Zedrin, thanks so much for taking the time. Everything you said makes sense. I’m not sure why it’s not presented that way in the first place. Best, AC
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Zedrin thanks for that - it makes it much clearer. I for one don’t mind the money not coming out immediately either and I’d rather it all be batched and come out on the 1st of the month each month instead of in drips and drabs. I take it I don’t need to do anything in order to stay at the batch fee style account?
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I’m optimistic or at the very least willing to wait and see how this goes particularly since founding creators get to stay as we are. I’m happy where I am.
I’m also happy that being looped into the Pro plan means we’ll get Priority Customer Support. That might not be relevant right away, but that’s actually a big plus for me in general. I’ve always gotten pretty timely support and I very much appreciate that.
Also I found some of the current workshops to be really helpful, so I think creator led workshops could be great as well. I’d love to hear tips from similar creators who might be a bit more familiar with my niche (or something similar) as well as hearing from Patreon staff.
As far as the fees… I’m perfectly content with how my fees are now. If there was an opportunity to switch to something better in the future (within Patreon) I’d be interested, but the way things are now is just fine for me. I’ve looked into tons of other options and even looked into running something myself… Nothing comes close to Patreon in terms of what I’d be getting after fees.
Of course I’m a little anxious to see how it goes, but so far Patreon has been a welcoming community for me and that’s rarely been the case for me with what I do (nude and lingerie modeling). I love it here. 
I also really appreciate these discussions and how attentive staff and Jack are.
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I didn’t have a real opinion on this change as it won’t affect me (and I’m not sure I fully understand it), but I’ve already heard multiple people (one of them being my patron) saying that they are very unhappy and consider deleting their account in retaliation to these changes. But these comments make me think Patreon should stop making drastic changes to a very functional and successful system! I mean, if it works great, why change it? 
There’s a lot of reasons but here’s a few i’ve heard being talked about a bunch:
One size does not fit all. They go into this a bit in this mornings livestream about the changes https://www.crowdcast.io/e/specialedition3/q/-LaNk3iBMrJ-njbXiG1v
(TLDR: Lots of artists need different things and the current platform doesn’t work for everyone. Some people just want something simple, some people want more robust things. So Patreon listened and created the plans to support the different kinds of creators on the platform.)
Another one is being able to offer the things creators want on patreon, requires hiring more people, building more infrastructure for the platform, etc. Which requires being able to pay them and any associated fee’s with whatever thing they are working on. There’s a lot of stuff patreon works on and even just needs, to be a business, that requires lots of people and teams dedicated to a particular topic to keep things running. (They also talk about this on the livestreams a bunch. There’s a link in the top post that links to all of them. the three that have happened, and to the one this friday.)
There’s so many other reasons but i don’t want to make this response ginormous. XD
Patreon is still a pretty small team for how many people they serve every day. The platform and its userbase has needs that aren’t being met at this point in time by the current system. It doesn’t work great for everyone (take a look at the pain point thread here and you’ll see.)
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No change for existing users? OK.
Prices going up for new creators? Cost of doing business. Everyone has to weigh what they get vs. what they pay, and decide if Patreon is a good value.
Full scale tizzy about changes? I can’t believe it’s time for the annual Burn Patreon to the Ground Festival again already. Busy for the next few weeks, so if we can put the burning off until later in the year, that would be great…
/snark
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(Best of luck with the treatments! 
)
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Seriously Lisa! Thinking healthy thoughts for you.
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Thanks, folks. Took that bit of information out, because it wasn’t the point I was trying to make.
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Sukka, this really shouldn’t affect your patrons, so I’m not sure why they would be getting upset. Patreon needs to make some changes because their current model isn’t sustainable for them. It’s growing pains for a fairly young company.
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I’ve seen a lot of knee-jerk reactions from my patrons as well… though other creators in my circle seem to be pretty optimistic about this. Funny how that is.
Personally I’m looking forward to the changes. A small uptick in the fees isn’t going to break my budget for the month. If paying a tiny bit extra means that the Patreon team can grow and improve the site at a better pace than we’re at now, then I say it’s worth it. I really appreciate the transparency and advance notice being given to everyone- and the fact we’re being grandfathered in at our current rates.
