I’m probably starting to feel like a broken record here, but I just want to recap a few things, in addition to reporting findings from my own patreon.
I’m a page with almost 300 patrons. I saw a huge growth a few months back and am expecting another one within a month when my next major work is complete. Patreon allows me to produce content as a full time job, so it has been nothing short of life-changing for me.
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A successful patreon absolutely relies on a big community. For this reason more care needs to be given to smaller pledges. Again, charging someone fees 20 times because they have 20 different pledges is utterly asinine. A big community means your patreon page grows faster and is more stable, and it becomes easier to interact with them for events. 200 $1 pledges is far more fulfilling and engaging than 20 $10 pledges.
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A big community also means more people are likely to join patreon as supporters overall. A bigger user base overall means more opportunities for creators to gain supporters. If a page brings 500 people to sign up to Patreon, a good chunk will wind up supporting additional patreon pages, even for small amounts. Don’t penalize them for doing so.
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Patreon should not be charging fees on transactions that remain within Patreon itself. As no financial institutions get involved, there theoretically should not be a fee to send money from one Patreon balance to another. The fees should only come when adding or removing funds from Patreon to another service, such as via Stripe, Paypal, etc. If this is an incorrect assumption, please clarify, but I do not see why it would be.
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A healthy chunk of patrons I have polled have stated they will need to scale back various pledges if small pledges remain penalized as the current model plans. I’m only up to 41 votes so far from just this evening, but 20 people have said they cannot handle the flat fee with their current spread, and 6 have said they can’t handle ANY new fees with their current spread, and will need to scale back. The remaining 15 intend to try and keep all their pledges as is. Additionally, I have already had about 5 people leave due to the policy change, even after I explained it would not go into effect until the 18th (I am expecting a much bigger exodus at that point). The flat fee is clearly the biggest complication here.
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A solution for the anniversary model: if the point on internal Patreon balance transfers holds, allow users to rely on a balances to mitigate fees. At the start of each month, your account would automatically be charged based on the amount and worth of pledges you have. This is when you would be charged the fees. This amount would then be doled out to Patreon pages as you come to your pledge date. When you make a new pledge, you get charged again immediately, however next month this amount is simply added to your total balance. This should prevent Patreon itself from incurring extra fees with financial institutions from having to interact with them multiple times a month per user regularly, as well as allow users to pay the $0.35 portion of the fee for their entire balance, rather than per individual pledge.
To work out an example:
Say you pledge $20 to a page A on the 17th. You are charged (with the fee) when you sign up, and the money is sent directly to the page A. Your balance still says $0.00 until the 1st.
On the 1st, you automatically are charged $20, with the fee. This is added to your balance and stays there as ‘reserved’ until the 17th, when it is sent to the page A.
You decide to add a $5 pledge to another page B on the 10th. You are charged (and fee’d) immediately, on the 10th. Your balance still says $20 from being loaded up on the 1st because that extra $5 was immediately sent to B, it never went through your balance, and that $20 was reserved either way. The payment to page A goes through on the 17th from your balance.
Next month starts, your account is loaded up for $25, with payments going to B on the 10th and A on the 17th. From there on, the fees are calculated only once per month, from when you load up at the start of the month for $25.
If you decide to remove a pledge, the money stays in your balance but becomes un-reserved, so you may use it for other pledges. One option may be for users to be able to withdraw it, though they would maybe need to pay a fee there if need be (similarly to the final point).
Similarly, if you pledge to 20 accounts for $1 each, at the start of the month you’d just be billed at the start for $20 (+ the fee), and this would be distributed to each account as your pledge comes up.
And, as another option, if there are any funds added to your account that are NOT reserved, you can use those to pay without fees. So if you intend to get $20 in pledges to different people, but don’t know specifically who or how many yet, you could load up $20, pay the fee, and start your pledges as you see fit.
If my assumptions are correct, this would not only greatly reduce fees for patrons (who pledge to a lot of people), but ALSO reduce the fees Patreon itself has to deal with, saving Patreon money.
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If need be, Patreon pages can still cover basic withdrawal fees. I’d imagine part of the reason for the user fees as well is to cover fees for creator payout. If there are still fees remaining after the proposed solution, they would strictly be from Patreon sending the money to the creator. If paid by creators, these would be less than what they are now either way and would now be consistent, as we only have to worry about our side of it: just 2.9% + $0.35 for paypal, for instance, instead of the unpredictable 4-12% that it is currently. The issue isn’t that creators receive fees–it’s that they are unpredictable and sometimes are quite high. While removal outright would be nice, reduction and normalization is also wholly acceptable.
The core issue again is how the flat portion of the fees are calculated–MOST patrons are fine with the percentage portion.
I would be stuck doing 100% freelance work and never pursuing my own projects if it had not been for Patreon. Please, if you can @carla , give us a bit more information if this would be possible / even considered by the payment team. Is there any reason that a fee has to be charged when the EXISTING BALANCE on a patreon account is sent to another account, when no involvement from financial institutions are needed?
Since you only would have to move a balance from one Patreon account to another one, no matter how many small pledges that may be. It would also help Patrons to know that their payment source worked. No more failed pledges, because if they can’t charge up their account balance, they cannot pledge so they would get feedback right away when something doesn’t work. And it still works with the instant payment change!