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Heads Up About Patreon by Thea
If you haven't received an email from Patreon you should know that they are switching their processing fees from onto the creator to over onto the patron Dec 18th. There is a huge uproar about it and here's why:
Say you have a strict budget, and wanted to contribute a little to as many creators you love as possible to support and gain some behind the scenes access. That $1 pledge is pretty easy to count how much you're spending.
With transaction fees of 2.9% + .35 cents, suddenly $1 turns into $1.38. Seems manageable right? Except that charge is PER PLEDGE. If you're supporting say 20 creators at a $1 tier, suddenly you're spending $27.60 instead of $20, and for a lot of people that's a deal breaker.
So two things are going to happen:
Either artists will have to lower their basic "every little bit counts" tier to $0.63 to make the math round back to $1 for everyone,
Or patrons are going to be trimming down their pledges big time and less popular creators will suffer because they can't shoulder a small cut for the opportunity to connect with a good portion of their fans on a more intimate level.
I was thinking about eventually turning Patreon into an interactive "tip jar", but after this I think I'm going to head over to Ko-Fi or make my own wordpress blog sponsored by paypal.me donations (I just can't tell if you get email notifications following people on Ko-Fi or not) or /potentially/ better yet, Kickstarter's not-Patreon: Drip! ...whenever they get their crap figured out...
Good luck out there, and have a happy holidays peeps!
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Comments
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Yeah something's fucky for sure D:
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I'm so pissed that Patreon decided to do this right as I was about to start my Patreon campaign.
But there's no way I'm going to be able to get patrons when every patron is already having to make hard choices about which supporters they already care about to drop.
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I just had a light bulb go on in my head that Patreon may be legitimately scared of Kickstarter's Drip. Kickstarter's system is discovery-based whereas Patreon completely dropped and left that ball behind long ago, and that is the #1 issue artists have with Patreon. They may very well be artificially inflating Patreon's company value using unsuspecting patrons (I know several who don't keep track of emails) to sell to a potential buyer and get out before Drip takes off.
I'd say start your patreon regardless, but don't rely on it to a point that makes or breaks you, and if Drip turns out to allow adult content and is all-round better switch over (or have both!)
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Huh, I didn't receive any email about that though it's not like I have any patrons yet :P Thanks for the notice!
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That's sneaky D: Glad I could help!
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Unfortunately, Patreon doesn't let you set a tier under $1. They used to, but did away with that option a while ago, so a lot of people with lower incomes are just going to have to drop their support. :/ I'm not in a bad position financially but I'm not rich either, and these fees were still too much for me after I did the math. I had to drop a couple pledges and lower all the rest to get it back in budget for January.
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Aw what D: sucky.
I was ready to throw all the $1 bills at people to spread the support/discovery after I came back from 1FW, but if that's the case I'm just going to have to buy a little thing here and there from each artist and promote them on social media instead.
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Eviscerator
Yeah, the geniuses decided going into the holiday season when money is already tight was a good time to start 'adjusting' payment schemes.
Truly brilliant.