Love the annual membership feature. Sad it wasn’t released until I’ve had to close most of my Patreon activity due to needing to get a job due to Covid impacting my art sales, but I digress.
Why is the discount capped to 16%? It’s awesome to be able to promote the idea that annual memberships can get 2 months off, however I often take 2 months off anyway for summer and winter breaks.
It would be better if I could offer 4 months off for annual memberships, 2 of which are consumed when I pause my patreon for my regular breaks anyhow.
As it stands, offering 2 months free for me doesn’t allow me to offer any financial benefit with an annual membership; I’m offering them what I offer my monthly subscribers, who also don’t pay during the 2 months I pause my patreon.
As a side note, WE the creators see on our end that 16% off is 2 months free. However when viewing my public page, potential subscribers only see “16% off.” This is a weird discount number and it’s not immediately apparent that 16% = 2 months. Can the Patreon design team add in some copy about how many free months/weeks you get based on the discount?
I think it’d be a nice feature to add on those paused months to the annual membership patrons. If you take a month off, tack on an extra month to their membership. Seems fair
I imagine it’d be WAY more powerful to prospective patrons to see the months off rather than the percentage.
This idea is even smarter. Just let the membership continue for however many months I paused. Makes it more flexible for the creator and gives the member more access and a greater incentive to stay.
@reyna with the recent promise to listen to feedback, can we please get a public-facing UI update that shows potential patrons that 16% off is “2 months free”?
Right now 16% off is just a weird number, when instead if we communicate 2 free months it’d have a more tangible benefit. I’m also pushing my $2 tip jar tear, which is a clean $20 flat for a full year if you buy annually. Right now my copy explaining that you get 2 free months annually is hidden by one of those annoying “learn more” content clips all over the page (plus I don’t enjoy wasting tier description space to explain discounts). It’ll help all points involved if 16% off is replaced with “2 months free” or similar.
We rolled out annual memberships with a 16% cap based on market research and the research we found surveying creators. We’re starting here but want to make it more flexible in the future after we’re worked out kinks and a larger roll out.
Creators who use annual billing are still able pause their page and push out the length of the annual membership by that period, just like monthly creators.
For now, we are going to continue displaying discounts by percentage. Not all creators choose to offer the max 16% discount, so we are not able to display “1 month off” or “2 months off” when the discount does not round off to a full month.
We do not have an updated ETA on when annual subscriptions will be rolled out to all creators, but I will continue to check back with the team on this and share more when I know more.
I’m doing my best to get updates as often as I can. Thanks for your patience while we work on this feature.
Seriously? How difficult is it to have three choices - 1 month, 2 months, custom, with the first two showing ‘1 month’ or ‘2 month’ and the third showing ‘% discount’?
I would LOVE to see the survey done for creators, including questions and raw results.
I would love to see the option added. Perhaps in the future. There’s already bugs and issues with this feature that should take priority in fixing first.
@zelaphas just want to reiterate what Reyna said in terms of discount, we found in our research and by looking at patron retention data that 0-16% was the sweet spot in terms of discount, that won’t hurt creators in the long run. As far as how that language displayed on the landing page, we currently don’t have plans to change that, but I would recommend using messaging in your promotion that mentions 1 or 2 months free, instead of 8% or 16% because it is generally easier to understand the value your audience would get without knowing the actual cost of the membership.
This statement has been made in response to so many creator requests that it rings hollow. We never see this alleged research. And, in the end, it’s always used to tell creators what they want, rather than actually listen to them and implement what they want. Always.
How awesome would it be if we actually got deeper dives and stats of all their “research”? I feel like that could massively assist in creators building up their pages, rather than Patreon just choosing things for us.
Patreon has a really talented research team that works with other internal teams to help develop, execute, and analyze research done throughout a variety of different ways, including, surveying a representative sample of creators, conducting focus groups, interviewing creators, reviewing data and analytics, among other things. Some research cannot be shared publicly, for proprietary reasons.
We have a Patreon Connect live event coming up with our Data Science team tomorrow, where they’ll be talking a lot about Data at Patreon. I encourage you to attend and submit questions, as they’ll be doing a Q&A https://events.patreon.com/connect-datascience
From the event page:
TOPICS
Meet Maura Church and Kenna Nelson from Patreon’s Data Science team.
Enjoy a short presentation from our Data Science teammates as they share their journey to Patreon, explain how data drives Patreon’s strategy and the tools we build for creators, and share tips on how to make data part of your creative strategy.
Live Q&A
I also think it would be great if folks from our Research Team participate in a future Patreon Connect series, so I’ll pass that request on with this thread as a great example of how it can be helpful or interesting to creators.
The problem arises from the fact that in nearly every case where I’ve seen Patreon say ‘our research shows’ it comes down on the wrong side, at least from my perspective (and in several cases, contradicts actual data I have). That makes it ring hollow, especially when it seems to nearly always be the answer that best suits Patreon, not creators.
Patreon needs to rebuild trust, and saying “it’s proprietary” doesn’t do help do that.
Patreon is a company with competitors, so the information that’s shared publicly goes through lots of different considerations. I don’t know exactly, as it’s outside my realm, but basing this off my experience working within the tech platform space: it’s a balancing act of what information can and how it can be shared to help users of the platform get the most out of it, without harming, potentially harming, or disadvantaging the platform itself and the users by consequence. Anyway, as a Community team, which I can speak to since that’s the team I’m part of at Patreon, we’re striving to make our decisions on feedback from creators - the biggest north star in this was the Community and Education survey conducted earlier this year, which did have results shared in this forum and elsewhere. We’re using that as a model for future research because it works well to see what created need, as told to us by them, and then work towards it while referencing the very map the creators made for us.
So in sum, I hear you for your thirst of insight and I’m absolutely in agreement with you: what can Patreon share to help guide creators to understand how best to use Patreon and its tools for your work, so you understand how and why things are being approached the way that they are, and have influence to help guide the future decision or influence process.
The Patreon Connect series in and of itself is designed to help introduce the different teams at Patreon with creators directly, and so far it’s been going very well. I had a chat with my teammates on the Community team re: this thread and how we can share research best practices that creators can also use with their own patrons for extra value, in addition to showing more of how Patreon itself does research. The good news is a program is being developed and I expect it to happen by the end of this year - I can’t give a date since scheduling is always bound to shift a bit as its in the development stage, but stay tuned as I’ll make sure the event RSVP is shared here once it’s scheduled and locked in, and it’ll be shared in our Community Updates email newsletter that goes out to creators each month. In the meantime, https://events.patreon.com is the best place to look for live streams like this!
