louminx:

doodlemancy:

kagenokuni:

doodlemancy:

doodlemancy:

Patreon changed their pledge model to pass extra fees along to patrons, murdering the $1 pledge, the backbone of many Patreons.

This is going to hurt a lot of creators with small audiences.

Merry fucking Christmas! 🙂

so to elaborate on this, they’re adding a 35 cent charge + a 2.9% fee to every individual pledge. (this means creators that charge per-post will get screwed even worse because for every single post, their patrons will be charged that extra fee.) the justification for this is that by passing processing/service fees to the customer they are “helping” the creator take home “more money.”

the new reality is that instead of being able to present nice flat fees to my potential patrons, i now have to advertise this obtuse bullshit, which is a much harder sell.

this also means a lot of people supporting many creators are going to get hit hard and are going to have to cut down their pledges.

and in the end Patreon is actually the one walking away with more money while all of us get screwed.

it is FUCKING BULLSHIT, it is going to do real harm to lots of people, and if you support anyone on patreon you need to yell at them RIGHT NOW and tell them not to do this. if you look at what actual creators are saying, the vast majority of us would rather eat the fees and keep our patrons. but so far they have been really fucking dismissive.

submit feedback to Patreon HERE

we need loud backlash RIGHT NOW, before they can make the excuse that it’s too late to change back.

Is this what is being discussed?

From an email I received today (From Patreon):

Dear creator,

In order to continue our mission of funding the creative class, we’re always looking for ways to do what’s best for you – creators.

With that, we’re writing to tell you of a change we’re making so that all Patreon creators take home exactly 95% of every pledge, with no additional fees.

Aside from Patreon’s existing 5% fee, you may notice that your income on Patreon varies because of processing fees every month. Your patrons may not even be aware that you actually take home a lower percentage of their intended pledges because of it. Our goal is to make your paycheck as predictable as possible, so we’re restructuring how these fees are paid.

A new service fee of 2.9% + $0.35 will be paid by patrons for each individual pledge starting on December 18th. This streamlines fees for both creators and patrons to ensure that you pay no more than 5%.

Here’s what you can expect:

• On December 18th, we’ll apply the fee for patrons and notify them of this change.
• We’re also sending an email to all patronstomorrow, December 7th, to share the information about this upcoming change.
• We ran experiments to understand patrons’ potential reactions and we found that many patrons were happy knowing that this change will send more money to creators.
• If you’d like to chat about this change with your patrons, we’ve provided verbiage in our FAQ here.

We want you to know that we approach every change with a creator-first mindset, aiming to help you grow your business and grow with your patrons. By standardizing Patreon’s fees, we’re ensuring that creators like you can get paid to continue creating high quality content.

Your patrons will have an email in their inbox with all of this information tomorrow. In the meantime, if you want to learn more or have any questions for us, please don’t hesitate to reach out here or visit our FAQ.

See you on the internet,
The Patreon team

Yes, that’s what’s being discussed, and what all those fancy words and ridiculous bar graphs are disguising is just a way for Patreon to bring in more money, without actually helping anyone except maybe people with thousands of patrons.

Here is an article that went up today that explains all this math way more elegantly than I can.

Here’s how fucked up this is: if you were giving $1 to 10 creators, that used to cost you $10. It will now cost you $13.79. If you give $10 to 1 creator, it costs you $10.64. This will encourage people to eliminate their smaller pledges and consolidate into larger ones. People who can only afford to give a few dollars are likely to drop their pledges altogether. Creators I follow are already seeing pledges drop off. 😦

And of course they spring this on us with very little warning, no real opportunity to provide feedback, and they tell creators one day ahead of patrons in the expectation that we peddle this garbage to them as some sort of benefit.

To echo sentiments above as a creator and a patron to others, this is ridiculous. 

When you start up as a creator on Patreon, there’s an understanding that they will take a cut of whatever you earn. It’s a fee that you are paying out of your earnings, to cover the cost of them managing and processing the pledges you receive.

Charging patrons instead contradicts what Patreon is supposed to be about. Those who pledge do so to support the creator and their work, not Patreon. Not only is this going to scare possible patrons away, especially in lower tiers (which can amount to a lot), it’s simply unfair to patrons present and/or future. They should not be paying for the “privilege” of pledging.