its also completely and utterly wild to think people will pay extra for “community workshops” or that it isnt completely deranged that people who pay more (min 300 dollars!) get tech support while, demonstrably with the nsfw purge, everyone else just has to languish in limbo waiting for patreon to maybe get around to fixing their problems
and who is supplying the merch? what’s offered? how much will it cost? what if i want to buy en masse for a con? is it stamped with a shitty patreon logo anywhere? whats the profit margin? why would i pay min 300 dollars for a service i can get for free literally anywhere else
also bananas that people who sign up later are going to have to pay extra for membership tiers, which to me is like uhhh a core aspect of patreon that differentiates it from the much less userbase unfriendly ko-fi.
I think maybe i’m biased but in the early days of patreon it took at least 5 business days to process payments. That fact that its (for the most part) been under 48 hours for a lot of people, 24 for many i’ve talked too, big and small amounts of patrons, with how many people there are on the platform now, is crazy amazing to me. (I sound like an old fart saying it like this… haha. “baaaack in myyy daaaaaay”) But i do agree that stability is key! I want to see the core platform run so well that we can all be at ease and look forward to cool new features without fear of loosing out on our income because of a payment issue or because someone on the staff guidelines team decided to suspend our account on the last day of the month because something on our page was off TOS wise, instead of contacting us first to fix it.
other features we still dont have: the ability to upload more than one image per post without having to dump them in the text field, a working search bar, an inline .pdf reader, servers that dont crash when everyone is trying to pull their rent money for the month, a commission manager for different tier levels. the other day a straight up porn patreon used my (and a few others) page to advertise themselves by commenting on an open post. i cannot believe you guys are asking for more money.
Thanks for all the additional questions. I realize it is a lot of information to absorb at one time.
I understand the question now about payment fees. I need to investigate this and see if there’s a more robust answer regarding the impact of new creators on founding creator payment fees.
One of the top complaints we get from creators is that they don’t know how much money will be taken out each month because the rates are variable. Our legacy payment rates are hard to explain and challenging to scale as our creator community grows. We want our rates for creators moving forward to be clear and transparent. We also know, as stated earlier, that people want things like annual subscriptions, yearly payments, and gift subscriptions and we are building for those product requests.
Over the past 10 months, alongside our conversations with thousands of existing creators via surveys, focus groups, 1:1 conversations, and debriefs, we also spoke with creators who had not yet launched. In our testing, education (expanding our Patreon workshops with creator-led workshops) and Special Offers and tools that creators can use to grow their program were really important. We know there are specific product requests (the team avidly follows threads here in the forum) that still need to be built and there’s more to build to help creators grow too. We want to set ourselves up for the ability to do this.
I do invite you to sit in on the Crowdcast or to watch it later, because many of these questions are answered here. One is just wrapping up now: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/specialedition1
i have way better things to do than sit and watch conte speak simlish into a camera for 40 mins while barely touching the most softball questions people could launch at him. what i’m hearing is that you don’t know any of the answers to my questions. it is completely, objectively out of pocket to charge a MINIMUM of 300 dollars for what redbubble and teespring do for free.
Just to chime in, my patrons usually process within 48 hours. And I have over 400.
There might be a straggler here or there that’s slow to process but 80% of the time that’s due to them having a payment issue, not Patreon’s fault.
Additionally, it’s worth reminding that the ‘premium’ plan is meant for just selective individuals. You’re not forced to use it.
Hell, honestly if someone wanted to just use Patreon’s API, they could export their supporter list from a Lite plan, use their own script, and send out and manage rewards externally.
That said, the biggest concerns I have from this, and I had talked about this a bit in the interview: this does disincentivize new pages a bit, especially the removal of batch processing for payment processors. The adjusted processor fees are definitely an improvement over last time, but it’s still gonna mean pretty heavy penalties for smaller pledges, and is gonna result in a lot more fees for new pages, with no benefit to Patreon or the creators. Less people on patreon also means a potentially smaller number of patrons on the platform.
I’d seriously recommend revisiting the topic of pro-rating payments to offset that. I had suggested a pro-rating model in the interview and also I had made a new thread about the topic
(tl;dr to prevent the case of “Pledge at end of the month, get the rewards for 10% of the tier cost, then bolt,” your initial pledge would be the full cost + the pro-rated amount, and would last until the month after when you go on the regular amount for your tier.)
Batch processing is one of the biggest advantages to using Patreon over just being independent.
Patreons says the the average (old) payment fee is around 5%:
“On average, we find payment processing fees have an effective rate of 5%. There are factors that reduce or increase that effective rate, detailed below.”
Source:
You see, this sucks for us creators… And I’m sure you know this.
You can’t tell me you didn’t calculate through that.
And also consider, that the average %5 payment fee for the old will increase over time, if more creators leave the old payment solution… or new creators can’t join the old solution.
I appreciate allowing current creators to keep our existing arrangements. I also appreciate you stating that up-front - always good when presenting potentially jarring news.
I think the premium tier is definitely something I hope - one day - to grow into. And I hope the new fee structure remains inviting to new creators. And while Patreon takes care of creators in first class, I hope you don’t forget about those of us in coach.
I expect Patreon is going to see a flood of creators joining before May to attain founder status - like you’re running your own special offer.
