I’m starting to see numbers go down and my lowest level of pledge is $5… When someone is giving me $5 or $10 a month they are being very generous and when I have to tell them “by the way, pay even more so I can have more” then they are insulted.
This change seems to make me think you don’t understand your own business model. The only thing this is doing is killing off patrons from supporting multiple people, making patrons leave the site altogether and massively damaging your reputation both with us, patrons and the wider market.
It’s so cynical to tell us you are doing this “for us” when in reality we are the ones most hurt by this… I’m expecting my patreon numbers to decline this month for the first time because long-time patrons see this for the money grab that it is.
I think that their business model has changed? It used to be a tip-jar “donate as little as $1!” kind of thing, but now they seem to be moving away from that and want to be a membership subscription thing, similar to Netflix or something? Maybe they should have communicated this to us first.
Patreon needs to talk to us, and people in general need to chill just a little bit, imo.
This article makes it sound like Patreon wants to shake loose those of us who aren’t making big money. Message received. I’m looking for a way to move my tribe elsewhere.
Chiming in to add my voice to those saying this is a terrible idea.
As both a Creator and a patron, when I pledge $1 I want to be charged… $1. I have a $10 support budget to donate to other Creators. What this change in pricing forces me to do is reduce the number of creators I support, from 10 to 7. And it’s the same math that all 700+ of my supporters are doing. I’ve already lost at least a dozen people.
To be frank: I’d rather have 100 people at $1 than a single person at $100, because that single person is harder to hang onto month to month than 100 $1 folks.
I have also never, ever had a regular, set amount I see every month because supporters change/delete/add pledges every single month, so framing this as creating a “regular amount” that creators can count on is just bad framing.
I’d much rather you figure out a solution that continues to charge ME the fees on the back end and let $1 BE $1 for supporters. Changing patronage amounts to reflect this ridiculous “fees included” thing is nonsense.
This has already cost me both time and money that should have gone into creating great art. I’ve been fielding dozens of messages from subscribers, and honestly I don’t know what to tell them. This single incident has transformed me from a full-on Patreon supporter to someone casting a net out for alternatives (Kickstarter’s Drip opens to all new creators in a month or two). I can also no longer recommend this service to my colleagues, many of whom I advised in setting up their own (amazingly more successful even than mine!) Patreon accounts.
This is, simply, bad business.
I hope that you will reconsider this change. As a Creator, it hurts some of my most loyal fans, and as a Patron, it reduces the number of people I can support.
My hope is they have been told to go silent while management figures out how to address this. My sincere hope is that they just declare they are rethinking it, and pushing out a change to six months from now when they’ve had time to come up with something that works for a majority of creators and subscribers.
For those that didn’t notice, Jack posted this on Twitter last night:
“Hi creators and patrons — I’m hearing and seeing all the feedback. I spent the day on phone calls with creators. I’m reading the tweets and emails. I’m collecting my thoughts and will share more next week.”
I like that they are listening, but at the rate I’m losing supporters, next week feels a bit too long.
If this is truly how Patreon sees us small fish, this equates us with their perceived value of $1 pledges, as expendable. I certainly hope that’s not the case.
Where are the creators who were in beta on this? We’ve heard from no one about how this has positively impacted them so far. Does one patron upping their pledge to $5 make up for losing 3 $1 patrons? Is the money worth more than the individual patron? And for Patreon, is losing a few thousand low-income creators acceptable if it makes the high end creators more prestigious and the site overall appear more elite? Do you feel those of us with less than X# of patrons are making Patreon look unsuccessful as a whole? Is this why there isn’t a decent system for browsing yet? Do my 16 patrons make you look bad?
I’ve seen no positive response in regard to this other than the occasional “I haven’t lost any patrons… yet”. This entire thread is full of creators hemorrhaging pledges and others anxiously hoping that doesn’t start for them tomorrow. My Patreon home feed is full of creators scrambling to get ahead of this, apologizing for something they didn’t do and something none of us want, and telling patrons they understand if… Their patrons’ comments are sometimes supportive, but many times also apologetic. Many of them pledge to multiple creators and had to determine which support they had to pull. Some patrons have lost faith in Patreon altogether and are pulling all their pledges. Nothing to do with the creator as they will say let me know where you go so I can support you there.
I told you in July that if you make this change you would have to do it with 100% transparency. That didn’t mean send creators an email 24 hours before patrons. This forum is full of people willing to brainstorm solutions that would have worked better for everyone.
