Patreon's cut is increasing?

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Let’s say I have 400 patrons with $1 pledges. (I’m simplifying, but that’s not far off.) Let’s assume each of them supports an average of three creators. Half of them pay by PayPal, half of them pay by credit card.

From what I can tell, in the November 2017 fee model, I’m going to be earning 86% of my patreon payments. They pay $400, Patreon takes 5% ($20), and then I pay $23.61 to Stripe, and $12.83 to PayPal. This leaves me with $343.56, which is 86% of what my Patrons paid.

In the new model, my Patrons pay $58.27 more in service charges. Patreon keeps those service, charges, and then takes 5% of the rest ($20 again), leaving me with $380. This is 83% of what my Patrons paid, so between Patreon, Stripe and PayPal, my share has been reduced from 86% to 83%. Patreon is effectively taking 3% more of the gross payments than they were in November.

Now, let’s assume I’m not any more awesome in December than I was in November, so the price hike is obviously going to cost me some patrons. (It already has, and they’ve said so in the exit surveys.) How many? I have no idea, but let’s arbitrarily assume that I see the exact shrinkage necessary to keep the gross payments at $400.

As it happens that’s 50 patrons, 25 of each type.

175 patrons of each type have pledged a total of $350, and then Patreon charges them %50.98 in service fees, adding up to $400.98. Patreon keeps the service charges, and their 5% cut is $17.50.

I’m now earning $332.50. That’s $10 less than before, even though my Patrons are still ponying up the same in payments as they were in November.

How does this benefit me?

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I have to agree with this. Why the change?
Why are Patrons paying the fees now?
Is it easier to hide the price hike behind some hand-waving and math?

This is by far the worst rollout Patreon has done so far.
This change doesn’t get my vote, and benefits no one but Patreon.

And you know what? I would have preferred a fee increase announcement, and I had to pay a bit more.
But this pushing the fee hike onto Patrons is just bad business. It of course won’t affect large sum creators, but the small pages like mine might take a serious hit.

Not cool, Patreon. Not cool.

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I just looked at https://www.patreon.com/dashboard/earnings to check how much I was paying in processing fees. It’s varied from 4% to 5.62% at its highest. It is already very predictable for me.

Is anyone paying 7% to 15% in processing fees here? I’ve never heard of that high of a fee before.

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I pay between 9% - 12% per month in fees. That’s total.
Processing fees have never been higher than 7.16%.

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I seem to pay around 12% these days. I suppose this means most of my patrons are paying via PayPal.

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I have paid 16 - 17% for the last 3 months. The more Patrons I get the higher the fees seem to be.

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I honestly get the feeling - over the last year or something + this - that Patreon does favour the very large creators. I currently get almost $100 from patrons per month, and for me personally, that is actually a lot and makes a big difference! And I have worked really hard to make it happen. This really makes me feel like Patreon doesn’t care about me and others in the same boat. It’s sad. Please show me I’m wrong, Patreon.

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I think they’re only interested in the big creators, which would be fair enough if they came out to say so outright (if they even admit it to themselves). The whole site is increasingly designed for big creators and increasingly pointless for small ones.

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This is what I’ve seen too. And yea, it wouldn’t be as big of a deal if they were upfront about it.

This makes me sad because I have loved Patreon since the day I heard of it, ca 3 years ago, and have rallied for them.

But Patreon doesn’t care if a big bunch of $1 patrons will drop out, do they? They even say in their announcement "While some patrons may leave in the short-term, we know this will help creators earn more money in the long term."
That bothers me. Those patrons are important, they are not just a dollar, they are a person believing in me! And I rather have them stay and be a part of my thing, than me possibly earning a bit more money.
I have also worked my butt of to find those patrons, that you don’t care about. But I care about them.

Am I overreacting here? :thinking:

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You’re not overreacting. Every one of us feels the same, judging from the forum. Patreon has lost the plot, or changed it without doing us the courtesy of an honest announcement.

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This was a pretty interesting Reddit post about the 1 dollar pledges: https://www.reddit.com/r/patreon/comments/7icp6b/why_patreon_doesnt_care_about_your_1_dollar/

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It confirms the notion that they’re no longer interested in helping creators get bigger, they just want to work with those who can already pull in money.

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I stated earlier that this is to give a boost to those dividends they need to pay out at the end of the year. Now that investors are involved, it will be full steam ahead on maximizing profit and continuing to tell the community, ‘We’re doing this for your benefit!’. It happens with every start up that starts increasing funding through investors. Fact is, it’s just corporate PR speak and the plan does nothing but increase profit margins and incentivize more investment into the company.

While it might not be completely true that they’re making these changes for the benefit of small creators who are a detriment to profit margins. They are doing this to maximize the amount Patrons are willing to pledge.
This entire plan deincentivizes anything less than a $5 pledge. Methinks this is the entire plan.

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I mean, I guess Patreon are changing. They used to be the $1 tip-jar kind of place but now they are going to be more of a subscription membership. That would be fine if they just told us that. Hmm.