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I’ve had the opposite. I did mention in the interview I had that backlash was gonna be pretty strong most likely, but most of it for me has been peer creators. Most of my patrons, I explained the situation to them and they understand that A) they won’t see any changes themselves, period, and B) I won’t see any changes as a founder. (I’ve actually seen a lot of growth this week regardless of the changes.)
Only one person I saw was vocal about it and his reasoning was kinda presumptive, like he didn’t read my post on the topic. Meanwhile a friend of mine is acting snarky as hell over this and is leaving Patreon, only to find that a lot of options are only on par with Patreon Lite at best. (And he’s claiming that “Watch, I’m gonna pin your comment so when Patreon removes grandfathering you in in 3 months I can laugh at you.” Though he kinda backed down after we looked and analyzed alternatives.)
Patreon also has the advantage of having dealt with Paypal to allow NSFW pages to still accept Paypal payments.
I think a lot of it is just people enjoy being negative and assuming the worst. It happens with everything.
It might be good to highlight the point that founders won’t see a price change / will stay locked in to Pro plans too. A lot of the backlash seems to just be from missing that point, since it’s “forseeable future” is only explained in an FAQ point.
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I’m a current patreon creator and the changes won’t effect me but I find these changes appalling.
I can only see future problems with trying to attract new creators down the road. These upped fees and pro, premium etc sign ups will deter them and they will seek other sites instead and creating a divide in supporters. If, Patreon continues on this path of taking more from its Creators then people will opt out of patreon and go to what ever site the creators this site lost out on went to instead.
The fact that the decision to make no changes for current Creators on here says a lot about how staff knows how upsetting these changes are in the first place.
I deeply wish Patreon did a mass-site survey instead of it’s selective surveys.
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So I’m glad the Patreon rate isn’t changing for me (thanks for making that part opt-in!), especially as I think the new tiers without the grandfathering are too expensive versus what I need (literally just payment processing and a fast API). So that part isn’t a concern for me as it doesn’t change anything for me.
But the processing fee change I’m not a fan of. As many others above have pointed out, the more creators that move to the new system, that means the processing fee will progressively increase over time as others adopt it, regardless of if we individually swap or not.
This would be fine with me if Patreon would let creators optionally opt into regular subscription anniversary billing – I don’t mind paying the full processing fee if the charge is actually unique, especially as it means my patrons get to have a sensible subscription system (like netflix or any other system: billed instantly, renewed on anniversary). But for Patreon to operate in a batched manner but not actually share the benefits of batching with creators feels both shady and irksome.
TLDR: Glad the base rate isn’t changing, but using the processing fee as a hidden profit center is disingenuous. The processing fee should be the true processing fee Patreon pays for processing.
FYI: Currently I have a 3.6% processing fee over the past three months very consistently, if I opt into the new system (or other projects do that share patrons with me), it would be 5.9% processing fee. So there’s definitely a difference there.
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I’m sorry that some people are so upset with the forthcoming changes.
Personally, these changes seem like a fine idea to me. I get the same exact tools as before, plus priority customer support, without paying anything extra.
Since Patreon will have a way to make some more income, they will be able to make the platform even better (quoting from the announcement):
We’ll be investing in core features and services to make Patreon better for all creators. Our roadmap is to build a world class payments infrastructure including annual plans and internationalization, improve features such as messaging and notifications, and create a more intuitive patron experience.
In my opinion, annual plans will be a game changer. This is incredibly good news.
Overall, I’m very satisfied with the Patreon platform, and quite frankly I have thought from day one of joining Patreon (in June 2018) that the fees charged by Patreon are a bargain. Meaning: I have always been willing to pay more for the functionality provided by Patreon. I understand that others disagree with me, and are dissatisfied with the platform, but all I can do is speak from my own experience.
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While I appreciate the heads-up, and not being forced to adopt the new system, I am a little concerned that Patreon is adopting new features too quickly. I don’t mean any offense by this, Patreon has allowed me to make my hobby a job and I love it to death, but my chief concern is receiving my monthly payout in a timely manner, and Patreon has not been able to guarantee that recently.
