About the 1st of the Month
Bloodworth here,
With 500 new patrons and the fact that we're currently above our $50,000 goal, there are a lot of you who are watching the Patreon numbers for the first time or more closely than ever before. So I want to provide some context so you know what to expect when the 1st of the month rolls around. Everyone on our Patreon gets charged on the 1st of the month, and logistically, that results in a lot of big fluctuations in the displayed number of patrons and pledges.
As Patreon prepares to make charges, payments and fees get recalculated, and for a few hours, you may see the number jump up or down by extreme amounts. This isn't a matter of anyone dropping or changing pledges, it's simply the math updating behind the scenes which can result in somewhat sudden and sporadic changes.
Pledges are locked in at the 1st of the month, and when you're charged, you can expect to receive an e-mail thanking you for your contribution. These charges roll out over the course of a full day. Some months they begin earlier, other months they start later in the day.
However, when Patreon attempts to make charges, many pledges may be declined for various reasons such as a bank's fraud detection systems, insufficient funds, or simply an expired date or typo on a credit card number. When a pledge is declined, Patreon will send that person an e-mail asking them to correct their payment information. As soon as that correction is made, it's added back into the pool of pledges. Keep an eye out for that message to verify whether your pledge went through or if you need to make corrections.
The public facing result of these declines is that the Patreon numbers appear to take a sharp drop of several thousand dollars. You'll see the numbers dip temporarily with declines, then bounce back up as payments are corrected.
The important thing to note here is that Patreon allows several days for these corrections to be made, and doesn't issue our payout until roughly the 5th or 6th of the month. It's this amount which ultimately tells us whether or not we've hit a specific goal. For those worried about people trying to game the system, backing out, or not updating their pledges, there's little need to worry as 99.5% - 99.8% of pledges eventually go through, and we only ever see a handful identified as fraud.
Long story short, all of these factors combined make the public facing numbers nearly useless for the first few days of each month, and particularly on the 1st. If you ever want to track them and compare to past months check out the daily graph at
https://graphtreon.com/creator/EasyAllies
If you have any further questions, feel free to ask, and thanks for your support.
-Bloodworth