work experience, I've trained on this from my work at iHeart where we're promoting radio hosts. And we communicated radio hosts as the best friend in your car seat. I think podcasters are the new radio hosts. And that is why that podcast as a medium do so well in our membership model, because they have that strong relationship with their community. So the Create Acquisitions team are looking at a number of inputs. It's not just one. They're looking at downloads. They're look at social media. And they're looking at. If you've done well on other membership platforms, have you been able to convert a top of funnel audience into anything paid, whether that is to buy tickets for your show, whether to buy merch, all of these are indicators as to your success in converting free to paid, which ultimately informs how well you'll do at a membership business. But there's a number of factors as well. And you can have a small audience that will pay a high price. And then the top line number is still the same. So it really matters as to what you're providing your audience versus just plainly saying how many people will convert.

Jeff Umbro  Yeah, we deal with that quite a bit on like the audience development side, like somebody will assume that because they have 100,000, you know, LinkedIn followers or something, they're going to get a thousand listens on every episode of their show. And sometimes, you know, they're underselling it and most of the time they're overselling it. But, you So Patreon often gets talked about in kind of broad creator terms, artists, YouTubers, writers, musicians. But as of a few weeks ago, you all put out a press release that said podcasts are now the highest earning category on the platform. So what feels distinct about how podcasters are using Patreon compared to other creator types?

Stephanie Smellie  Yeah, and thanks for for acknowledging that. That's a big accomplishment for us. In fact, we earned over podcasters earned over six hundred and twenty nine million dollars in 2025 on Patreon. That's up 33 percent from the previous year. So the proof is in the pudding. This is obviously still a very strong category and our strongest category on Patreon, we have over forty seven thousand podcasters. And that's not a coincidence. It's I hinted at it before, but I think that podcasters, consistent episodic content mixed with their relationship that they have developed with their audiences is a perfect marriage with Patreon and the tools we provide. And that's the relationship tool. So whether it is the community chats, the DMs, the ability to go live and answer Q&As or do demos. All of that helps to build this deeper audience that can convert even more often, or you can galvanize it to move to a show or to sell merch or any other type of item that you wanna sell. All of these tools lend itself to podcasters' success. And so we're also seeing them become multi-hyphenates on our platform. So they've moved from just audio podcaster to now video podcasters. To newsletter writers, and it's still all in the same vein of episodic content, but we've seen it migrate to just one form, which is audio, into various other formats that they can also connect with their audience in different ways.

Jeff Umbro  Yeah, I'm wondering too. And I'm sure that this is super variable based on like who the creator is, but like, are there certain tools that you find that people are getting like the most traction out of when it comes to conversions?

Stephanie Smellie  I think that using our free tier is a core way to bring in new audiences. So being able to provide teasers, clips, to then give people a taste of what they could potentially get behind a paywall has since the beginning of time, been a great way. And I look at social media, not as like competition, but as a funnel to our platform. So also leveraging, moving further up the funnel and promoting off platform, and then telling them to come to Patreon for more content is probably the top way to convert. I say, I think that when you get to Patreon, the best ways to build that relationships are those community tools. So we have group chats where people can talk directly to their creators, they can DM them where it's one-on-one messaging. I think that leveraging Quip's our new feature. We've already seen great success with the conversion and discovering new audiences. And so if I see Jeff's Quip of him eating lunch, which takes no effort, but it's a touch point with a new community. And I'm like, Oh, I love this restaurant. Then I might wanna see more. And so being able to have these low effort, but strong touch points with new audiences, I think we're gonna see incredible growth with that new feature as well.

Jeff Umbro  Anybody who's listening to this can google like who are the top earning creators on patreon podcasts there are a lot of people who make a lot money yep and you know if you do the math on those 629 million divided by 47 000 shows like the average podcaster on the platform is making like 1300 or something a year or i guess the mean number would be like 1300 bucks but You know you have some people who are making six figures a month on on the content. They're producing Joe Budden famously is making a million dollars a month, so.

Jeff Umbro  What are they doing that makes them stand out? Or is it just that they're like that talented? Or is all of the above?

Stephanie Smellie  I don't want to reduce anyone's success to talent. I think that there are some undiscovered creators that may just be just as talented as the top creators. I do think it is a factor of reach, like Joe had an audience before Patreon and that goes to my point of being able to convert to a membership model. What he's done is put out thought provoking, sometimes polarizing content that people want more of like it it it's interesting it's funny it speaks to culture and so being able to say oh wait kendrick lamar and drake are beefing and joe is gonna have an exclusive episode on patreon let me sign up he's doing that very well and has since expanded to the joe button network so he's able to provide more of his co-hosts and his team platforms to also share there. Their craft, which I think is super cool. Kev on stage does that really well as well. He has kind of amassed a whole media empire leveraging Patreon to put out shows, put we've sponsored live comedy shows where he had all black comedians performing and then sold digital recordings of that on Patreon as one time purchases and sold out immediately. And so that's even taking a step outside of the membership model. And looking at one-time purchases as a path to monetization. Another example is The Cutting Room. I don't know if you've heard of Rachel, but she's awesome and has had a lot of viral moments, one being with Steve Madden on her show, but she has a completely exclusive to Patreon model where she doesn't put any full shows on social media. She puts everything behind the paywall and leverages social media clips. Create these viral moments and foster demand to come back to Patreon. So it really depends on how you look at your content, the value of it, how you look at the existing relationship with your audience and what you choose to put ahead of a paywall and behind a pay wall. There's no like prescriptive way to do it. It really just depends on the creator.