Maybe use the new funds to make a payment processing system that works reliably before branching out into merch, customer support, and other features. If you can’t be relied upon to handle payment processing, then I have little confidence that you can handle shipping merch, or providing other services.
Personally, I don’t need any of these features, I just need someone to process the monthly payments and then transfer them to me. If you need to take a larger cut to be sustainable, then so be it, if your business fails then so does mine! But I think you need to nail the fundamentals before you start incurring even more operating costs.
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I’m so confused about this, I’m not sure if I for this or not.
I was expecting Patreon to allow to add physical merch to certain tiers for which the price of the tier will be built of:
- A minimum base amount that goes to Patreon for producing and shipping the item (that includes anything that needed to be paid for to cover the expenses of making the merch + additional revenue fee).
- Shipping fee. This + #1 is the minimum amount a user can put in for the tier.
- An added revenue amount for the creator
For example: if a creator wants to create a tier in which a patron will receive a mug for their pledge, and it costs 10$ to produce such mug and 5$ shipping, they’ll be able to do that but they’ll have to set the minimum amount of this tier to 15$ (for which they will receive no revenue for themselves).
This is how it makes sense for me to have this work.
With the way things are going now, Patreon is taking a 12% cut of the creators revenue whether or not they have merch tiers + additional cost per merch, or whether most of their patrons select a non-merch tier. If a creator has a 20$ merch tier with 1 patron pledging, and a eighty of 1$ patrons, Patreon will get 12$ + 8-18$ (instead of the current 5$ + 8-18$ per merch) of 100$ that creators are making, not even including the processing fees, for one merch created, while the creator is making the rewards for 80 of the patrons.
I wouldn’t really mind paying an additional 7$ for handling packaging and replacing lost items, but it’s 7$ for every 100$ I make, and it’s not even dependent if I have merch tiers that month. It makes a lot more sense that Patreon keeps charging the usual 5% + have a 7% additional revenue for every merch tier pledge, so if a merch item cost 10$ to create, shipping is 5$ and creator sets the tier to 20$, Patreon will get 10$ for producing, 5$ for shipping, 1$ (5%) regular patreon fee and 1.4$ (7%) merch fee for every pledge in that tier. Creator will be left with 2.6$ for every pledge in the tier (which they do not fulfill the rewards for, or they can adjust for a higher revenue) This will not affect other tiers which rewards are fulfilled by creators and not by patreon.
That’s my take on this which I feel is much better for both big and small creators. I understand that there are additional features in the premium plan, but I would prefer to be able to pay extra to turn on the feature I want, rather then have to pay for them even if I don’t want them (such as teams and partners, which you can request additional % to turn each one on), and also I dislike that you have to be a huge creator to even have access to merch, since as a small creator I offer merch in some of my tiers as well.
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Thank you! It’s crazy that so much effort is being invested into intergrations and these big sweeping changes instead of prioritizing basic search functionality and navigation.
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If you take a close look at the new changes, there is a search function…but you have to pay extra for that.
It’s why I assumed that we were never going to get a functional search within the site, and lo and behold, I was proven correct.
Any other features we request, I assume are going to be rolled out in the same fashion, in order to keep Patreon ‘sustainable’. In investor speak, that means unlimited year-on-year growth into infinity. If that cannot be maintained, then it’s considered ‘unsustainable’ in this day and age.
Just making a steady, solid profit every year is no longer enough, or what a business these days considers ‘sustainable’.
I digress. I suspect any more integrations, or popular requested features are going to be monetized even further.
I also wonder how long things won’t change for those of us ‘Grandfathered’ in. The wording and language used in the public statement sounds as though it’s only temporary, and we will be rolled into this tiered payment program before long as well.
You have to pay to be able to search the site?! I’ve been bemoaning the lack of a good search/explore function for ages, but I just don’t see the point in monetising that function. I mean, won’t that actually STOP potential patrons finding creators? Or have I misunderstood this?