Regarding My Patreon [UPDATE] (Patreon)

Hey everyone! 

So today a kinda important thing happened. I, along with many other creators, RSVP'd for an online meeting scheduled today by Patreon regarding the new "annual billing" method they want to implement in the near future. 

This new feature caused a lot of uproar online in the last couple weeks, especially because there seemed to be zero clarity on the matter, and it was only quietly spoken of (I personally only found out about it on Twitter, vs in an email or update of any sort from Patreon). 

This meeting today was meant to address the concern regarding the new billing method. Unfortunately the meeting didn't really do that and only increased anxiety and confusion in those who are creators and pledgers on this platform. 

So what's this all about?

In short, patreon wants to introduce a billing method that charges you on the day you pledge. So if you pledge on the 15th, you'll be charged on the 15th of every month afterwards, vs the 1st of ever month like it currently is set up to do. How does this effect patrons that pledge to multiple creators on different days? I have no idea. They assured that pledgers will not get billed more than once in a month but they didn't specify how. They also didn't specify if this will be an optional choice either. What they DID say is that this won't effect existing pledges, only new ones. Not to mention this greatly messes with the schedules creators have set up for rewards, and how creators will pay their monthly bills. It's something we don't want but they choose not to listen because based on their surveys (only surveying a small amount of users, mind you) they see positive feedback and want to go forward with anniversary billing. 

SAYING ALL THAT. I've chosen to go forward with jumping to another pledge based platform, SubscribeStar. It's not currently active, since it needs to be approved by mods, and I still need to get content on there and the tiers organized and what not. But my plan is to run SubscribeStar alongside Patreon for the time being. I'm wanting to wait out on the decision Patreon will make before I make a full jump to a new platform, but I figured starting it up wouldn't hurt. You'll all have the option of staying here or going over there when it's up and running. All the content, tiers, rewards, etc will be the same, I'm just forming a branch from one to the other. 

I understand this may result in some losses when/if I make the full move. Again I'll wait until I hear whether or not this new billing method will be implemented, whether it'll be something we can opt out on, etc. SubscribeStar is still very new and not as popular as Patreon, but I prefer not staying on a platform that doesn't listen to their users and has no problem damaging the relationship with the creators they get their earnings from. 

Hopefully that all makes sense. My views anyway. What Patreon is doing doesn't make sense to me in the slightest, and the fact that they can't get people like me to understand why they want to do this says a lot. This billing cycle shouldn't be introduced, plain and simple.

ANYWAY. Stay tuned for more updates regarding this matter. I heard that they'll be doing another meeting in March? Not sure if that's true or not but I'll be joining that one too if that's the case. I want to definitely stay on top of the updates for this. 

Thanks for reading!