MLeeLunsford
patreon
Patreon's new Pledge Fees
🕑 Added 2017-12-07 22:52:12 +0000 UTC Hey everyone!By now I'm sure you've heard about Patreon's terrible decision to force supporters to pay a fee added on to their pledge. I would much rather pay that fee myself as Patreon creators always have before, and I've done what I can to tell them how much I hate this change.
The biggest impact is on $1 supporters, who now have to pay something like $1.38 instead, for each pledge they give, each time they are charged. This is outrageous. Especially if they are supporting many creators, that all adds up. This is an absolutely insane change to me, and the only one who really benefits is Patreon the company. They actually take in more money from this change, and can claim that creators get a higher percentage. It's greed, that's all, and I'm sorry.
If you absolutely need to drop out, I understand. And if you do, please tell Patreon why they are the reason you left. Be loud.
EDIT: I was going to try and change the reward tier of $1 so that you can get early pages even if you pledge cents, but you literally can't pledge less than $1. This means after this change, you CANNOT pledge less than $1.38 in reality. This is awful.
Thank you everyone for your support, without it I wouldn't have a home right now. You all mean a lot to me, and I hate this turn of events. Please again, give Patreon a piece of your mind. I don't know if we can turn this around, but together we can at least try.
EDIT (Dec. 13, 2017): Patreon backed down, and decided to NOT go through with the new fees! Thank you everyone who spoke out against This post will serve as a reminder of what they could have suddenly done if we hadn't been so vocal.
Comments
kou32
Patreon just announced they're scraping the service fee! <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/13/16772556/patreon-drops-service-fee-plan-apology-update" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/13/16772556/patreon-drops-service-fee-plan-apology-update</a>
Is there a way to have partial dollar amounts for the 'higher' pledge tiers come out the same? So that a pledge of something like 4.52 ends up being $5? (And 9.38, 12.30?)
Parziivale
I've noticed as well recently that Patreon has been forcing a minimum of 1.00 pledging. When I was going around and adjusting some pledge numbers, it wouldn't let me pledge less than a dollar. I don't know if it's affected others- has anyone else expierenced this?
kou32
kickstarter has a monthly set up now? okay so there are options
Moz
Looking into things like that, as well as the new Drip platform created by Kickstarter.
kou32
People are being very vocal about this, a lot of artists are losing support fast
HEARTZMD
if people want to still pledge to you just allow them to send the money directly to your paypal. Or you can set up a gumroad subscription
James Schweitzer
The way it disproportionately impacts the patrons making smaller pledges is mind-boggling. It's literally beating on the "little guy" (whose pledge amount will change by ~38%). It'll add ~80 cents (or about 5%) to my pledge so I don't plan to change anything, but I see how this could have a chilling effect on smaller contributors. You're being very cool about this and I hope people appreciate how many creators are taking a stand on this point!
Not dropping here though. Nudie tier for life.
kou32
^^^^
I have no idea what Patreon was thinking with this. They said it’s so creators can have a more consistent income and be able to budget, but patrons have budgets too! I have $X I put aside every month to support my favorite creators and now I’m going to have to shuffle it around and drop tiers with a few to stay in budget. I am yet to see a creator in favor of this mess.
kou32
I sent a feed back message to them this morning telling them not to do this and why. EDIT: if this goes through I will probably have to drop people, this is counter intuitive. This is greed, pure and simple
