Too many users only sign up for a month, download everything and disappear

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1

I share guitar arrangements in PDFs and notice many Patrons who only sign up for the first month, download everything I have shared over the past years and then unsubscribe.

This is not good, how to fix it?

  • have the option of a higher amount for the first month only, for example 10 dollars for the first month and 3 dollars from the second.
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My solution to this problem is to move older material to an archive and make access contingent on being a patron for a few months at lower tiers (this is stated in the tier description).

I use Sync.com because it’s fully encrypted end-to-end, and it’s impossible for them to scan your files the way Dropbox, OneDrive, or Google Drive do.

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My solution was to implement a parallel reward website via the API (it is a bit of a headache) and only use Patreon to collect the money.

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Another popular option I often see people use is Gumroad. You can also upcharge your content for non-patrons, then just give out a discount code for current patrons.

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If you are a monthly creator, you can enable Charge Up Front billing method, which charges your new patrons on the first day they join your Patreon, thus if they pledge to view content, they are charged for it immediately. More information here:

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Hi Hayley, thank you for your support.
I’m sorry but I already use Charge upfront but that does not solve the problem.

With only $3 upfront a new patron can download years of contents in a few days.

I think there are two possible solutions

  1. Allow us creators to set a higher pledge for the first month only. For example the first month $ 10 and the following months $ 3.

  2. Allow us creators to set a minimum subscription period for new patrons. For example 3 months.

Best
Nick

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May I offer an opinion?

Your $25 tier offers exactly what they are getting from you, the only difference being for that much you deliver it to them so they don’t have to pick through your archives to get it themselves.

I see this as proof that the amount of labor they are doing is less valuable to them than the difference in charges between the tiers.

It may be time to think of either shrugging it off since you still have over a thousand loyal fans, or somehow raising your prices to cover for the cheapskates.

Thank you for reading.

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Thanks for all of these suggestions and ideas.

Another possibility, while perhaps not ideal, but certainly a work around for how you’d like to structure your page -
You can pick a moment in time to mark your lower reward tiers as “Sold out” and unpublish them. You can re-create them as brand new tiers, so that new patrons sign up to the newly published tiers, which will not have access to the reward tier locked posts published under the previous reward tier.