It’s almost a rhetorical question at this point. I’m just very disappointed and upset that directly after we are promised to be informed of things, we immediately are blind-sided–again. 
3 Likes
If they are indeed going to try again with anniversary billing and if it doesn’t come with the OPTION, I guess my patreon is going to be slimmed down to a skeleton of itself (tip jar again) or leave entirely and I’ll have to find somewhere else to do my custom content. The way I do things currently (monthly and needs to be charged all at once) will be entirely not possible if they do this. Custom content is my bread and butter. I’ve tried to do other content types and push for non custom content many times but it’s what people primarily want from me and if I want to pay my bills, that’s how it’s gotta be. Tips and POD/one off sales are a small fraction of what I make. Most of my patrons are only on patreon because that’s where I offer this. They will move to wherever I do so here’s hoping it’s a smooth transition, whatever it ends up being. (Of course, time to take hours out of my days to research and update my knowledge base on this shit again. What fun.)
So very disappointed. I highly doubt they will let creators choose because it will make it complicated for patrons if one creator is anniversary and one is not, unless they plan to charge people all at once and just “hold” the funds until the first when the monthly creators “get paid.” But I doubt they will opt for some complexity.
5 Likes
Guys, this forum … I came to realize we are shouting in the wind. We’re not heard, much less listened to. They care about their investors, who care about patron-$$$, but it’s clear now that “improving their communication” is a blatant lie.
“Hey guys here’s the community edition of the post that announces the changes coming in 2021”
Conveniently leaving out a controversial piece of information that concerns BILLING
I lost a lot of patrons / earnings following the announcement of anniversary billing (the “fee debacle”) in December 2018. Yes, they tried this before.
More importantly: I and my patrons lost our trust in this platform - they’re NOT creator-first. Patreon needs to understand these patrons are loyal to me, not them.
5 Likes
Sweet lord - the fact that they gave us a version of the blog, which was meant to include more information and took this insanely important part of information out say everything we need to know about what we’re worth to Patreon.
I am livid and stunned and heartbroken about this. This will absolutely collapse my business model with no possible change I can make to adapt to it. After working myself raw for 3 years to turn my offering into a sustainable system, I’m having the rug pulled out from under me and all my supporters.
If this is what you meant by improved communication @reyna , you guys are doing a bang up job. Unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable.
3 Likes
For me I have a video library I add to daily and from around the 20th to the end of the month see patron joins drop off as people realise they will be charged twice in succession. So I’m hoping this coming change works well for me.
That said, I can see how it will be devastating to people who create content around a monthly basis. I hope they give us the option to enable it or not then we can each do whats best for our patrons and get the best of both worlds.
Would these suggestions work better for you?
I feel like there is a mix of creators wanting payments done on sign up anniversaries. Those who want to avoid the double charge, and those who just prefer that system in general. We could fix things for at least that first group with some other method that doesn’t come at the cost of hurting so many others.
Just as a reminder @ Patreon:
1 Like
Looking at all the replies, I think I may have thought of an effective solution, either manual or possibly automatic. I am from now on most likely going to be dividing up the month, probably into just 2 or 3 segments for now but with an automatic method from patreon possibly every day, to charge less during the end of the month by changing or creating and deleting tiers. If patreon could make it possible to only introduce tiers at certain dates I think this would satisfy everyone 
Edit: I just realized this won’t work because they will be charged less for the end of month subscription in the future ;-;
Yeah, back in May of last year this sounded good, but now that a few things have been explained to me and I have a better idea how it would be implemented by Patreon, I’m not such a big fan of the idea.
1 Like
Hey everyone! Robin from Patreon’s Product Marketing team here. Thank you for all your comments and sharing your ideas here. This thread, and some others on this forum, shows us that there are very strong preferences on multiple sides of this issue. Some creators have built their businesses around the current billing model and don’t want it to change. Yet we are very aware of the drawbacks of the current system that many of you are super frustrated by. I feel your frustration and I’m sorry! We don’t have a clear path forward yet. We know that we don’t want to introduce a change that causes patrons to have multiple charges throughout the month instead of one bill. And we don’t want to make a change that increases costs for patrons or creators.
We would like to find a way to solve the double billing issue, and make Patreon simpler for new patrons to understand. We’re looking for a way forward that doesn’t have drawbacks, and that is a challenge! We appreciate all of your concerns and hope to make things better for everyone. I’m going to close this thread now as part of this initiative, but want to let you know that we’re thinking about this!
2 Likes