I don’t think it requires an explanation, because I don’t think anyone would be surprised/shocked when they got charged.
Complicated on the inside, totally intuitive on the outside.
@benjaminharveydesign - I like the idea. I am technically minded, the logic immediately clicks with me.
However, if I wanted to explain the logic (that I feel is fair, rational, easy to grasp) to someone with less than 12 words (standard Facebook generation attention span) or a video shorter than 5 seconds - I would fail epicly. I’d probably try something like “You want it all - and you want it now? Cool, you get charged for one month NOW, but you only get charged for the remaining days from this month NEXT month. From then on - fluffy rainbow carps all the way”.
… and I would expect a lot of “er, what” thrown at me …
Marc
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Oh but they would be surprised when they get charged. And you’d have to explain. People are already going “sod this, it’s too complicated” already.
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Just charge people every 30 days. That’s very easy to understand and the fairest way to do this.
@benjaminharveydesign From the perspective of a technically minded person, I agree that that makes total sense. However, from the perspective of a user, I think this system would fall into the realm of “I don’t know why it did what it did”, which is the primary issue with the current pay-up-front system.
@chris1612 At the moment, this is the structure I am personally choosing to go with. However, the traditional every-30-days structure does nothing to tackle the issue of fraudulent accounts, and causes additional bookkeeping for those creators who have one-time rewards (physical goods, digital books, etc) that they would like to only be made available to users who have made a contribution. I completely agree that every 30 days, for users who are not having trouble with fraudulent accounts or credit cards, and who do not have one-time rewards, is a great system. But for others, it would be nice to have an alternative structure, which is why we are here, discussing the current pay-up-front structure and what could be done to make it a more viable option.
I think that devalues the rewards. Let’s say a creator has a $50 reward tier limited to 1 patron that is for a custom artwork. You pledge $50 on the 28th, you get that artwork and then you’re charged $5 on the 1st of the next month? You want another artwork, but the creator isn’t going to do it for $5. Now you have to wait an entire month to get the reward you signed up for and that reward tier limited to 1 patron is closed out because you’re sitting on it for $5. Not fair to patron or creator. The patron is mad for not getting another artwork for an entire month and the creator is wondering how to cover the $45 loss of that limited tier.
Prorating either at the front or back end doesn’t work where rewards are involved. It would cause all kinds of problems for the creator to have to explain.
I’m not really sure why I’m typing this much on a suggestion I don’t even know if Patreon staff will see on a feature that I don’t even use myself, but I feel like nobody is understanding this the way I see it so let’s do this.
Here, think about this this way. There are two kinds of people. Technical-minded people who want all the nitty-gritty details (A), and people who don’t really understand or care to (B). Let’s look at this from each person’s perspective.
“You’ll pay the amount when you first sign up, and then be charged each month from then on” is the initial short public explanation.
Person B sees that and thinks, alright, cool. They sign up on the 28th for $50, they are charged $50. Three days later, they are charged $5. They might say “why was I charged for $5?” to which you could say, “Monthly payments after your first payment are charged on the 1st after your initial payment, so you were just charged for those three days of this month.” I see no reasonable cause for Person B to be upset by this explanation.
Person A sees the initial explanation and has questions. Will I be charged twice in 4 days? How does this work? They then go find or ask you for the detailed explanation, which is:“You’ll be charged upfront, then on the 1st of the next month you’ll be charged a percentage of that amount based on when in the month you signed up.” They go, oh that makes sense, sounds good, and then they know exactly what to expect.
As for rewards, that IS a little trickier. But I don’t think any reasonable person would be like, I just paid you $5, where’s my $50 reward? But they might want something, especially if they signed up early in the month. Perhaps you could offer them a reward from a tier equivalent (or similar to) to what they paid. It’ll vary based on people’s situations. But I don’t understand why they would be upset they have to wait a month to get a second $50 reward, since they just got a reward 3 days ago upon signing up!