Now, again, under the existing system there’s definitely variability (hence showing some potential scenarios), but you’re still paying a per transaction fee, but the amount is unpredictable due to a wide variety of factors and can vary for the same patron’s payment from month to month. So, one month you might be paying 25 cents and the following 45 cents. This causes a great deal of confusion, not to mention frustration, especially when you’re dealing with multiple pledges. Most creators we’ve spoken to prefer to know reliably and predictably what they will be taking home.
Again, we’ll be working to a solution so that founding creators who will benefit from the new rates to adopt them.
yes, this may be true… but I think your are missing one important aspect.
At the moment we have this shared payment fee feature, which decreased the effective payment fee which I pay to approximately 5% to 6%.
If this shared fee is missing in the new solution I always pay a higher amount. While in the old solution it may be a little bit more confusing but it saves me money. And I prefer to be to be confused and save money instead of having it predictable and always pay more I think you didn’t asked the creators you spoken through if they want the predictably in exchange of a effective higher fee
So… it may be right that the theoretically old formula for the payment fee is the same as the new one, but through the shared fee feature it was effective lower (probably to the average 5% you mention on your own website!)
My suggestion is that you remove the payment fee completely and increase the patreon fee to a fix 10% which also includes payment fee. This is the most transparent solution for us creators and 90% is the average amount which most of us receive from a pledge.
I know for Patreon it’s a mixed calculation… but I think that’s the best and easiest solution for the creators.
Definitely wanna stick to the old system then. I know I’m going to (unless batching can be implemented for the new fee structure).
(again just throwin it out there: i feel like a proper pro-rated system could get the best of both worlds–predictable, doesn’t feel cheap to a patron for pledging at the start or end of a month depending on page, if done right won’t allow someone to get rewards for extra cheap and run, and allows for batch processing)
All said, I am glad that Patreon has given a big window of time to discuss this. I’ve been waiting for the NDA to lift so I can talk to people and supporters about it / assuage concerns.
The kneejerk reaction I’ve seen from a lot of people is to compare this to the December 2017 cases which I don’t think is a good comparison.
I just wanted to pop in here to say that I can understand why people are not happy about various aspects of the change. I think it’s a very rare change that will be for the better for everyone. And I do my share of complaining about changes that I don’t like. BUT, I think the one thing that most, if not all, of us can agree on is that we want Patreon to be sustainable, and able to continue in the future. The current fee structure was not a sustainable one for Patreon. I can’t say whether what they are changing to is the best one they could have picked or not. But I want to say that I hope that these changes will allow Patreon to continue.
Very this. i’ve seen a lot of kneejerk reactions (it just released to the public today for crying out loud) and social media is not helping. Too many post their spit takes without source links or accurate info (or time to process and read it thoroughly) to give people the chance to do their own research and come to their own conclusions. No change will ever go over 100% smoothly, it’s impossible, but dang the misinformation spreading is insane.
One other thing worth noting, just thinking of competitors:
Other services charge 2.9% + $0.30 per subscription or pledge outright, and they don’t batch.
New pages under Patreon Lite will be identical functionally to that, except with the added benefit of the 5% + $0.10 for smaller pledges, which actually makes Patreon lite better than the competition while essentially offering the same things. (Looking namely at Subscribestar for example.)
(That said, comparing to the current model, the current model still looks better, though as pointed out it can be unpredictable.)
Micropayment fees sound great for small pledges, it’s great if that can be implemented. Good on Patreon staff for starting to talk about this months ahead of release. I’m not that excited about the new creator plans since I don’t have many patrons (yet), but I think they’re mostly reasonable plans. I kinda wish the Lite plan also had the tiers feature (or then a lower fee rate) since tiers are pretty much a core feature when I think about supporting creators on Patreon (even though I know there are creators who use no tiers and still do well). Also thanks for having founders accounts.
I mostly like using Patreon because I don’t have to use PayPal to withdraw payments and I like that payments are aggregated monthly, as opposed to having a transaction occur for every single pledge (which is why I prefer Patreon over other subscription services). It just makes my life easier.
Hello all. I’m a new creator to Patreon within the past couple months with a very modest Patreon income of just over $100/mo, so I still have a lot to learn. Can someone put into layman terms exactly what I’m being “grandfathered” into and what how this will affect someone like me, what the percentages mean vs flat fees, how the folks that will loose money with the new changes are actually loosing money, and what the benefits are for a current creator of opting into the new changes. Really sorry, but thanks for your time!
Basically: Your page as it is now will be identical in pretty much every way.
You’ll be upgraded to the “pro” tier, your pledges received will still be batch payments with a slightly variable processor fee, and Patreon’s cut will continue to be 5% as it is now.
If you want to opt into the new fee structure, I believe it’ll allow people to be billed on their own cycle rather at the start of the month. That’s good. But you get a fee per pledge, rather than as a batch fee. That’s bad. But they have two rates based on the pledge value so small pledges don’t get totally screwed over. That’s good. Also the fees will be easier to predict, which is also good.
Personally, I’m sticking to the old fee system as the erratic-ness never bothered me, but there are valid reasons for people wanting the new fee model. (Just, being forced into it instead of it being an option was the source of controversy back in 2017, along with how it didn’t have a plan for small pledges.)
