There aren’t much in the way of good competitors right now. Kickstarters “Drip” is invite only/beta (and who knows what their rules will be), Swaggerdile got shut down because of reasons Patreon should have gotten shut down (and might be one of the reasons they are trying to push these changes but since they haven’t really been honest with us about the why’s, other than touting the “it’s better for creators” bs, who knows.) Many of us have been spreading our Ko-fi’s, Paypal me links, some have started up accounts on Flatter and Liberapay. Most i’ve seen are sticking with Ko-fi right now as it’s actually kind of nice and has a gallery you can post to. So for creators it’s something. But there really isn’t a great alternative that i’m aware of that has all the things patreon has/had. HOWEVER, you CAN create your own website using wordpress and woocommerce and whatnot to make a shop, paywalled/subscription parts of your site, etc. It’s just incredibly time consuming. (However there are some people around social media offering their services to do this sort of thing for Patreon creators who are loosing their income.)
So there are some nice temporary alternatives but in the long run, I’m not sure. It’s likely going to be back to the commission 24/7 artist i don’t want to be, for me. (And searching for a part time job. Whee.)
I’ve been giving several alternatives by my patrons. They’re that enthusiastic about it. I had considered doing commissions again, but honestly I’d rather just eat less.
I still do commissions through my patreon and outside of it, i was just able to do less and focus more on improvement and experimentation and whatnot, which is really important to me. (Hec, my patrons liked when i did my own themes and characters, so, bonus!) But now. yeah. I have some game plans but we’ll see what pans out. Commissions will definitely have to be on the docket for me no matter what.
Good luck to you and i hope you don’t have to eat less. Your health is important!
Before Patreon came along, I did subscriptions via Paypal, so that’s probably what I’m going back to. Even if I stay on Patreon, I’ve lost people who indicate they don’t want to use it as a platform anymore, so to recapture their revenue I’m going to have to give them other options.
Hi Community folks, I wanted to say first off, thank you for the incredible amount of feedback that you’ve shared. All of this was elevated internally.
I wanted to share our updated comments here but let me say: I’m sorry. We need to do a better job of listening and sharing within this community. More changes to come here, but wanted to let you know that your comments and feedback did not fall on deaf ears.
Thank you for taking our feedback into account and rolling back this plan! I for one really appreciate it. I know it’s been a crazy week that hasn’t been easy on you guys either. But it means A LOT to know that you guys were listening.
I’ve lost 30 patrons over this, and I won’t know the full financial damage until next month because about 40% of my patrons changed from pledging $X per creation for 8-10 creations per month to a single pledge of $(Y)X non-repeating, where Y is between 1 and 10.
More importantly, I lost the time to create during this as I’ve been dealing with this instead of creating.
Thank you for taking our concerns into account and for the apology. It means a LOT. I totally understand that you guys need to make changes to further your services, i just hope your promises of interacting with your user base more directly and actually using us in your feedback for future changes actually happens.
This is definitely a time where earning trust back will be important and keeping true to your words will be the make or break. Some wont come back. Some may. Many of us lost patrons, valuable income that keeps a roof over our heads, keeps us and our families fed, lost time over this, during an already busy time of the year for so many. So, be wise guys. Put yourselves in our shoes, actually utilize these forums and your user base. WE, your users, are why you continue to exist. Communication is key in everything and you guys screwed the pooch on that this time. Please please please learn from this.
I am grateful, as I’m sure most of us are, that you are cancelling the proposed move.
I hope you understand that whilst many of us were very vocally against the change and how it was being handled we do ultimately support Patreon as a platform. We all want what’s best for Patreon and ourselves and that means sometimes we disagree.
I hope lessons are learnt on all sides. Most specifically we hope Patreon comunicate with us more before considering big changes like this.
Thank you… Now let’s get back to creating awesome stories/art/games/etc…
Thank you! This is a good first step to restoring some of the trust that was lost in the past week. It’s going to take a while to recover from the financial damage this has caused though. Timing really couldn’t have been worse with the health insurance premium increases kicking in next month.
Also, please please please, we took a lot of your feedback and helped to create this form https://jamiec1.typeform.com/to/gvucuX - we literally combed through your specific quotes. We continue to comb through comments here, but this helps us to quantify things. If you have specific ideas of ways that Patreon could help you to re-coup patrons, please add those there too.
We have some much smaller rollouts that are planned, and as we do those, you’ll see a new thread that calls attention the information around that.
