Nihilophant
patreon
Patreon's changes in how they charge.
🕑 Added 2017-12-10 10:37:24 +0000 UTC Patreon has informed me and probably most of you that they are going to place the burden of processing fees against the patrons meaning that if you are at the 1 dollar tier, you will be charged additional money (unless I'm mistaken) for the process of charging your card.In their words "A new service fee of 2.9% + $0.35 will be paid by patrons for each individual pledge starting on December 18th"
This is so that they can guarantee I get to keep exactly 95% of the total of what patron's pledge.
I want to state for the record I am strongly opposed to this. I joined patreon with the understanding and expectation that I patreon would take a certain amount to pay their overhead and to run their business. I was somewhat fine with that though I might have done it differently by adjusting the percentage that creators are charged progressively (if you are small-time like me then you pay a higher percentage initially, then as you get up to a status where it becomes your primary income as a full-time creator then it goes down but then once you get into middle-class bracket such as $50k a year or more then the percentage goes back up to a capped amount. This would be fiddled with until they can reach a revenue stasis while providing more services/features/optimization/research and development.
I would prefer that patreon kept their system the way it was. I have tiers set up unconventionally from many other creators because I wanted this to be more of a subscription service where you can get something instead of a donation, which is why I have tiers that are weird numbers like "6" instead of "5" because I knew that patreon was going to take a certain amount.
I really understand where patreon is coming from but I wish they could give me the option. They give me a lot of other options and of course they run this site that is changing my life, but I hate to see my patrons have to pay more than the upfront prices because I do see these as prices instead of suggested donations.
I understand any patrons who want to leave as a result of the changes. I will be adjusting some of the tiers prices in a few days since the price I settled on were figuring in what patreon would take but now they are letting me keep more. If patreon decides to switch back to I'll adjust the tier prices again.
Thanks for your continued support.
Comments
Douglas Carter
<a href="https://twitter.com/Patreon/status/941005364882845696" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/Patreon/status/941005364882845696</a> They just tweeted out they're not doing it anymore, if that helps.
H_R
Hopefully something takes a new direction or at least one with more creator-options in mind VS only one route; best of luck as the changes roll out one way or another!
