My two cents is that I’ve tried to explain this as best as I can to my patrons, and hope they don’t all leave me. I’ve already lost a number of them, a lot of $2 pledges, but even a few $10 pledges. Not because they can’t afford the change, but they don’t support it and no longer want anything to do with Patreon.
In my letter to my patrons I suggest that before they left us, to consider editing their pledges down. This now becomes a loss for me AND for Patreon, but I’d rather see this side lose the money than my patrons who are already going out of their way to show us their support. I suggested they bring down their current pledge by $0.50-$1.00, or consolidate their multiple per creation pledges into one and will only have to pay the one processing fee at that point.
If this were solely a 5% fee being transferred over to patrons I think they would have a better time accepting it and trying to see a positive light that the creators they support are now able to keep more of their contributions coming in. But the per creator per creation charge is complete bullshit, and that I can not get behind. I think I stand behind almost all of us when I say that we want to keep things as they have been running and would happily take the blow in processing fees over our patrons.
That’s what I did - I have three pledge tiers, 2 dollars, 5, and 20. I created three new tiers at 1.50, 4.50, and 19.00 (with the fee adjustment, the total would come to 1.90, 4.98, and 19.90, respectively). My patrons have responded well to that so far.
This is so bad. Just bad. There is a post somewhere where they said they tested it and spoke with other creators. Can these creators please respond in this thread and let me know why they thought this would be a good idea? I get patreons motives (you’re greedy, that’s it), but why would any creator approve this?
If you read the article linked above, the ‘tests’ they ran were not with actual people. Instead it seems to be all algorithms, computers, and bots. Which seems the reason for no creators on these particular forums being very supportive of this change.
They didn’t seem to consult with any real, thinking, feeling, and breathing people.
Also, this change seems to be based on a few creators complaining about fees. One of the quotes they refer to, comes from a creator making over 11k a month and complaining that the fees are over 1K!!
Ironically enough, the people who need the least help are arguably the ones who have the most to lose with this whole thing, if they don’t support the changes. They, of all people, can’t just jump ship because they don’t like where this is going, unless they can convince their twelve billion supporters to follow them. They can complain and maybe even trend on Twitter, but they REALLY can’t afford to leave. Someone with three patrons could cut their losses and try something else.
Already happened. Already lost a lot of Patrons over this specific change, because they were RIGHTFULLY not happy with the fees being charged to their patronage.
December 2017 summary: -$35 in pledges, -17 patrons
Already lost over 8% of my patrons and still a week to go until changes go into effect! And with good reason, I cancelled all my own $1 pledges as well of course!
The most ridiculous part is where Patreon even plans to disable paying from funds already sitting at Patreon. Having funds already on Patreon was the best way to avoid fees for creators, and all that would have been needed was a way to manually “top up” that amount.
For minimum fees, it should work something like this:
Set up minimum amount to charge on Credit Card / PayPal
Each time pledge is charged:
Take money from funds at Patreon
If not enough: minimum amount previously set up is charged (or more if pledge is higher), any remains go into funds at Patreon
I’ve now introduced fee-adjusted tiers for everything $3 and up in my perk structure. That won’t stop patrons who’ve lost all trust into Patreon as a platform thanks to this stupid stunt from leaving, but at least it offers a solution for patrons who are willing to stay in principle, just not to pay those outrageous fees. It sucks, but it sucks less than losing my livelihood completely.
I still can’t believe this whole mess, the timing of it, the “communication” of it, the silence now… It’s mind-boggingly stupid and IMHO a contender for Worst Business Decisions of 2017.
It would certainly be weird if a retail sign maker did that, but many shopping malls require the stores in them to adhere to certain business hours. Another example is the street where I lived a couple of years ago, all stores were required by the city to have neon lights in a certain style so that the street had a uniform look. It was probably annoying in a way for the stores, but it also arguably created a very cool look and was most likely beneficial for the stores as a whole.
How about the prices in those shops?
Were all shop owners required to add on another $0.35 + 2.9% fee for having the required neon sign though?
And then push that cost onto the customers by adding it just as you’re about to pay?
This is now at >4% (lost patrons) and 3% (lost income).
I just want to point out that the 5% fee you “pay” Patreon every month for the use of their platform is so you don’t have to deal with this sort of overhead or nonsense. The lost income is not just a one month thing – that’s forever gone – as a direct result of a poorly executed “feature” change. Annually, that represents more than $3k of lost income for me.
That’s not the example I argued against, but sure, stores in some cities are mandated to charge for plastic bags, for example. If you sell things in the Apple App store you’re mandated to select prices within a certain range.
Look, I’m not trying to make this service fee out to be a good thing, I’m just saying that arguments in the vein of “this is unheard of” isn’t a particularly good one as it’s relatively common for stores and merchant to live inside an ecosystem with common rulesets, of which some rules sometimes are regarding price.
I don’t know what you pay, but my stripe fees are currently approximately 10% so if I had the same loss of patrons as you I would still be very much at plus from this change.