Attention: Patreon's Patron changes.

Hey all,

I hate that I have to write something like this, but I need to warn you all of an e-mail that I've received from Patreon this morning that involves patrons paying a 'fee' for pledging to creators.  

Patreon states in this e-mail that its to 'help creators take home more', meaning I will only have to pay a 5% fee to Patreon, instead the usual 10% to 12% that also goes to Paypal.

I personally find this utterly unacceptable.  I do NOT support charging a 'fee' to people who are kind enough to want to give even $1 each month for the work I give in return.  I cannot speak for all of you, of course, and it seems that you all will be receiving an e-mail tomorrow (December 7th) detailing these changes.

There is also an FAQ here: https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005631963 that details more about what will be going on.

I won't lie.  I feel like this might financially ruin what I had going here.  I had zero problems paying all fees because I feel they are the cost of my doing business on Patreon, and Its been such a massive financial help that I've been able to devote time to taking care of family things instead of splitting time three ways.

I leave this up to all of you if you wish to continue your support.  Please note that I bear no ill will, and no blame to any of you if you decide you don't wish to continue with this fairly asinine move by Patreon to help 'creators'.  None of the creators I've seen on social media support this.  They'd prefer a system where you can opt out of charging patrons fees, and believe me, if there is an option to do just that I'll do it in a heartbeat.

I wanted to give you all warning.  I feel I'm obligated to ensure that you all are informed fully of what is going on.  The changes themselves won't take place until December 18th.  

I'm currently writing a letter (literally wasting a whole day with what I consider nonsense) to Patreon asking them to either not implement this change until more discussion can be had, it was sprung on me literally this morning.  I'm going to also ask them to give an option to allow me to opt out of passing a charge of 2.9% +$0.35.

I'm trying to think of a way around these fees, if they do go through.  I might take the percentage paid, and knock that off of the pledge amounts.  Meaning a dollar would become about $0.60.  I'll take a rather massive hit, as I'm charged on a total instead of by pledge, but its an option I'm thinking of implementing.

I'm truly sorry about this.  I'm doing as much as I can to let Patreon know that I personally think this is a bad idea, and that its likely to cripple patrons more than help them.

I'm a bit blindsided by this.  I expect its not going to be pretty.  If it does end up at a point where its not financially viable for me to continue to do this, I will warn everyone months in advance, of course, and find a place for you all to grab higher resolution files for a good while afterwards.

We'll have to see what happens.  And please let me know your thoughts one way or the other.  

Going to go and try to get some work done.

-T.J.