My suggestion, send out a poll immediately to ALL creators asking if they would rather pay the fees themselves or have patrons pay it. We understand the cost of business changes from time to time and you might find that most of us are prepared to pay the fee and consider it a necessary business expense. After all, how great is 95% of pledges if I lose 50% of my patrons?
This just dawned on me - this isn’t about prices, and whether Patreon is right or wrong about whether this will produce more money for creators. This is about whose customers the patrons are.
Creators worked hard to find these customers and bring them to Patreon. Patreon’s biggest contribution was to explain and popularize the model of recurring crowdfunding, in the same way that Kickstarter explained and popularized big bang crowdfunding.
But the patrons are our customers. It was us that set expectations of what we were going to do for a buck, or five bucks. When Patreon unilaterally steps in and modifies that arrangement, it’s overstepping its bounds.
Can you imagine a retail sign maker setting your business hours for you? You’d be shocked. “Um, put it back?”
When the sign maker starts arguing with you about how this is better for you and your customers, it just makes it worse. So what? We shouldn’t even be having this conversation at all.
My Dad just called and I had to walk him through the process of how to cancel his pledge. I got to hear almost an hour of how I tried and it didn’t work and I’m not good enough to be an artist at this point so I should just get a “real job”. Tell me again how this is going to be good for us in the long run?
We worked hard to get the patrons we have and build up a trust in us and Patreon and once that’s gone, there will be no getting those patrons back.
Ugh. I know that this isn’t really something that works with one’s parents, but whenever I hear random people on the internet talking about getting “real jobs,” my response tends to be the question of how fake my job could possibly be if I’m filling out tax forms for the government each year.
I think it’s the instability of the art world that makes it “not a real job” to some people. But honestly, does any job really have true stability?
In the sense that my dad meant was that it hadn’t taken off like I thought it would as fast as I suppose he thought it should (read: failure); it doesn’t cover all of my bills, nor does it give me benefits, insurance, or retirement. I’ve been informed that if I were actually a good enough artist all of this would have already happened.
The problem really is that Patreon has been a hard sell to anyone who isn’t an artist or creator already. I may have only ever had 20 patrons (now 15), but I worked for every one of them. When they do something like this and we lose a patron here and there, some of us more than others, it makes people lose faith in the platform and what Patreon stands for. I fear even if they come up with a better solution to this much of the damage has already been done. The patrons we had and lost were the ones that were most receptive to patronage. The next ones will be much more difficult to convince. I think we’ll be seein’ fallout from this for a while.
Radio silence is never good when you’re trying to put out fires, and do damage control.
It only gives me the impression that none of this was ‘actually’ tested on real Patrons, or Creators.
Based on the article linked above, it sounds like all of the ‘testing’ that was done, was done with algorithms, computers, and no actual involvement from thinking, feeling people.
And that much is obvious by the backlash such a decision has caused.
The silence is deafening, and will remain so until next week I presume.
Also, testing for months, at least to a real audience, is dubious at best. Like everyone wouldn’t have shot down the idea of being screwed over for donating. Can you imagine a charity telling you to put more than you just said you’d choose to put in?
No no no no. Just no. I never post on these forums but I’m gonna break my silence for this. This is not okay. The fact that you aren’t listening to the creators is not okay. I’m a webcomic creator who relies mostly on 1-5$ pledges and it’s difficult enough to get new patrons to have to lose them over a decision you really hadn’t talked over with us.
Have a little of common sense and don’t go further.
Down 5 Patrons now so far and had another lowered his pledge due to the fee structure.
As more people find out about this it’s going to get worse.
I fear much of the damage is done and is going to require a massive amount of community good will to reverse how creators and Patrons feel right now.
I should also mention that right before this announcement, I was at a major milestone in income, that has taken me almost 2 years to achieve. I’ve since dropped down past that milestone, and if this keeps going, I’m afraid of what my income is going to look like come January.
I will say this - if these changes aren’t repealed, or some other, more cost-effective, and less greedy corporate solution is presented, I will be taking my fans and business elsewhere. I hear Kickstarter Drip is starting soon…
It means your $1 patrons will be charged $1.38 for each charged creation you put out each month. If you have your account set up for monthly pledges, then yes, it would only add up to $1.38. But if you charge per creation, and say put out 5 creations a month you charge your patrons for, that patron would be charged $6.90 for the month instead of their previous $5. So, many of us are expecting to lose a good number of our small patrons, because if they only had a small amount to donate to begin with, what would keep them around to pay 20-40% more with these absurd fees?