BazilRacoondog
patreon
Sorry folks but Patreon sucks and I can't help it :(
🕑 Added 2023-10-16 04:14:06 +0000 UTCUsually I leave business stuff like this for monthly summary posts but this is an urgent emergency and I thought I should warn you right away.
I noticed some changes going on here lately, mainly visual ones, I thought "Oh gosh, another shitty minimalistic revamped design, exquisite." but it turned out to be not only about design.
First of all, when opening my Patreon page to make a new post today I noticed an odd new thing, now I have "Paid members" and "Total members" which number is significantly bigger than Paid (1st image). I asked myself "Who the heck are these 16 free passangers here?" but it was a deep night and I thought "Alright, I'll deal with it later, just make a post and go sleep."
I made my post about AI image compilation and instead of a regular "Publish" button in a top right corner I got "Next" button in bottom which sent me to a separate page (2nd image) where I had to choose tags and also what was really strange is the choice above.
Who can see this?
Everyone or Paid Members
Sadly I forgot to screenshot it but it was different than the image here, it changed permanently after what happened next, Paid Members was gray and the cursor was turning into π« when hovering it with a pop-up message saying I should make a paid membership or something like this. I didn't know what to do and published the post anyway. Then I tried to log out and look how my page looks like and, as expected, this post was seen to everyone, the rest is available only to patrons, the way it should be. I checked out my settings, I have a normal Pro plan Paid membership and I didn't understand what these Patreon fuckers want from me.
Then I went on my main page again and saw a "Membership button" (3rd image), clicked on it and understood what is happening now.
Now tiers are obligatory.
I don't know how many of you noticed it but unlike most Patreon artists I never had tiers. I didn't make them first and then just didn't want to set it to a certain number like $5 and lose those people who are subscribed to me for a less price.
I thought it's fair. I know people have different financial situation and I was ready to give my content to them for 4 or 3 or even 2 bucks per month if they can't afford more but want to support me and get their benefit for this. Every single dollar is already important for me anyway. And I was thinking about myself too. My productivity is inconsistent so giving people a choice to pay less when they think I deserve less for my work was fair, as well as for those who don't have a 100% perfect fetish match with me and my overly versatile taste and follow me only for bellies, muscles or farts which I don't draw constantly, it's mood-depending.
But now Patreon deprived me of such opportunity and forced me to switch to tiers like everybody do. I didn't want to do it, I'm very sorry for this, but I had to set it to 5 dollars since that's how much a major part of my patrons pay me here. If you was subscribed to me for 2-4 dollars then I'm sorry but now you have only one choice, to pay more or unsubscribe if you think you can't afford it or that my art doesn't worth it. If you was subscribed to me for more than $5 out of generosity then... I don't know, you can donate me or something like that.
I'm afraid that with these changes I'm definitely gonna lose some patrons. I don't want it to happen, I didn't want to upset these people and I'd like to have everything the way it was but Patreon doesn't allow me to do so. Hope you understand.
Comments
Zinfandel
I think I did the process right, thank you for letting us know! Happy to keep supporting you :D
