-
Not being able to see patron who left on the month they joined even if they paid when they came in (no notification)
-
The fact that all payments go out on the first of the month see the Melancholy and Motivation topic
-
The fact that patrons get that 3 days until we charge you email which causes so many people to leave. No other service does that that I know of except from Amazon Prime, which is a YEARLY reoccurrence.
5 Likes
NOTIFICATIONS are my top three:
-
I need a notification when a non-patron comments. I need to be able to talk to these people every bit as much as patrons so I can convert them to patrons. I lose the momentum if I find out about their comment in an email the next day.
-
I need a notification when someone replies to my reply to their comment. I get a notification when they comment. I get a notification when I reply to them. WHY??? But any replies afterward get no notification. I cannot build a community if I cannot have an ongoing conversation.
-
It’s unclear what a notification is for. As I said above, I get notifications when I respond to someone’s comment and it took forever to figure out that’s why I had a notification. Most recent comments/actions should be at the top, perhaps highlighted as unread.
BONUS: I need to know who leaves, but I do not need to see them at the top of notifications all month. That is demotivating.
I’d like to add that my separate nsfw Patreon got suspended last month. I got an email and notification on the 26th, but I’d already scheduled all of my posts through the end of the year on the 25th and as a result was logged into my primary Patreon and email those last few days and didn’t see it. No big deal because I logged in on the 1st, saw the suspension, corrected the issue immediately, and got the suspension lifted the same day (great job getting that resolved quickly!), BUT I didn’t get paid as this happened during the payment processing. I do not understand why I couldn’t get paid. Normally, if a payment doesn’t go through Patreon continues to try until the 5th. If a creator has pay up front set up, a payment can go through as soon as a patron pledges. I do not see why if I resolved the suspension on the first day of the month, the processing couldn’t just happen then. The email response I got from Patreon said I should ask my patrons to double up in December. No. I’m not asking my patrons for twice as much money during the holidays, I just don’t get paid for November. This could have been resolved by just charging them when the suspension was lifted or prevented altogether if I could have my separate Patreon pages under one account, which would also mean notifications would need some serious work to accommodate multiple Patreon pages.
4 Likes
Thanks for this @Lochy! Can you send me your NSFW account in a DM so I can take a look into this with the team? I’m glad it got sorted same day 
but would love to understand the payment situation further.
1 Like
That “three days” email is murder. Kill it.
3 Likes
I only have one suggestion… I’d love it if it was possible to add a preview picture to locked posts. That would make them so much more inviting and intriguing! I love the preview text option already!! Thank you for that!!
11 Likes
THIS.
I’d also like to expand on this and bring up once again, that being able to set an image as a featured tag preview instead of an automated or blurry preview would be amazing. Or to allow us to pick a featured image from the posts in that category and actually edit how the thumbnail shows up would be super.
9 Likes
Hello All,
Thank you for this opportunity to list pain points!
Here are mine:
1. CURRENCY / VAT: As a UK creator (and I know this may be very difficult to solve), my biggest pain point of all is that I can only offer my Reward Tiers in dollars and then my EU-based Patrons have to pay VAT on top of their pledge. I’m sure that this is the biggest single stumbling block for garnering new Patrons.
2. EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS FOR PATRONS: When Patrons receive email notifications of new posts, they shouldn’t receive the whole post — they should receive an excerpt with a ‘Continue Reading on Patreon’ link.
By receiving the whole post in their email inbox, it kills engagement, reducing likes and commenting.
3. COMMUNITY BOARD: My final biggest pain point relates to the Community section. This has so much potential to be great but, again, engagement is killed. Nobody knows posts are happening there — you have to go looking.
As a Creator, I only receive a notification when one of my Patrons posts, I don’t receive notifications to any further replies. I’ve been mortified sometimes when Patrons have asked me a question and I just haven’t seen it.
It should behave like a Facebook Group or forum — all Patrons should receive notifications of new posts on the Community Board. It’s a nice way to have a discussion about ‘smaller’ matters. Also, Creators should be allowed to start a new post on their own Community page and more than one photograph should be allowed too…!
