Patreon's Fee Change Announcement
Added 2017-12-07 12:44:21 +0000 UTCHey guys in case you may have missed an email from Patreon I wanted to break down the changes to the system they're implementing this month. Up to this point, you'd make your pledge, and it would have things like credit card fees and Patreon's cut taken out before it got passed on to the creator.
But moving forward, Patreon is giving creators a full 95% of the money. In theory this sounds good for creators, except that the fees are now being passed on to the supporters instead. Whatever you pledge, Patreon will now add a 2.9% fee plus an additional 35 cents.
Not an astronomical sum I know. But I still don't think this is a great move on Patreon's part, as it puts smaller creators at risk to losing supporters who won't stand for a price hike. I honestly don't see their endgame here, but I did expect changes to start popping up ever since last month when Kickstarter announced they were relaunching Drip, their service that will be in direct competition with Patreon, in early 2018.
In any case, I wanted to explain things here to make sure none of you wound up with any unpleasant surprises in next month's billing cycle. I hope you guys stick around and I greatly appreciate your support as always.
Comments
It sounds like there's been a lot of backlash about this whole thing. Maybe it will be enough to get Patreon to back off from a pretty much unanimously unpopular idea.
Reinbach
2017-12-10 13:01:37 +0000 UTCYeah, that's the problem I have a fairly strict Patreon budget, I liketo support a bunch of different guys, even if it's only a dollar or two. But if yu are pledging a buck the price per pledge goes up about 40% Not cool at all.
The BRM
2017-12-10 02:30:31 +0000 UTCAgreed, the small boost in payouts won't do creators any good if a big chunk of their audience leaves when the fees go up.
Reinbach
2017-12-08 22:29:06 +0000 UTCWell near as I can tell for a $5 supporter the fee will go up fifty cents, not a huge amount but yeah that could add up depending on how many creators you follow and how much you pledge to each.
Reinbach
2017-12-08 22:26:12 +0000 UTCI'm supporting multiple creators so this change will probably fuck me over since they're adding the fee on each individual pledge. Guess I'll wait and see how much my bill changes next month before I decide on what to do.
Angelo
2017-12-08 16:24:56 +0000 UTCSo true and this could very well blowup in their face, if creators end up jumping ship because of this move.
Bob Fink
2017-12-08 15:07:40 +0000 UTCIt'd be kind of weird if they made this move to make it more attractive for creators... and ended up hurting them. Patreon's probably worried they're about to be "MySpace'd".
ScuzzBucket
2017-12-08 06:57:07 +0000 UTCI agree with you, I see where the’re coming from but I like you think this move is going to hurt the creators. I’ll be sticking with those I currently support. I just think if the creators aren’t complaining and this is just a ploy to keep the creators from jumping ship it’s a bad decision on their part.
Bob Fink
2017-12-08 00:07:40 +0000 UTCThat's where it hits the hardest I'm told: creators whose base is made up mostly of $1 supporters. Now that I think about it it's clear that this is a move on Patreon's part to make them more attractive to new creators than the upcoming competition. But this will really screw a lot of existing creators in the meantime so i don't think it was a great idea.
Reinbach
2017-12-07 20:36:18 +0000 UTCHm, yeah- that's going to be interesting. It's just a couple of bucks here and there, but might hurt some people who had people only donating $1 a month or something.
ScuzzBucket
2017-12-07 20:29:54 +0000 UTC
