Patreon has been sending out e-mails stating that beginning December 18th, they are going to apply a 2.9% + $0.35 service fee that patrons will pay for each individual pledge. A lot of people claim that this is going to kill $1 pledges, and for good cause. e.g. If I supported 10 creators, and I donate $1 to each creator, I'm on the hook for $1.37 x 10 or $13.70. This, compared to $10.00 that I was paying originally. So next month, I'd be paying nearly 40% more just to cover service fees. In other words, the cost isn't shouldered by the creator anymore, the donor has to handle the majority of the cost. The idea behind this fee change is to make income more consistent per pledge to the creator (95% across the board instead of varying between 33% - 93% depending on pledge amount), with the remaining going to paying Patreon's operating costs. That said, someone ran the numbers and it looks like each creator ends up earning like 10% more per pledge whereas the biggest beneficiary, Patreon, ends up earning 200% - 700%+ from each patron. (src: www.pretty-terrible.com/funny-money-patreon-style) Putting it into hard numbers: Assuming that the average processing fee is 2.9% and transaction fee is 0.35 for the payment processors (Stripe and Paypal) when Patreon pulls from your account. (Paid by the creators before the fee change takes place. Paid by you, the donor, after the fee change takes place). **Note that even though the numbers are similar, these fees are not the the fees that Patreon plans to charge you. If you pledge $3.00 to 5 creators, your new bill will be $17.19 a month. $14.25 will be divided equally by the creators ($2.85 ea) while Patreon takes $2.15. Patreon's Take = $17.19 from donor - $14.25 earned by all creators (which is 95% of $15.00) - - $0.44 processing - $0.35 transaction The numbers before this fee change is that you, the donor, paid $15.00. The 5 creators had $13.46 to divide equally ($2.69 ea) while Patreon took $0.75. Total Creator's Take = $15.00 from donor - $0.44 processing - $0.35 transaction - $0.75 patreon's 5% fee Over a year, you end up paying $206.28 instead of $180.00, and Patreon earns $16.80 extra (from $9 to $25.80) while the 5 creators take $9.60 extra from this amount. As a result, each of your creators would earn $1.92 more from you this year. I feel that the author of the website made a good statement. To paraphrase: While it is okay to pay a little more so that the creator doesn't have to shoulder the burden of the processing cost, it's not okay that the creator gets a tiny bit increase while Patreon stands to make off like a bandit the more creators that you want to support. tldr; If this policy goes through and you patronize more than 1 creator through Patreon, please go to your Patreon account and reexamine the pledges while understanding that each creator that you patronize will add at least $0.37 cents to your bill per month...to show your appreciation of Patreon apparently, not the creators. As for me, until they change this policy back, or revise it to something less blatantly greedy (like a single 0.35 cent flat fee since they only make one transaction to my bank account at the start of the month), I plan to stop using Patreon to donate. Next month, I plan to use my creators' donate button. Feel free to Google search the following terms: "Patreon fee hike" to learn more. Update: Patreon's recently updated their blog post explaining the reason behind the flat fee. Basically they're catering to those creators that wanted payments to apply immediately instead of at the beginning of a new month. This would prevent patrons from jumping in, leeching the content, then running away before the month ends and their CC is charged. To implement this, however, it looks like Patreon is doing away with its batching system and each pledge will be charged a month after they have been made. Umm, on the bright side this means that Patreon is making multiple withdrawals from your account and the extra fees make some sense because they need to pay for each withdrawal. Unfortunately, because this means that the pledges aren't grouped together so that the fees can be shared, the $1 microtransactions still remain unfeasible due to the per pledge flat fee. (src: https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/)
Oh wow, Patreon is shit; truly surprising! Thank you for enlightening me to this most recent and unexpected development.
Screwed over the lower pledging supporters. GG Patreon GG. Time to see Patreon slowly fall to the abyss.
And thus Greed shall consume another great opportunity for content creators and others of a stable income.
Yeah this new policy sucks, already thinking about dropping some if not most of the 1 dollar pledges.
But it's still much easier than creators relying on those people that donate amounts large enough to feel it worth the effort.
well i'm not doing any patreon, so idk but reading from your thread it seem my resolve to not doing patreon is firmer~
They can do it because they have no real competition. This leaves room for someone else to come in and do it cheaper now though.
Patreon is the most well known and used. I'm not signing up to 10 different potentially sketchy services to support people who use different sites. Also, while PayPal is a thing, you can easily get screwed with people donating then asking for refunds
I've brought the better popcorn. With a flat fee per popcorn bag purchased, you can enjoy them to the fullest!