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Update from Patreon regarding fee changes (Patreon)

Published:
2017-12-08 04:40:18
Imported:

Content

(additional update:12-8,9:07pm EST: The CEO has said they are reading the tweets and emails, phone calls, will collect thoughts and will make an announcement or hopefully, change, next week. Stay in there if you can! You won't be charged more before Jan 1st anyway, so.. cross fingers)

I'm making a new post so more can be notified of the new info.

Quick recap for those of you unaware: Patreon will start to charge a 2.9%+35 cents to all pledges starting January. This makes a $1 pledge into $1.38, a $5 into $5.50, $10 into $10.64 and $25 to $26.10.

Why? They are splitting fees between Creator and Patron. Creators pay Patreon their 5%, and Patrons will cover the processing fees. And at first Patreon wasn't very clear on why they wanted to do this, other than "keep creators' paychecks more reliable". Turns out the answer is much more complicated, but thankfully they did release an update earlier today detailing it. Nothing's changed unfortunately, but it does help in a way. I highly suggest you take a read at the whole thing - it ties together in the end.

https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/

(Specifically the part under Update: 3:57pm PST )

Long story short: Patreon wants to move to charge-up-front to everyone. Patreon wants your monthly pledges to recurr on the dates you subscribe, not "the day you subscribe and then every 1st of the month". To do this, they no longer benefit from aggregating charges all on the 1st, and so more processing fees occur. It's why the fee-per-pledge thing is there and another reason why they can't keep covering processing fees: because of pledge-cancelling. Charge-up-front eliminates it, but to roll that out, they need the recurring-payment-on-payment-date to work. And to do that, need the standardized fees, etc. 

The system isn't great, because it still doesn't solve the main problem: The fact that it will cost patrons a bit more. It's just a few cents, but if you pledge a lot, it can add up. 

TL;DR: It might make more sense 'why', but it's still not the best idea or a solution yet. I don't believe Patreon is greedy or evil. A solution would be to make the fees optional for patrons to cover if they wish, or an option to lump pledges timed together to save on the fees. I think the comments on their Twitter post sum it up best: 

 https://twitter.com/Patreon/status/938920810084831232 

I want to say thank you for those of you who can/will stick through this change; Patreon is my full time job and I give it my all, my time, and best shot. I really appreciate the continued support if you can, despite some extra fees. It has changed my life and is still the best option for adult content creators out there.

Comments

Anonymous

Comon, I love the fact that they all got payed on the first. So much easier to know when money was gonna be drawn from my account.. :/

Volpethrope

Being able to budget around payments all happening at a specific time was great. This is obnoxious, but manageable. I guess. Are you going to address the waitlist and vote counts soon? I want to be able to assess if I should stay at the $25 tier in the new year or not. I'd *like* to, but a $25 charge in the middle of the month might be untenable or undesirable.

Kelanich Santovedis

<a href="https://youtu.be/5FjWe31S_0g" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/5FjWe31S_0g</a>

Tama

Thanks for being on top of this! I do appreciate the extra brainpower you're putting into it -- it's a bit of a cluster to have to deal with it all. I wish it didn't come down to this, because it doesn't feel fair for the people who want to support others. Maybe in a week's time we'll see another update with a better change...

Teckly

Well this is stupid, it's much better when you know when you're going to be charged. So now you will get like 10 bill every month. It sures going to be easier for everyone. So they're charging more for a crappier system. I would like to know the real reason behind this because right now it's not making any sense

Murphyslaw

Thanks for the post and the information. Every little bit helps

Silvador

So now people are going to have a half dozen to a dozen or more random Patreon payments all over the month? Jesus fucking christ, did Trump buy Patreon or something? This shit just keeps getting more and more retarded. Having all payments taken on the start/end of the month helps people consolidate their money and ensure they have what is needed for when they are charged, plus it helps keep track of a lump sum monthly charge. Having multiple, varying charges all over the month is going to cause havok on people's budgets and planning. Patreon may claim to be thinking about the best interests of the creators but this reeks of them thinking only of their own god damned pockets. I really, really, REALLY don't want to, but if this BS continues, I'm going to have to seriously consider pulling ALL of my pledges.

fluffkevlar
>>8752999

Yeah, not sure how that will work, it'd be nice if it just charged a total, pulled from an active list of pledges, at a certain point each month, if that makes sense

fluffkevlar
>>8754112

Please, don't toss in political side-comments or other language - But I understand your frustration. I don't yet know how that'll work. I do think lumping existing pledges into one predictable charge on a date is better, I'm hoping they'll have a solution, but I really doubt it's filling their own pockets. The fees haven't increased or anything. The article does let it make more sense. I would HOPE there's no more fees or any increases, but like I said, I would try to edit my own tiers a bit to help make up for it, if possible, so less have to quit or leave.

fluffkevlar
>>8752297

Yeah I will make a post about that soon! I think you had a good idea from before.

