Important Payment Changes Incoming! (Patreon)

I have been invited to partake in a new payment system on patreon - one I and many creators have been wanting for a long time: Charges made upfront!

What is this, you ask? It basically means that when new patrons join, they are charged immediately, instead of waiting until the 1st of the next month to get charged.

What does this do? It prevents bots and pirates from coming in and perusing content, and either not paying, or deleting their pledge before payments are due.

How does this effect people who are already patrons? It doesn't. You will be charged on the 1st as usual. It only effects two groups: Those who are new to the patreon, and those who change their payment amount.

Those who change their payment amount? Yeah. For example, if you were pledging $5, and you wanted to increase it to $10 to see that tier's goodies, you would be charged the difference upfront. This prevents someone from increasing their pledge to see higher tier content, and then decrease their pledge before payment is due (trust me, it happens a lot).

What about decreasing a pledge? If you decrease your pledge from, say, $10 to $5, you will be charged the new amount ($5) on the 1st of the month, when your pledge renews.

Basically, the new payment system stops bots, pirates and cheaters from gaming the system. It has no effect on people who are already paying patrons, or who legitimately change their tiers.

I wanted to let everyone know I am going to be trying out this system, so that it wouldn't be a shock if you changed your payment tier or invited a friend to join or something and you saw you got charged immediately.

This is really a hugely important step for this site. I've been dealing with the headache of pirates and bots and people trying to cheat the system since day one, and now this system should make everything run a lot smoother on here.

There's more info on patreon here: https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/208404313-Why-was-I-charged-immediately-Will-You-Charge-Me-Again-

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns and I will try my best to answer them!