❗[IMPORTANT] Apple iOS subscription fees, billing changes and other updates (Patreon)

There are a few things to address, so let's get started:

Apple iOS subscription fees beginning November 2024

As you may already have heard, starting November 2024, membership prices in the iOS Patreon app will be subject to Apple's in-app purchase fees (30% of the price). THIS ONLY AFFECTS NEW SUBSCRIPTIONS VIA THE iOS APP, the ones already subscribed won't be affected!

My options are either to increase the prices for people who subscribe with the iOS app or to take the financial hit and pay the fee for those subscribers out of my pocket.

I REALLY dislike that Apple gets to, pardon me, swing its dick around and force these changes onto creatives like us without us having any chance to fight back.. other than boycotting the iOS Patreon app.

I won't be swallowing the fees due to not wanting to take any financial hits + not accepting and condoning business practices like this. Fees for NEW people who subscribe with the iOS app will increase from November 2024 onward. PLEASE, if you have the means to subscribe via PC or Android.. do it, you don't need to give Apple more of your hard-earned money. If supporting me with the iOS app is your only way to do so, I'm sorry about being a little selfish here 🙏

I will be adding a disclaimer about that on my About page and tiers for future supporters to see because I am well aware that this post will fall into obscurity soon.

Billing changes from November 2024 onward

I always charge on the 1st of each month. I know some people see this as scummy when they start supporting me at the end of a month only to get billed twice. I tried to avoid that from happening by adding the disclaimer in every tier description. In any case this and "pay per creation" were the only options back when I set up my page, therefore I designed all my creation schedules around this monthly procedure. Suggestion periods, poll voting periods, etc. With all of this in place, I just didn't see myself changing to the newer subscription model where people pay the day they started supporting me. In the end, it doesn't matter, it was my fault that I didn't realize that it doesn't matter. I bet people who get paid per creation must be devastated by that change though, which makes me despise this change being forced by Apple.

The schedules will remain, the dates for said schedules are already featured in the tier descriptions and everything should just play out normally no matter when people started to support me.

Sorry once again to everyone who had to pay twice in the past, first I couldn't change anything about it, and then I didn't make the jump to the new subscription billing when it first arrived on this platform due to the fear it might interfere with my schedules 🙏

This means I'll be switching over to "subscription billing" in a few days, once again, this only affects NEW PATRONS!

Taking a vacation

I've been talking about it before I took my last vacation in January. I want to increase my yearly vacation time from 1 week to 2 weeks. Therefore I'm taking my second week in the first week of September. Therefore it's not too close to my January vacation.

Just like last time I won't pause pledges, In the first week of September there will be no content, but the suggestion threads will still get posted and I'll be posting the polls once the vacation is over. I will cut all personal project stuff that month so I can focus on getting TACS 2 pages done before I have to work on the monthly projects. I will also try my best to get the timelapses ready for August's content on September 1st so you don't have to wait a week for them.

I just wanted to give you this heads-up early enough so you can decide if you want to stop your pledge for that month or if you keep supporting me. There will be a little less content that month but I still hope it's worth pledging for ^^

That's about it from me, I know this is a giant wall of text.. maybe you can let Chat GPT run over it and summarize it in case you have a terrible attention span like me lol

Thanks for your continuous support and if you got any questions feel free to ask!

Aron