@Temrin and @jan4insight_creates let me update the team and come back with a clearer explanation for you both 
Also a thought. I’ve been on patreon since 2014 and I’ve changed my patreon a lot. Will posts that are from said old days just get a generic $x attached to them asked on what they were set at even if that tier doesn’t exist anymore? Or maybe even that amount doesn’t exist in my current model?
Yeah to have historical posts all restricted to each tier is going to be very annoying indeed. I know not that many people will go back and look at previous posts but I have one or two people who have gone through EVERY old post and liked and commented on them (I think that’s pretty unusual though).
That’s about what I was expecting! The only other question with that, I take it it still works like the current “pay X or more to view” system? Like if you make a new new $10 tier, would it have access to the $5 posts from prior to the change?
Also I know it was mentioned, but I second it’d be great to have an option to post to non-patrons. So like, if you have a free version of a post, you could share that without notifying patrons who already have access.
All in all I’m really excited for this update tbh.
This finding a way to exclude people who are below the lowest tier has been a concern for us too. We need sort of a “tier 0” box to uncheck. I know that we are patrons of some campaigns where we don’t pay enough to be in the lowest tier, and we have several patrons ourselves who fit into this category. There doesn’t seem to be anything in the new system (yet?) to take this into account.
1 Like
We have actually had a number of new patrons go back through all the old posts, or at least through many of them, so we have this same concern. It will be important that new patrons can access all the old posts that they are entitled to. I hadn’t thought of this, so glad that people are raising the issue!
@Temrin @Zedrin All previous posts will not be affected, so $5 tier patrons will see all previous posts that are under $5. If you edit a previous post, you will have the option to select a tier. If you change your mind and do nothing, then it will keep it at the dollar amount under the old system.
Under the new system, all new posts will be set to Public, All Patrons, or Selected Tiers. If a new patron joins and pledges to a $5 tier, they will only be able to see new posts that have been set to either All Patrons or to that $5 tier. However, they will be able to see all previous posts (published under old system) that are under $5.
@jan4insight_creates You are correct. Under the new system, if you check “All Patrons” then all patrons that pledge to you will see that post. However, when you check “Select Tier,” all tiers are checked by default. You can uncheck the boxes and we recommend that creators have 3-5 tiers available for patrons as this is where we’ve seen most success.
@FutilityCloset @artbyemilyhare I shared your feedback with the product team, I’ll let you know when I hear back.
2 Likes
That is unfortunate as that means the $5+ will not be honoured and if I want them available to $5 and up, as initially intended, then I’ll have to manually do it for hundreds of posts.
Thanks, mindy. That eases my concern.
1 Like
@mindy, I have one more question about this. We are having a very hard time getting a hold of our patrons and getting them to put themselves in tiers or put themselves in correct tiers (we’ve only tried this on my husband’s campaign so far). Anyway, our next thought is to put up a post on his page for all appropriate patrons to see to explain this new system. So if he posts something for the $3 and up patrons now, and someone doesn’t come back to the site for a couple of weeks and isn’t in any tier, will they still be able to see this? It really does appear to us that at least some of our patrons only pop in periodically, check out everything new for the last few weeks, and then disappear again. So it could be a while before everyone might see any given post. Thanks!
Thank you for your patience while I got some more answers and clarification for you. Please let me know if anything is unclear or if you have further questions.
Ahh I got it. You will not have to check every box. When you check “Select Tier,” all tiers are checked by default. You can simply uncheck boxes.
Yes, all previous posts will not be affected. Once this feature rolls out, under the new system, you can also make a posts to “All Patrons.” This will include patrons in tiers, and patrons not in a tier.
All previous posts will not be affected. You will also be able to continue to filter posts on both the old $ system and new tier system. This image should show that nicely!
Patrons who pledge below the lowest tier can continue to do so. If you would like to message these patrons, you can publish posts to “All Patrons”. In the old system & new system, patrons who pledge below the lowest tier do not receive any tier benefits.
Old patrons will be able to go back through all old posts. New patrons on the new system will only be able to see posts that are published to the tier they are in. So if the old posts are published to that $ amt tier, they will be able to see it.
