aftermathteam
patreon
My letter to Patreon
🕑 Added 2017-12-13 20:57:46 +0000 UTC Not sure if any of you are interested in seeing this or not, but I thought I'd share it anyway. The link I gave earlier to the Patreon article includes a link to a survey to tell Patreon what you think of the new changes they tried to make and why you did not like them. I went ahead and filled it out, as well as wrote a letter to them. I felt that I was speaking on all of our behalf on this:From where I am sitting, I never had a problem with paying the extra fees. I see them as a cost of doing business. Patreon provides a platform for creators like myself to share their work, and you take a small cut and charge necessary fees to ME as a creator to maintain my working environment. If you have fees that you need to take, talk to us about it and apply it to creators. We're effectively running a business and if we incur additional costs, those costs should fall on us. If we feel that we need to compensate those fees by passing part, or all, of those costs on to our customers, then that should ALWAYS be our decision to make.
If you want to create stability for creators, I know that I pay anything from 8-11% in additional fees the last few months. If you really need to create a specific number for creators, why don't you charge 10%, or even 15% as your fee from creators, then pay for those expenses out of your own cut? After all, you claim to be here to provide an environment where we can focus on our work without needing to worry about everything else.
In the future, you may consider proposing changes to the community as a whole, explain your idea, or your need for a change, then let the community share their thoughts and ideas related to an issue. You could avoid much of the blowback from situations like this, and from the recent rules changes for adult content creators, by letting us take part in the discussion. Obviously there will be times as a company where you will HAVE to do something, but even in those situations, be honest and up front about it, don't mislead us, and see if maybe someone has ideas that will help take some of the sting from any needed changes rather than forcing those changes down our throat and watching us choke on it.
In the end, you've betrayed our trust, both of the creators who use your platform, and from the people who support us. Trust is a delicate thing. It takes time to earn, it can be lost easily, and when its been hurt it can be slow to heal. You won't win back my trust, or any of my supporter's trust over night. We're wary, and we're hurt by what you did, and I'm not just talking about all the money I have lost since you made the announcement about your changes, I'm talking about the loss of support from our patrons, the lack of certainty we had in being able to use your service without worry about how you might hurt our business.
I'm not ready to forgive you for all of that yet, I'm upset, and I know a lot of people who support me are as well. Reversing this bad decision is a good first step, its like finally being able to breathe after spending a week being smothered by uncertainty. Continue to do the right thing, continue to rebuild our trust, and in time we will all be able to put this unfortunate situation behind us.
~Aftermath Team
Comments
Aftermath Team
Fair enough. Guess I learn something new every day. ;) If they're getting charged an abnormally large percentage for processing through their system, then one would think they would look into options to drive those costs down.
ThaumX
I'm not talking about the fee patreon takes (5%) that's reasonable. I'm talking about the specific transaction processing fees, i.e. the fees taken by credit card companies and banks for using their system. THOSE are what's high, particularly for domestic charges, the average is well over what you'd expect even for international transactions.
Aftermath Team
I think the best way I saw the new fees described was where someone said: If you pledge $100 to one person, its not a big deal, You end up paying $3.25 in fees. However if you pledge $1 to a hundred people, its a HUGE deal. You end up paying $37.90 in fees. I don't think Patreon should have gone over creators' heads to bill the supporters in either case, but especially when I regularly see supporters who pledge to 10-20 other creators, I know that has to hit people hard.
Aftermath Team
Very true, and just as importantly to me is that I try to treat this like a business. That means that if I incur additional costs, it should be MY choice as to whether or not those costs need to be passed on to my supporters. This pile of BS was like my bank trying to set prices for my product, and that's not ok. I don't even know that they'll bother to read what I had wrote (Though you would think SOMEONE at least skims the feedback when its given.) but I hope that they do, and even if they never do anything with it, I'd like to think it will give them a little better idea of why we all feel the way we do about what they tried to do.
Like for many others the change in policy really is a downer for me. If you have little too spend the extra fee for a low pledge really hurts. It is nice to see you have been able to describe our and your frustration to them, even though they probably won't do anything with the feedback.
Aftermath Team
Exactly, and this is a bit part of why I've never had a problem with paying the fees. I figure Patreon takes their 5% cut, I get hit by another +/- 10% in fees, and in the last 36 hours of every month I have people pull out before being billed, or their payments dont clear make up a little less than 5% most of the time. So I just figure that the unadjusted number I see at the end of the month, I just cut 20% off the top mentally, and payday comes out pretty close to that most of the time. :D
Aftermath Team
Something I have seen as common among the couple of other similar places I have scouted recently charge a 5% cut for themselves (I'm fine with that, ) though I have heard of places taking as much as a 40% cut from creators. That and it looks like 5-10% is pretty typical for fees beyond that. One place I have bookmarked but haven't actually signed up for yet (Got the holidays on us right now, busy with other stuff. I just don't have the time to give a new platform the time and care it deserves at the moment.) charges a 5% fee for themselves, then an additional 5% fee for the processing and all that other stuff for a total of 10% taken out of your earnings. (Again, I'm ok with that.) You know of specific other places where the fees are lower for creators like us? If so, I'd love to take a look at it? (Feel free to PM me over on TFGamesSite or message me here. We can share notes if you would like.)
waffel
look at it this way, if you were making things for a puplisher they would take 60-80% of the cut, steam is taking 30% of the cut, Itch.io is taking 10% of the cut, patreon is taking 5% of the cut, one thing they shouldn't be flamed about is their own cut margin which is extremely extremely generous!
ThaumX
This whole bit of shenanigans was pretty ridiculous. From the fee itself, to the way they handled it. The solution to this isn't charging more money, it's working to bring the fees down to some slight semblance of being in line with the rest of the world. Paying 5% in transaction fees is already very steep, even for a small independent merchant. Patreon's transaction fees are... flabbergasting. Giving accurate information to creators so they actually know what's going on would be another good move. Perhaps sending a message to creators before announcing a stunt like this to everyone. There's also the "spooky numbers" patreon gives us, which is reminiscent of book cookery. I don't like a fuzzy 5% margin on most of the financials Patreon gives me.
Aftermath Team
Thank you!
Robert Stiteler
As always, well written
Aftermath Team
Thanks. I doubt that I'll hear back from them regarding what I had to say, but if I do, and its more than just a form letter response of some kind, I'll be sure to share it with all of you. I don't think they track who actually takes surveys like that, which is kind of why I took the time to add "Aftermath Team" to the end of it so they could look me up if they really wanted to. Time will tell though. I don't know that what I had to say will mean much to them or not, but I hope at least that this experience will ensure that they more carefully weigh important decisions like this in the future.
helvorn
Nicely said, I would be interested in their response
