Note about patreon fee changes (Patreon)

You may have heard about the fee changes Patreon is planning to implement in the coming weeks, putting a fee on the Patron side of the transaction amounting to 35¢ + 2% of the total pledge. Personally I am opposed to this change and have communicated my dissatisfaction to Patreon. I don’t think fees should be the donor’s responsibility at all, and this proposed system is the worst approach to that, putting the largest penalties on patrons paying the smallest pledges. Under the new system, a patron who makes one $20 pledge to a single creator pays $20.75 while a donor who make twenty individual $1 pledges to multiple creators pays $27.40 (and that’s to say nothing of international fees and exchange rates). Patreon tries to explain this as “putting more money in the creators’ hands” but if you do the math on single dollar pledges, where in the past 80% of the money spent by the patron was going to the creator, now only about 69% of the total coming out of your pocket goes to the creator receiving it.

If Patreon can’t be persuaded to rethink these fees, I completely understand people having to cancel their pledges. (I mean, I always understand people having to cancel pledges for any reason, any kind of support at all no matter how much or little is always more than I could ever ask for) Ultimately I want to follow your lead, so if people just want a way to be able to leave something in a digital tip jar, I can look into other venues like ko-fi or Drip that don’t charge the donors.

Again, I’m very sorry that the company has let us down like this, I want to keep everyone in the know, and just make it clear that I totally understand if these fees lead people to cancel their pledges.