Patreon's new fees

Hi there!

I'm sure you've seen the update on Patreon's new fee structure today - many of my own favorite creators have voiced their opinion about it and I also wanted to give my two cents on it.

To sum up what has changed: Patreon used to charge creators a fixed + variable percentage of each pledge - the fixed 5% they live from, plus a fee for payment expenses on their side. Neither of these were visible on your own pledge, but the total displayed for each creator would have those fees already deducted.
Now it's 5% that Patreon takes from the "visible" part of the pledge + 2,9% and a 35ct fixed fee patrons need to cover before your money even makes it to the visible pledge.
What does this mean? Effectively, large pledges got cheaper, while small pledges just got a whole lot more expensive. And from a business side, I don't disagree! The new 2,9% + 35ct is probably intentionally exactly what PayPal charges and most likely close to what credit card fees are on the receiving end. Small pledges, realistically, were costing Patreon money.

But small pledges are a huge part of why Patreon is a great platform in the first place - it's a way for viewers to not just support creators financially, but to show their appreciation even if it's only a $1 pledge. I guarantee you every single creator appreciates a $1 pledge just as much as a $100 one, so seeing the first patrons leave because of the new fee structure hurts much more than losing a single patron at a higher pledge level.

Laura Kampf has made a good point here: Instead of cancelling your pledge entirely, consider simply lowering it to offset the now visible fees on your side. There were fees before, and overall it's actually not that big of a change that would make your pledge worthless. The entire fee restructuring thing on Patreon is still not a great move, though, and they could definitely have done a better job communicating things. Yes, this all sounds very familiar to what has recently been happening on YouTube. #adpocalypse

For many reasons, I personally still think Patreon is a great platform to support creators. So instead of just complaining about things, I've made a suggestion to them: Why don't they allow small pledges to be paid in advance for a few months to save on transaction fees? Say, commit to a $1 pledge for six months and only pay $0.52 in fees instead of $2.27 for the same period with monthly credit card charges. Would that be something you'd be happy with as a patron?

I'm really hoping Patreon find a way to make this right. I can totally understand if these changes make you rethink your pledge, but if you do cancel it, please make sure you're at least following on Twitter (@toms3dp) to keep receiving updates!
There are also other ways to support the channel, some of which don't cost you anything - all of those are listed out at https://toms3d.org/support-me

Either way, thanks for being here!
-Tom

PS: If you're curious about VAT - it needs to be paid somewhere. Currently, Patreon is collecting VAT and deducting it, but if they found a different way where they wouldn't collect VAT, each creator would have to pay VAT for pledges on their own. Same result ;-)