Thanks for listening,
— Jack
17 Likes
Jack, I totally agree with all your suggestions. I am one of a few creators from Australia (I think, as it is not easy to search and find people) and a number of my patrons are shocked when their pledge of $AU20 is actually $US26. I mention it in my intro but many don’t take notice of the fine print. Improvements with email notifications and severe lack of engagement with patrons due to platform limitations would be a great help. PS. Love your work as a photographer (and all that you do). I am a photo historian with a narrow local niche.
2 Likes
Update–discovered that Lens DOES work on my iPad.
3 Likes
Hi Geoff,
Yes, I guess at least the psychology of it isn’t so bad here as it’s about on parity with the dollar amount (or a bit less) once the VAT has been added. You’ll see on my page that I do a rough conversion at the bottom of every Tier — it’s the last thing potential Patrons see before they go ahead and click ‘Join XX Tier’. That way, there are no surprises.
Might be a useful tip for all Creators outside the US?
And thank you for your kind words about my work!
Keep on keepin’ on…
Best wishes,
— Jack
2 Likes
Has anyone mentioned the inability to convert warm leads into paying consumers? I have so many people following my Patreon and no way to contact followers. Why. Whyyyyy.
12 Likes
- Merch/Rewards. Can’t wait to get automated merch fulfillment, even with a tiny Patreon it’s still too costly and time consuming to do.
- Life-time pledge benefits. Ie, get that fancy item after 12 months of pledges.
- Automatic sharing to all social media platforms - or at least a thorough Zapier integration.
- Instagram.
- Zapier.
- PayPal. There are so many smarter alternative nowadays, such as TransferWise, N26, etc. PayPal is just an unwanted whale at this point in time, imo.
- Keep being awesome, Patreon, you got this!
5 Likes
I would LOVE to be able to send a message to those following me on Patreon to encourage them to take the plunge or maybe even offer them a special offer to encourage them to sign-up!
8 Likes
Aaaah, Instagram, yes. Integrate!
5 Likes
I like the idea of having a gallery on Patreon. It’s easy for people to look through my body of work on social media, but as far as I can tell, Patreon only uses posts and tags. It would be helpful if there were a tab on my Patreon page called portfolio/gallery/work or something to that effect. 
9 Likes
The biggest problem I have is not being able to attach pictures to messages. As rewards for my patreons I create artwork for them each month and first send out a sketch for and then a low res version of the final piece so they can approve it. It is a real pain not being able to attach images as I have to manually email everyone, it may not sound like much but it can be quite time consuming.
4 Likes
Thank you so much for all of these! I’m making note of every single one and compiling then into themes for the product teams. Keep 'em coming, especially with notes about what the problem is and how it impacts you.
5 Likes
I’d just like to second your points about image handling.
It is especially frustrating for me when I try to post images shaped like long, narrow rectangles. The images are usually upscaled to fill the post column width, even if that is a humongous increase. I have resorted to adding images as attachments, but that way it’s additional clicks and not everyone clicks through.
4 Likes
- A better way of distributing rewards within Patreon. From what I’ve read many creators use file sharing services such as WeTransfer to distribute rewards because you can’t do this within Patreon. Whilst you can attach files to posts, posts are not ideal because everyone within a tier can see them, whether they’ve paid or not.
- Better transparency when it comes to Patron statuses and what they mean - this month I was notified that I had a new patron (yippee!) but when I logged in it says ‘former patron’ next to my NEW patron’s name (huh?!) I also have a patron whose payment was declined but is listed as a current patron. I haven’t a clue whether either of these are now current paying patrons.
- Multiple currencies - this has been asked for a long, long time - we don’t all live in America and people like to see prices in their own currency, it makes them feel safer using the site and they know exactly how much they are paying from the start, without having to use a currency converter.
7 Likes
Yes yes yes to 1-4. (And 7, haha!) They do already integrate with Zapier, though — do you just want more integrations? Or something else?
As for Instagram integration, I completely understand if this is totally out of reach, since IG is HUGE and Patreon is still up-and-coming, but I run a Patron-only Instagram and being able to automate followers based on pledges would save me SO much time. I know that’s a big ask, but we don’t get what we don’t ask for, right? 
2 Likes