Hey DysonLogos, thanks for the reply. I also noticed your post in another one of our communities sharing about this, so I’ll respond to both here.
I can get a real sense of how frustrating your situation is as I read your post, and I think the problem you’re describing is really important for us to hear and think more about, particularly for early adopters like yourself who have been with us from the beginning.
There are a number of reasons why it’s difficult to design a Merch product that works in a predictable and reliable way for “per-creation” billing and delivery. Since per-creation creators are now a small fraction of our creator base, we’ve had to make a tough tradeoff to allow us to design a better, simpler Merch product that works for the large majority of our creators, instead of a product that’s available to every creator that we can’t support as well. I can’t speak for every feature, but I know the team building Special Offers had to make a similar decision for similar reasons.
We encourage most of our per-creation creators to upgrade to a monthly billing cycle, and many of the folks who upgrade wind up making the same or more than they did as a per-creation campaign. But for creators like yourself for whom upgrading hasn’t gone well or isn’t an option, the choices involved can feel unfair, and it’s good for us to hear this perspective clearly.
I don’t think this is a problem that can be solved overnight, but I’m forwarding your feedback to the appropriate product teams, and I’m going to follow up by asking what we can do to develop better migration strategies and support, particularly for our creators who have been with us the longest. One positive piece of news I can share is that our user research team is currently wrapping up a study on this very topic — how we can better support per-creation folks, including support for creators wishing to migrate. If you have more feedback or ideas you want to share you can send them in a DM and I’ll share with the research team. I’d also love to connect you with someone on our team for a one-on-one growth consultation.
You’ve been loyal to us, and I hope we can do more to support you.
Thanks for the feedback!