I’m a creator, aware of the issues behind the scenes, and I still don’t follow your explanations (to specify: I kow what you’re trying to say, but it would make no sense ot me at all if I didn’t already know what was going on). An outside person doesn’t have a hope of making sense of why they would be chargd $50 then 5 then 50 again. Nobody wants to feel even slight confusion when their money is involved. The system doesn’t just needs to be simple, it needs to be dumb-simple. I would back @chris1612 's suggestion: Charge upfront and then on the same day of the next month, every month. That’s how bills are charged so it’s not something new users have to learn: they already know how it works. There doesn’t need to be a change to creator payouts, they can still be set for the 1st of each month with whatever is in the creator’s account.
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Unfortunately that would be a bookkeeping nightmare, for creators, for patrons, and patreon itself. (As @chibibiscuit alluded to as the “fly in the ointment” in the OP - also they were the one to suggest it, not Chris) Everyone would be charged at any random day of the month. Keeping track of whose rewards are due when and who’s getting paid how much and when would be horrendous for both creators and Patreon respectively, which is my guess as to why Patreon didn’t implement it that way in the first place (plus the issue of patrons being charged at random days of the month for different creators that the OP mentioned) It certainly could work for some creators, but it wouldn’t by any means be “dumb-simple” to any creator pledging to multiple creators if they were charged a different way every time, especially if it wasn’t universally implemented, which would be incredibly frustrating to creators that currently post rewards on the 1st of every month. I don’t think you’re going to find a solution that is “dumb-simple” for Patreon, all patrons, AND creators.
Nevertheless, I should qualify this with a disclaimer that I certainly don’t consider my solution to be perfect. It just, in my opinion, seems like it would solve the most problems with the fewest drawbacks all around.
I don’t see why. As I said, on the patron side, you get charged on the same day every month; on the creator side, processing of payments and rewards happens at the next 1st of the month. This is extremely simple to understand. With that basic agreement understood, there’s absolutely no reason why anyone should keep track of rewards individually. You just do exactly what you’re doing now, deal with them at the turn of the month. This can’t be an issue for Patreon: every online store charges payments upon purchase, only releasing them to the seller at the beginning of the month each month; and every utility company charges their clients every month on the day they signed up. I see your point about people pledging to multiple creators, but unless that multiplies fees (which is a question), I really don’t see where the bookkeeping nightmare comes in. I pledge to multiple creators: take my various payments when you need to, and send me a summary email on the first of the month as usual. It’s not complicated.
That said, I’m discussing this as if I felt strongly about it, but there are so many things currently self-defeating about the site, this matter is not one I consider a priority.
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See, I think a lot of people would be upset to be charged on the 5th of every month and then not given their reward until the 1st of the next month. Which would mean you would have to keep track of when they are charged and deliver rewards at that time. That’s the bookkeeping nightmare for creators.
Yes, online stores charge payments in that way, but they’re not managing millions of different custom-sized transactions to thousands of different other people. Though I should qualify that that is just a guess as to why they didn’t initially set up Patreon to work in this manner only from the start, like most subscription services do, as you mentioned. I’m guessing they didn’t want patrons to be charged dozens of small amounts on random days because that complicates emails/notifications/transactions/etc, they’d rather have each customer charged once per month, which simplifies it enormously.
I simply make users expressly aware that are going to charged pay up front and then again on the 1st…and it may be wise to wait until the 1st to sign up. I make it VERY, VERY clear.
I also offer refunds extremely generously and make this clear. If anyone wants a refund for any amount of time they’ve been a patron, I give it to them. Rarely, rarely anyone ever asks. But if they do, I make sure they get it.
I think this adds a degree of safety to the users mind as well as trust. I’d assume most creators would be frightened to offer refunds so generously, but in my experience, people actually don’t take advantage of it…
So if you have an unhappy patron, then perhaps you did not make the system clear to them and perhaps you should be offering refunds if they are unhappy. This seems like a simple solution.