Thanks, @mindy, but one of your answers isn’t quite what I was trying to ask. I was saying that we need a Tier 0 so that we can exclude patrons who are below the lowest tier. We have patrons who are below the lowest tier, and we have patrons who pay enough, but aren’t in any tier. The only way to make sure that patrons get all the posts they are entitled to is to publish to all patrons. So what we need is a Tier 0 box to uncheck so that we can exclude those patrons while getting posts to all those who qualify for them. I’ve been trying to find a way to say this clearly enough as I’ve gotten an answer to this a couple of times now that isn’t rel.ted to what I’m attempting to say. So please let me know if I’m still not clear enough.
And, actually, this wasn’t originally my question/comment. Someone else had suggested a Tier 0 to solve an issue they were having with the new system, and I just piggybacked on to that, saying that would solve the problem for us, too.
What we’ve ended up doing, since this suggestion didn’t get implemented before the new system took effect is that we are now making our posts available to all our patrons, even those who aren’t pledging enough, just so patrons who should be getting them don’t miss out on them.
The best recommendation is for you to encourage your patrons to join a tier. You can find suggestions for some messaging to communicate the change with your patrons (with sample email template) here. If they are paying enough to qualify for benefits but aren’t in a tier, they will need to be in a tier to get those benefits. This is an important step to make benefits and tiers a more simple, straightforward process. Thank you for your feedback, it’s been vital while we’re building this out.
Yeah, I agree that it would be best to have all our patrons be in a tier. We just find it difficult to get a hold of our patrons. It used to be too easy for patrons to sign up and not pick a tier (and at the time seemed redundant to do so). So for our Futility Closet campaign I think we have 70+ patrons who aren’t in a tier. For my husband’s blog campaign that was a smaller number, so we tackled trying to get those patrons to sign up for the correct tiers. It appeared that we only managed to get a hold of about 20% of the patrons we tried to contact.
Knowing what to say to the patrons hasn’t been the issue; managing to get email or messages to them has been.
1 Like
I also find it hard to get hold of patrons. Most of mine seem to not respond to posts or emails at all. I think they just pledge and then forget about it and then ignore posts (just like people do with kickstarter updates… SO annoying). It’s tricky!
2 Likes
Just wondered if you have already changed the patron tier system as it is not showing on mine. Are you bringing it out in waves and not everyone at first? I’d like to know when it will be happening as I have plans for same priced tiers for my patreon…
1 Like
It’s not out yet but it will be very soon I’ll update in the forum when this feature is live.
Post via Tiers is now LIVE! You now have more control over which Tiers see your posts, ensuring that each post reaches your intended patron audience– this gives you the opportunity to target patrons with unique Benefits and messages.
1 Like
Finally had it roll out for me!
Just reiterating something that you had answered before, just in case anyone’s still confused (cause I was as well til I saw an example): Old posts have the “$X and up” rule and it applies only based on tier values.
You can opt out of this on a per-post basis by editing an older post and switching to the selectable tiers.
This means that people will still have access to old posts even if they’re switching to one of your new alt-tiers. (And this is probably the cleanest way to do it shy of having a big “apply new rules” button or mass post editor.)
Only downside is kinda fringe cases, like what I had: for me, I had SFW posts set to ‘patrons only’ and then NSFW set to ‘$2+.’ If it applied the new rules automatically it’d actually mean that those posts would still be accessible to everyone, even if a role wasn’t selected on them, yet the new SFW tier wouldn’t be able to see any old NSFW posts which actually did have a minimum role assigned (all as intended). Only downside would’ve been if they wanted something and were in a higher tier, but I’d do that case by case.
Instead I just have a warning that people who pledge to the SFW role will still have access to any NSFW posts before the date of the change, so if they wanna avoid them, don’t go too far back into the page history.
Either way I’m very glad this has finally come. Already a few patrons have adjusted their rewards since now they can pledge into higher tiers without having to see NSFW content, if they’re not partial to it.
(Also, it was suggested before, but I wanna second that a “Non-patrons” selectable role option would also be great for making public versions of posts. 
)
2 Likes