I know this past week was a HUGE distraction for y’all and pulled back time from your ability to create and engage with your community.
@carla I agree 100% with what Temrin has said. I’m currently breathing a big sigh of relief over this reversal, but at the same time Patreon needs to work with us and as creators we need to work with you to figure out some way to recover. Simply stopping and stepping back from this will not be enough at this point. Some pretty big damage has been done.
It has been difficult to be ambassadors for Patreon before as there hasn’t been a system in place quite like it and many people don’t understand how it works. As our faith in it grew with our understanding, we were better able explain how and why patronage is so important to the arts, but it hasn’t been easy to convince others who aren’t creators and we have worked really hard for those patrons we just lost over this. We won’t get most of them back. And now it will be a while before the tarnish comes off. The trust we built with our patrons and were building with our followers is on very shaky ground right now.
Patreon needs to work with us so we can make a strong push forward this year to restoring the faith and making Patreon that much better. 2018 needs to be the year that Patreon becomes so impressive that this incident will be minor by comparison. @carla, please make sure those working on features and policy at Patreon see our ideas. There have been some fantastic ideas presented in these forums that haven’t gotten the attention or consideration they deserve. This is our business too and we want to help.
Thanks for the apology and the rollback. That was well done.
I hope that the problem that change was trying to solve can be addressed in some other fashion, though I’m not clear on what it is. I’m getting multiple answers from all the people I’m asking.
THANK YOU for taking our feedback seriously and for the apology! What makes it a good apology is that you guys understood what you did wrong, and hopefully (by the wording of the blog post) intend to move forward with better communication with creators and patrons. A lot of people’s trust in you is shaken, mine included. Keep up this momentum, and I’m hoping you’ll gain a reputation of being a platform that truly puts ALL of it’s users interest first, and listens to them. In my opinion, the next step is going to be how to compensate creators who lost precious income because of your mistake. After that, and for the rest of your time operating, it’s going to be all about communicating more clearly with your users and involving us in changes that effect us. You guys have some ironing out to do, and it’s going to take a lot of work. More accurate search function, hammering out the charge up front problem and making it available, increasing security so we creators don’t keep having our content spilled out on skeezy free websites, better record keeping tools for creators, and more.
So much this. So many great idea’s have been posted here and many have yet to even get a response from staff. We have no idea what is going on behind those closed doors, Patreon, and it’s even more worrisome now with this fee debacle. Some companies have a trello (or similar) where they show the public what kinds of things they are working on, they communicate with their user base to thoroughly test out ideas and let us know whats going on. While i’ve seen talk of you guys doing this with other features, we never know whats actually happening and for those of us that aren’t in the beta, we cannot voice our thoughts on any of it because it’s kept so far under wraps often times. Be transparent guys! Many of us WANT to help you and have been trying to help with our feedback for a long time and it feels like often times it’s all pushed aside because you guys are like ghosts. Your selective responses hurt our trust. If you guys are short staffed here, you could at least say that, or something. ‘Like’ our posts so that we can know you’ve seen important stuff we’ve posted. Responses are better but -something- is better than the usual nothing, here on the forums. (And this is certainly not the first time we’ve brought this up either.)
We want this partnership between Patreon and it’s users to succeed and be awesome. We don’t put time and effort into talking and reporting our issues because we are just full of hot air. Many of us feel quite invested in this platform and pulling the rug from under us has been quite the shocking experience.
@carla (but to all patron staff. You’ve just been the only one responding about this so i’m directing it at you, for all.)
There is going to be some good coming out of this – We also learned the impact of our feedback as well. I believe if you actually did ask us about this firsthand (sent us mails, messages us on the platform, give us surveys etc) I don’t think creators would’ve given much heed to it. Most of us would ignore.
I don’t think people will ignore anything after this incident. Perhaps we all learned something from this.
Yes, all fair. You’re right, I should be more transparent about time or anything.
Your voice has been particularly consistent and you’re a super active participant, so I know you’re saying this from a place of real experience in working with the Patreon team.
Like I said, I’d like to come up with some sort of method for showcasing new things to this team in advance. For example, I’ve got two things unrelated to payments in any way for example that will be out in the next 4 - 6 weeks. I’d like to share those in advance to get feedback and hear your thoughts before we roll things out, and to let you know when things are coming.
I’m relatively new to Patreon so also learning how strongly this group feels and how active all of you.
And yes, responding is always better – and trying to bring more of the team along for the ride too.