I definitely agree that refunds can be used and in some cases are definitely good to utilize, i think the primary thing is that the pay upfront solution really doesn’t work for all in it’s current state. Without some kind of customization to the feature to prevent the double charging, it’s not extra crap that many of us want to deal with. Most people i know of don’t use Patreon as their sole income and are already managing a lot of platforms and clients from various places. Having to tack on worrying about -regular- potential refunds and double charge questions (because people still don’t read even if its extremely clear on your project page and even if you link to it or DM people directly when they sign up, to explain and make sure they are aware, many still don’t read it for various reasons.) I am all about communication and talking with my clients but i also don’t think it’s really productive to use a function that tacks on extra work that takes away from creating what the people are pledging for and adding more confusion to potential pledgers to try to digest and understand. (I’ve seen people not pledge/increase their pledge because the system is confusing and seems like a “jerk” move from an outside perspective. Especially when pledging to higher tiers or planning on it.)
Honestly, I plain and simply just don’t see why making it a back end choice for creators to simply not let unpaid people see content set for paid patrons is such a huge problem that still hasn’t been solved. That in itself would pretty much solve all the bot problems and give patrons and creators more security. 
(I completely realize that programming is not easy. So i’m sure there are things in the back end that are making it hard to fix and probably other priorities, etc. I have mad respect for the programmers that make systems like this function. I am just frustrated with the current options.)
honestly there are so many backend things that they need to fix
thougg…like id like to respond to comments in my notification
feed…simple right? nope broke 3 weeks ago. id also like to see
referring urls. simple. nope never done that either.
this morning i sent them a video in detail about a tech issue they have an
offered to hire a coder for them. im dead serious too, i would pay
someone to fix their issues.
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Hi all!
There’s a LOT of discussion here that I’m not fully caught-up on yet, but I do want to take a minute to let you know we’ve got a plan. We are totally aware of how painful (not to mention confusing) the current options are, and we do want to move to a model that’s a lot more similar to normal “every 30 days” subscription services for monthly creators.
I can’t get into a lot of details here yet (I’m sure you have tons of questions), but we will let everyone know well in advance of us making any changes, and answer allll the things. Look for some communications starting in early 2018!
eb
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Thank you so much for taking the time out to answer some of the posts. It means a lot!
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Why don’t you just have a joining fee which the creator sets? The user knows they will pay a joining fee plus another fee on the first of next month.
The joining fee cannot be more than the monthly fee
There can be a joining fee for before the 21st of the month and another for after. Which the user is unaware.
I know for my content if you join on the 20th of October you are getting Octobers content.
When you pay on the first of November, that is for November’s content in my eyes.
My problem right now is:
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I do not wish to make people wait for content, nor have some method where I deliver it manually. Patreon should be doing that for me.
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My Patreon allows people to join, rip all the content and leave immediately. This is highly frustrating. None of the ways to avoid this are acceptable to me.
Q) Why have patreon if I have to micromanage delivery of content?
Q) Why is it when someone joins and leaves. No trace of their activity remains except for an email alert that they joined and an exit survey. This is the group which is normally full of rorters, we should have all their details, we should have the ability to block their IP.
I agree happy and it is totally clear to those about to sign up that they are paying for the current month (and can get all the rewards for the current month, even if they sign up on the 28th).
I offer original rewards as one of my tiers and if someone signs up on the 28th and the money comes out again on the first of the next month - as it does and should - then they just get their original reward times 2. I don’t see how it could be changed so that each patreon potentially is having their money taken at different times of the month, to keep it at the beginning of each month makes it much easier as creators know when they’re going to get paid rather than a drip drip affair.
If someone doesn’t want to pay for the mont that’s just happened on the 28th, then they can surely just wait till the 1st and pledge then, I don’t see the issue here at all. For me pay up front has been a godsend as I did have some people signing up and then deleting before the end of the month. This stops people who aren’t serious about pledging.
Sorry if I missed this in previous comments, but has anyone here tried the pay-up-front method while charging per item instead of monthly? As in: I plan to put out and charge my patrons for 4 videos a month and they pledge $10/video and are charged up front that month for $40…but something happens and only 3 videos go out that month. Does the extra $10 roll over? Is it refunded?
Actually, in response to you and my message. I don’t really care about the first month for the product and support.
When I do care is when people join and leave after a few hours of ripping content.
Solution: If they join the first payment is put into escrow. If they leave, that amount is sent to me. If they stay that amount is used for their first payment.
Give them the first month free.
Stop the rorters.
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