Adleisio Cefnfor

The pay up front thing should be done and for someone making 11k per month about 1k going to fees is not a good example of how this could be a problem. it is like dude, you are making 10k per month that is 120k per year, people would kill to have that sort of income, and not only that but anything above 50k/yr doesn't really increase your happiness, so stop whining because there are people are literally barely scraping by. Also they are keeping 91% of pledges at that point, having a pledge removed means you get 0% from that pledges. 90% is a whole lot better than 0% Creators will lose more money when a pledge is removed than what is removed in fees, period. And paying up front can still be done and then all charges still be done at the first of the month how it has been for you since you implemented it. It still solves the "ding dong ditch" cancellations and it consolidates any sort of transaction fees thus minimizing them. I think that Creators will complain after they lose a good chunk of pledges, as I said before, people on a budget will keep only the artist that they benefit the most from. I hate the Patreon is not getting any sort of real feed back from the the people pledging.

fluffkevlar
>>8754677

Yeah, totally agree there too. I'm hoping they'll listen to creator emails who pass on their supporters' thoughts.

KCDodger

So, just to clarify. It's still one payment per creator per month right? I've got you and Scappo down on the same day, and I don't heavily mind a minor increase in what I have to pay (if Patreon sticks to this) cause, well I love your guys' work. But yeah, just wondering if I'm not interpreting it correctly.

Adleisio Cefnfor
>>8754677

I really don't think any of this was thought through, and they used the example of a person who is make 10k off his pledges, do you know who snobby that sounds? really they take the guy who is easily doing well to be held up as an example of creators complaining when I have had very few creators complain about it.

Adleisio Cefnfor
>>8754750

But now take the people who are on tight budgets, and try to manage their money and support 20+ creators. those fees will add up fast. Let's say they pledge 5 dollars to each of the 20 creators, that is 100 dollars, but now it is 5.50/pledge, that is now 110 dollars, which doesn't seem like much, but than an extra 120/year and then let's say that 100 dollars is the maximum budget they can afford per month. They will now have to remove from at least 3 creators to stay under their 100 dollars budget. Now let's take it from the creators stand point, let's say you have a creator who offers good rewards, but not as great as some of the others and there is a lot of overlap with pledges. Let's say each person pledging to them pledges to 4 other people. Now each Patron will need to remove 1 pledge to stay in budget, but this one creator is competing against others who provide a lot more rewards to the people pledging, so they are going to dropped either A because people don't care for their art as much or B they don't have enough rewards to offer like some others do, you will have some patrons stay because they like this creators art more, but chances are that creators will almost certainly lose a good chunk of support, say 5-30% to be generous. It could be more or less depending on the creator, but almost certainly ALL creators will seem some sort of loss in both the # of pledges and the actual earnings from those pledges 90% of a pledge is better than 0% of a pledge, and that extra 5% they get to keep from the others will not completely off set the losses from the removed pledges. This is not just a matter of creators keeping more of their money, this is solid statistical math.

fluffkevlar
>>8754750

It should be still one payment per month per creator, yes, especially per-month creators.

aVintageRock

Jeez. I have to pay my bank a "foreign currency fee" every month for Patreon as it is. Multiple pledges paid at different times...I'm going to pay more to my bank in fees than I do to Creators! &gt;.

Adleisio Cefnfor
>>8754750

Also, I did a more thorough analysis using some very simple math to illustrate a point, and I proposed a solution: <a href="https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/8530657/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/8530657/</a> TL;DR If all patrons moved down one tier, some creators could potentially only make 28% of what they are now.

Simone Spinozzi

As i suspected, this pledge move on Patreon is just a move to make "payments upfront" possible. "Never explain with malice what simple idiocy can explain it." in this case patreon thought that since patrons would want their pledge to last "a month"... :facepalm: they are splitting the payment process into micropayments so, when i said that the "per transaction fee" was identical... apparently i was right, i just did not think that the people at patreon would be as idiotic as to think that people could not hold it together and wait the right moment before pledging or that they could not accept that pledging near the end of a period was going to be detrimental. Basically they are covering their asses for a problem that is not there because it happens too few times and in the meantime they are making life impossible for everybody :facepalm: They think that if people were to be free to pledge at any moment they would pledge more often. :facepalm: I think they think money grows on trees or something. People are more worried about wasting a lot of money very often than "donating to a cause" every now and then as was seen by people pledging at the last moment before collection. So by allowing the "month" to be flexible people will be continuously wasting a lot of money on collection fees. :facepalm: I'm facepalming so hard that i think i'll switch to :headdesk:ing in order to find something softer for my forehead

Anonymous

So...now I have to drop even more pledges because I'll have to start paying throughout the entire month in little increments instead of one big payment that I could easily plan for at the end of the month... Thats just messed up on so many fronts. This whole thing is hurting creators and patreons WAY more than anything else. What ever idiot thought this was a good idea needs to be demoted.

Antoine Davis

Hey, again thanks for the update. Still i hope this thing change soon.

