For my campaign, I distribute (digital) rewards after payments have cleared for the month. Normally that means a lot of work on the 1st-2nd, and a straggler or two thereafter. My cut-off is currently the 5th, after which I punt until the next month. I distribute outside Patreon, so having access to my feed does not give access to previous rewards.
It would be feasible for me to handle this at any time during the month. I don’t especially want to be processing rewards many times during the month, because, you know, it’s work to do it and track it, even if the rewards are digital and there’s no overhead to create additional copies. But if you figure the new patrons normally wouldn’t be billed at all until the following month, it would be extra income to me, and instant gratification for them. On that basis, it seems like maybe I should just deal with the annoyance of processing multiple times per month?
Can someone recap the problems with charge-up-front, in case I’m overlooking something?
Hey @ammulder! thanks for making this thread. I’d recommend you take a look at this help article as it goes into a lot of detail about charge up front and has an FAQ at the end. If you have some really specific questions after reading that, post them in here and I’ll try and find the answers, but if they’re about your account it would be best to write into the support team
Yes, I’ve read that already. But I know some of the folks on here have specific issues with Charge-Up-Front that aren’t addressed in the FAQ. The Patreon page doesn’t really present the actual down sides – such as “what if my reward is to create a custom work of art that takes some time and inspiration, and a patron signs up on the last day of the month”? Well, fortunately, that one doesn’t apply to me, but I don’t remember whether any of the other ones do.