Jeff Umbro  I guess I'm curious though, there's a lot of people out there who have between one and a thousand subscribers a month on their show or on their Patreon account. Do you think that there's anything that would help them to keep compounding that and increase that followership over time? Do you see a lot people bring in their audience and then plateau? I know you're working on tools that would try and offset that, but I guess the question is how frequently do you see people plateau on the platform?

Stephanie Smellie  Churn is normal on every platform. However, a membership model lends itself to more of an automated model that helps creators build that like predictable and sustainable revenue.

Jeff Umbro  Going back to the ad-supported piece here, most podcasters grew up in an ad- supported mindset, CPMs, brand deals, host reads. When you're talking to somebody brand new or new to Patreon, what objections do you hear most frequently?

Stephanie Smellie  Honestly, it's not about ads versus non ads. It's about having to add a new business model to what they're already doing. And so oftentimes it feels like this mammoth task of like almost launching a new business because now they have to think in terms of conversion and bringing people, migrating people to another platform. I think that is the biggest hurdle. But once I share what I shared earlier, that a lot of this does not have to be so complicated. It could be you have a back catalog and you have never done anything with it. Put it on Patreon as a collection and see if people are interested in engaging with that. Also, you don't have to have a paid membership. Leverage Patreon for your community building, for your CRM. We allow you to own your audience and own that data so that... You can use it however you wish, obviously within parameters, but if you wanna move your whole audience to another platform, you can do that. That is not our job to control your relationship with your audience. We're providing the connection tools, but it's up to you. So it provides creators with more flexibility, autonomy and agency, and then also bonus points, another path to revenue. And so once you lay all of those options out and all of those benefits, I feel like it's a no-brainer as long as you have like the resources to manage a number of platforms.

Jeff Umbro  Are there moments in time over the last few years where like your inbox is blown up, like the ad market goes soft for a few months and more people reach out to you kind of thing? Or is it more of like a sustained, this is something in people's toolbox that they can choose to activate when they want to.

Stephanie Smellie  There's definitely been inflections. Like think when TikTok was supposedly shutting down. Yeah. I think that was a wake up point for a number of creators and their teams. Like, wait a minute, if this shuts down, we don't have any access to who these people are, even though they're engaging millions of views every week. We don't know who these are. That is a problem. And that is the main reason why we exist in this form of owning your audience. Because at the end of the day, people on social media are just renting that space. They do not own it. And if something happens where you become shadow banned or the platform shuts down, you no longer have access to your audience and that's scary for a lot of people because that's how they make their bread and butter and it makes sense when ads are involved. But when the ad money dries up or when the platform doesn't exist, then you really have to take a step back and say, how sustainable is my business? And that is our goal at Patreon to help creators build sustainable businesses that can weather the fluctuations and popularity of platforms in ad dollars and everything else that comes with just the volatility of the creator market.

Jeff Umbro  What would you say to somebody who came to you asking like, should I do Patreon, Apple podcasts, subscriptions, supporting cast? Is there, is there like, you know, a reason that you would recommend that people use Patreon instead?

Stephanie Smellie  I mean, I'm extremely biased.

Jeff Umbro  Yeah. So.

Stephanie Smellie  So the answer would be come to Patreon, for sure. But the platforms you mentioned have different features that we all solve for. So let's take a step back. We touched on ads, we're not ad-supported. So a lot of the DSPs like Apple, Spotify, you name it, a lot their revenue is driven from ads. We help creators make money directly from fans. So everything we build. Is around helping podcasters grow sustainable businesses versus just scale audiences. The next thing is we prioritize ownership. So a lot of those platforms you mentioned, you're not gonna have access to your audience to be able to own those tools. So that's another reason that I would say Patreon is the right platform for that if you wanna build a sustainable business. The other thing is creator first and fan discovery. We've been building tools. To help creators, whether those are quips, whether those a collab posts, whether those the explore feed. We're not just a distribution platform. We are a platform to build community and to build connection with your community. And then the thing is with the white labeled platforms, which align with some of the platforms you mentioned in your question, is that. Discovery is a lot harder. So you have to have high intent fans that, and you also have to have a strong enough creator brand where you don't even need the cross-pollination of new audiences or even new creators to sustain your business. That model might work for, I don't know, a Beyonce, but for the average creator, that's tough. And oftentimes they can benefit from that cross-pollination of audience, from new fans discovering their work through an explore feed. So it's about working in a vacuum versus working in the collaborative environment where everyone can kind of win with each other. And we've also like, not for nothing, we've been around for 13 years. We have a lot of time in the game to understand what works, what doesn't work. We have robust team that is constantly building new features for creators. And we have a state of the art staff that constantly is in market learning new insights and figuring out how to build to benefit creators.

