Right now, my patrons are paying $3/month. Iād like to increase this to $5 in the future, but only for ānewā patrons. In other words, Iād like the original patrons who were paying $3 to still have all access without needing to increase to $5.
Is anybody else interested in this?
Another option would be to just increase to $5 and hope the original $3 patrons increase their pledge (but I kind of feel like Iām screwing them over or something). What do you think?
I definitely like this idea. Long time pledgers getting a little discount is a nice touch!
I have changed up my patreon a few times over the years. Iāve gone through a process with my patrons to discuss whats changing, get their feedback, etc. None of them have really had an issue with price changes. The one issues iāve found is having people not pick a new reward after the changes. (I usually delete tiers Iām changing the price of so that people on the old one have to pick something to get a reward from there.) But i have noticed in the past, when i have changed the price of a tier without deleting it, those who were still pledging to it are still there and on that reward tier, so it might already be possible? They could have fixed that since the last time i did that though so Iām not sure.
Limit the number of people who can pledge at the $3 level, so no new patrons can pledge to this tier. For example, if you have 15 patrons on this level, limit the number of people to 10. This will keep all the current 15 patrons on the $3 level, but prevent any new patrons
Set up a new $5 tier, and list all the $3 tier rewards on the $5 tier as well.
Every time you post content that the old $3 patrons and the new $5 patrons should be able to access, set it to $3 patrons and up.
This should, I think, create the situation you want (though in a rather awkward way).
You can unpublish reward tiers. This doesnāt remove the reward tier nor the patrons within it, it just prevents new patrons from joining at that tier.
So, unpublish the $3 tier, and publish a new $5 tier thatās exactly like the old $3 one.
I still have a pile of patrons at my $0.05 and $0.50 levels (Iām a per-creation campaign releasing 9 creations per month on average, so a $0.50 supporter still brings in $4.50 on a typical month), but those levels have been unpublished because Patreon doesnāt allow for people to sign up at sub-$1 levels anymore.
(Which is a whole other issue, Iāve literally made thousands of dollars from sub $1 pledges)
My issue with this, is that unpublishing a tier pretty much makes that tier not show up in the logs for your paid patrons each month. Those patrons just show up as āno rewardā which in turn make its a lot of work cataloging whoās on what tier for those unpublished tiers when it -should- just be something you could do on the site. Iād rather cap it so no one else can pledge to it so it still shows up in the monthly roster than have to keep some separate log of whoās on what unpublished tier. (This is harder for those who may offer more specific rewards per tier, things that need mailing or specific file delivery, etc. and not something you can just mass send to all. And if you want to add or alter something on that tier, itās really not going to show up on the site either.)
It would just be nice if there was a function to restrict a tier to current patrons only, have it greyed out so people canāt purchase it anymore. Similar to how when a Kickstarter tier is full/closed, it still shows up on the page but itās no longer purchasable.
Then i am not sure what is up, because in the monthly roundup that shows who successfully paid and who didnāt, my unpublished tiers are not listed what so ever. Not even when there was someone still on one of them and i unpublished it, it never showed up.
While they could do this, theyād fall into the āno tierā category. Posts would be visible, but messages wouldnāt. You could at least keep track of it.
Whatād give it away would be when a non-patron sees the page and itād say āPledge $3 or more to unlock!ā but they wouldnāt see a $3 option on the tier selection page.
I decided that one of my tiers was no longer necessary. Virtually nobody was using it, so I figured the cost/value wasnāt there and I might as well ditch it to avoid making the tier decision too hard. Iām giving the one person on it at the end the benefit of the next tier up.
This is a little different from the āgrandfatherā because the next tier up already existed. Itās more that Iād like to merge tiers, or move a person to a higher tier to give them the benefits of that tier (but leave their pledge unchanged at the lower tier value).
I know the backend supports this mechanically, because I have people with different pledges on the same tier from when Patreon introduced the whole-dollar rounding error a while back. But thereās no UI that would allow a creator to mix pledges in the same tier on purpose.