Sean Palumbo

I really don't like this change -- I don't remember the exact day I started this pledge, so if it was after the 18th of the month, I'm going to have an unexpected charge later this month that could hinder my ability to pay my student loans. But on the flip side, it makes me glad you are the only person I'm pledged to, FK. I still only have to worry about the one transaction each month.

TouchFluffyTail
>>8754677

Just an aside, not all creators on Patreon are individuals. Some hire staff, like CrashCourse or Canadaland or Kurzgesagt. Being able to budget your business would be beneficial, and that $1k variability when you're paying staff and expenses can really hurt. So sure they're making $120k but that's not one persons salary, it could be 4 people plus expenses for an office space and equipment, and they're all making very little. Not saying that I agree with Patreons changes, but just that their example might represent a different type of creator than you're interpreting it as.

Mora Fermi

I absolutely hate to do this, but I am cancelling my pledge today. While I do not mind the increased fee (even if it does add some annoyance), I consider the one transaction per pledge model a complete deal breaker. If Patreon decides to reverse that part of their new model, I will return. Until then, I will be looking for alternate ways to toss some cash your way. Thank you for all the great art!

Adleisio Cefnfor
>>8754677

Right, but even if that is the case with these changes, you still have the issue of people cancelling pledges all together which would be 0% versus the the 70% that one would make off that pledge. Or the other issue of people reducing their pledges to the next lower tier. and I ran some very simplistic math just to illustrate a point and made the assumption that ALL of someone's patrons [for individuals or teams of creators] could mean making 28% of what they were originally making. One of my other suggestions was instead of just paying the creator and letting them try to figure out how fees are being processed, what about a pay stub, like that of which any other company would do where it shows all of the line items like gross total, patreon's cut, and processing fees and then a net total. This would make taxes easier for the creators and it would still consolidate payments to the first or end of the month. And then you could have a weekly stub for anyone that joined in the middle of a month for those upfront payments. Some subscription services will even factor in that starting in the middle of a month and change the upfront cost. and then charge like normal there after. There are a lot of better solutions, and I think Patreon is missing the point that this sort of change was not discussed with the user base and then just doesn't understand that simplification of payments will make everyone's lives happier.

Sleeps-Darkly

I'm not going to cancel any pledges to anyone at the moment, I'm OK eating an increased fee for 1-2 months, while I'm looking at how the situation will handle itself, but I'll still think about my actions if it will not resolve. Someone from my $1-2 pledges will get shafted, possibly. I'll keep mine here, though. Keep doing a good work!

SCPilot

Wait....since it says they'll start the new payment plan on December 18, does that mean I'll be charged again even though I just got charged on December 1?!

fluffkevlar
>>8761775

I don't think/know if it would retroactively affect pledge start dates. Thank you!

fluffkevlar
>>8773646

No, it means any new pledges made after the 18th. For existing, I think it starts on the Jan 1st.

fluffkevlar
>>8771576

Yeah I hope they fix a few things about it too. Thank you for sticking around!

fluffkevlar
>>8767784

Yeah I think the main/biggest issue is the transaction fee per-pledge. Sorry to see you go, I will still have my works put up on my E-store and such!

fluffkevlar
>>8756736

I think maybe pre-existing pledges will continue to go on the 1st? I don't think it says specifically

TouchFluffyTail
>>8754677

I wasn't debating the changes so much as the caricature you created based on the assumption that an individual was making $120,000 and complaining about $12,000. When that might not be the case at all and they're still raising a valid point.

Anonymous
>>8756736

I seriously hope thats the case, but I highly doubt it. They make it seem like this is a global site wide change that will effect literally everyone, no matter how long they've been on the site.

Anonymous
>>8756736

Oh, and you know the sad part about all this? This change becomes effective on my birthday... the 18th... Yeah...talk about a happy birthday from patreon... fuck sake... &gt;.&gt;

Adleisio Cefnfor
>>8754677

Right, I get that, but the comment in the blog post seemed to be phrased as if it were from an individual. If it is group of people yeah I can see how that might be a potential issue. But I am simply pointing out that the loss from people lowering their pledged amount or deleting their pledge will not likely be outweighed by the increase of revenue that creators get to keep in the new system.

SCPilot
>>8773646

Ah okay. Well that's good to hear at least. Though the system they want to implement will backfire in the long run.

Anonymous

I donate to a lot of artists. Many I only give a dollar to. That extra 30 cents really makes a difference. I only give 25 dollars a month. And if that got raised to 27 I'd be fine. But since over 15 of these are 1 dollar gives. These each add 30 cents. This takes me to spending over 10 dollars in fees. Which is not only undoable with my tight budget but it's predatory. Patreon charges me once every month. Why should I pay multiple fees on a single charge? This will likely mean I will have to withdraw my support from all the creators I currently support as to not continue supporting Patreon as a company. Which I'm sorry many creators are caught in that cross fire.

SCPilot
>>8773646

Actually just found out you will be charged on when you signed up for Patreon so people might be charged a second time this month!

Vicki M.

They're just moving the fees, right? Couldn't you adjust the tiers a bit and receive the same as before, while the patrons pay the same too?