Jeff Umbro  And you have some very impressive numbers to back all that up. So. Exactly. So when you take a step back from Patreon and you're looking at like macro trends that you're seeing in audio right now, what are those big trends outside of like membership?

Stephanie Smellie  I think the biggest trend is no longer just audio. I think video has no longer become a nice to have. It is almost a must where podcasts are transitioning from a format standpoint. If you look at how moments go viral, they're usually not viral audio moments. It's usually viral video moments. And all of that helps to new eyes to see you and new fan acquisition. So, I think... That the main trends are, creators are no longer just building from one format, they're building for a number of formats, whether that's repurposing one form into these other mediums, but they have to think about thumbnails over videos, what clips look like, what will attract people if they have eight seconds to connect with them. And so it's becoming more, creativity around format building, along with creativity in the type of content that they're sharing. For better or for worse, some people love to live behind no camera and not have to get made up. But the good thing also is that I think the production and performance of video, the barriers kind of decrease. And when people really like to see the raw, they really like to see you wake up out of bed and talk about your dreams, you know? And so I think that for better or for worse, it's a lower barrier to entry for video and there are so many tools out there that enable you to produce and distribute video better.

Jeff Umbro  And you mentioned earlier that a lot of your creators are becoming like multi-hyphenates. Do you think that we're going to a world where most podcasters are gonna become successful by like being multi-format by default?

Stephanie Smellie  I do. I think that is the only way to keep up with where everything is going. It's becoming increasingly visual unless we revert to analog and then we're looking at broadcast radio as a main medium. I think visual is becoming key, especially with social media and how people stare at their phones in order to survive. I think not only having to convert to video, but just being open to whatever's next. Who knows what that will be. It could be AR, VR, you name it. However, having the flexibility and the openness to keep up with innovation I think is key.

Jeff Umbro  How long do you think it'll be before Patreon announces a billion dollars made for podcasters?

Stephanie Smellie  I hope it's tomorrow. Yeah.

Jeff Umbro  That would be worth it, that would be fun. So okay, so for a podcaster who's never done memberships before but wants to get into the game and create a new revenue stream, what is the simplest possible starter plan that you would recommend for them?

Stephanie Smellie  I would say open up a Patreon, it's free to open. Our revenue model is we make money when you make money. So our incentives are completely aligned with your success. Start a Patreon. Listen to what your audience wants. I think that's where a lot of people go wrong, thinking that their numbers just dictate how many members they will get on Patreon. Actually connect with your audience. And this is off platform where you've already built a following or even a small community. If they're saying... Hey, we love that interview, we want to hear more of it, that's a signal that they want an extended version behind the paywall. If they're just a fan of you, maybe they just want bonus content or a spin-off episode that would live on Patreon, but you have to listen and engage with your community before you do anything else in terms of conversion.

Jeff Umbro  I love that. So conversely, for someone who's already doing well on Patreon, what is one advanced lever that you think they should experiment with?

Stephanie Smellie  Quips, I touched on it before, but we are continually developing tools, and we have a great creator management team that helps with product adoption and holds our creators' hands to learn these new tools. But I would say Quips is probably the easiest low-hanging fruit tool to share video, text, or images and convert free to paid. Through discovery and through exploration on our new feed that will be launching

Jeff Umbro  If you could choose one area, whether it's like a geography, a language, a niche, where you could just snap your fingers and like the size of that audience triples tomorrow on Patreon, what would it be?

Stephanie Smellie  Oh, that's a tough one. I I'm biased because I'm a music junkie. OK, and I love music, but music comes with a ton of complexities around licensing and rights. And if I could get rid of all those complexities and allow musicians to really do whatever they want on Patreon quite easily without having to go through a ton of red tape. That would be my area of focus. Our CEO, Jack, started Patreon because he's a musician. And so I think that going back to our roots of supporting musicians would be really cool. And we do, but it's just very complex space.

Jeff Umbro  Yeah, no, for sure. Everyone in podcasting knows that well. Yes. Well, thank you so much, Steph. This was awesome.

Stephanie Smellie  Awesome. Thank you, Jeff, for having me.

Jeff Umbro  Thank you so much to Stephanie Smellie for joining us on this week's episode of Podcast Perspectives. You can find her on LinkedIn at Stephanie Smellie. 

For more podcast related news, info and takes, you can follow me on LinkedIn at Jeff Umbro. 

Podcast Perspectives is a production of The Podglomerate. If you're looking for help producing, marketing, or monetizing your podcast, you can find us at thepodglomerate.com, shoot us an email at listen@thepodglomerate.com or follow us on all socials at Podglomeratepods. 

This episode was produced by myself, Jeff Umbro, and our production team, Chris Boniello and José Roman.

Thank you to our marketing team, and a special thank you to Dan Christo.