I love the concept, but I use Patreon to provide a supplemental income to my freelance work. (I would love for it to replace it but I’m not there yet.) Offering annual memberships would reduce how much I receive every month. (Yes, I realize I would still receive the payments, but I would have to hold on to the income and divide it out each month, which makes it dangerous for me.)
I would LOVE the ability to offer annual memberships, but ONLY if Patreon would divide up the payments. I realize this is probably not likely, but one can wish.
It should be quite easy for Patreon to implement just by giving you the money piece by piece. This way the user doesn’t need to choose that option if they don’t want to.
I agree that it would be SO awesome to have an option for the income to be doled out monthly. I resisted the annual option at first because it really does go against the purpose of creating a stream of income, and I have much less confidence this person will stay on longer than a year than I do a patron who signs up for monthly and has continued paying for several months.
I was pursuaded by the research that Patreon shared about how many prospective supporters would prefer an annual option, and indeed several people have shared they only signed on becaues of the annual option. So I’m confident that my 2020/2021 income was boosted by offering annual memberships, and yet have reduced conficence that my annual supporters will be as loyal as my monthly supporters. Thanks for giving us a chance to share these concerns, @Jeshields, and thanks to @reyna for reading them.
