Patreon service fees about to change on Dec. 18th 2017

パンダさん · Dec 7, 2017

On Dec. 18th 2017 service fee will be paid by the patreons, you have to pay 2,9% + $0,35 for each pledge.
IMO this is really bad for people like me who do a lot of $1 pleges, each of these will increase by about $0.37
And this will hurt creators too. They will lose a lot of $1 patreons because of that.

https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005631963
https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/07/p...purs-concern-that-creators-will-lose-patrons/
https://www.patreon.com/posts/patreons-new-fee-15748098

UPDATE: Seems that they're paddling back:

https://blog.patreon.com/not-rolling-out-fees-change/

NotLiquid · Dec 7, 2017

Stay losing Patreon.

Mario's Nipples · Dec 7, 2017

I already pledge €30 a month to one Patreon. This is making me reconsider renewing my pledge.

Dicer · Dec 7, 2017

That seems like a pretty sharp bump...

Luchashaq · Dec 7, 2017

So good for the biggest donation receiving patreons and sucks for everyone else.

Going to be canceling like a dozen $1 pledges since almost half of it is going to Patreon themselves now.

Tygre · Dec 7, 2017

Crossposting from the EZA thread:

This Patreon change is garbage, especially if you pledge small amounts to multiple creators.

EZA has 1872 people pledging $1. They're going to see the cost of their pledge go up by ~38% 38%! That's crazy.

Now imagine each of those EZA $1 backers back 20 Patreons at 1$ each, they get to pay $27.58 after the changes

Someone who backs just EZA for $20 will instead pay just $20.93. That's an incentive of $7 to stop pledging to lots of people and start pledging to just one.

So this change is going to lead to mass consolidation, and any Patreons that rely on thousands of small backers over hundreds of big backers will suffer.

In fact this is the sort of move that can destabilise an entire platform, so I wouldn't be surprised to see everyone on Patreon suffer.

Just_a_Mouse · Dec 7, 2017

This is a really poor move by Patreon.

Hentai · Dec 7, 2017

Seems greedy.

John Dunbar · Dec 7, 2017

Luchashaq said:
So good for the biggest donation receiving patreons and sucks for everyone else.

Going to be canceling like a dozen $1 pledges since almost half of it is going to Patreon themselves now.

unless i am mistaken, doesn't this mean the patron now pays more than the pledge, meaning the patreon gets 1 dollar even, but the patron has to pay 1.35 and something?

Kthulhu · Dec 7, 2017

I can't afford an increase like that for most of my pledges. Don't they already take a cut? Is Patreon not profitable or something?

kami_sama · Dec 7, 2017

Really shitty move by patreon.
I have two or three $1 patreon, and now I'll have to pay, not $1, not $1.21 (what I was paying, 21% VAT yay), but 1.67, and that's more than 50% more.

Rosur · Dec 7, 2017

Moving the fees from the total pot to each user sucks...

I bet someone thought be good for patrons but they will lose users as a result of this.

Tygre · Dec 7, 2017

Kthulhu said:
I can't afford an increase like that for most of my pledges. Don't they already take a cut? Is Patreon not profitable or something?

Patreon take a 5% cut and will continue to take a 5% cut after this change. They are staggeringly, unfathomably profitable.

This change is about passing on the Credit Card / Paypal processing feeds to the patron, rather than the creator.

kami_sama said:
Really shitty move by patreon.
I have two or three $1 patreon, and now I'll have to pay, not $1, not $1.21 (what I was paying, 21% VAT yay), but 1.67, and that's more than 50% more.

Yeah, already getting smashed by ~20% VAT is bad enough, but this change means I'm going to be cutting down from ~20 Patreons to 1 or 2 Patreons tops.

Luchashaq · Dec 7, 2017

John Dunbar said:
unless i am mistaken, doesn't this mean the patron now pays more than the pledge, meaning the patreon gets 1 dollar even, but the patron has to pay 1.35 and something?

I was fine giving a buck a month to a bunch of small time creators that I don't actually follow but think they are nice and deserve support. In the past they got 85-90% of that money. Now the price "increase" doesn't matter to me, but on principal I don't want to pay Patreon 40% to give these people a buck.

If I come across someone like them in the future I'll just toss $5 in a go fund me or whatever instead of giving the buck a month through Patreon.

This is worse for these small time creators but I have no desire to prop up Patreon's already insanely rich owners.

kami_sama said:
The problem is that, why have the 35c charge on every pledge?
If I have 20 $1 pledges on the same cc, wouldn't it be 2.9% of $20 + $0.35? It's not like you need to charge the card 20 times.

Ding ding ding.

If you have 20 1$ pledges they are just going to pocket the other 19 fees.

kami_sama · Dec 7, 2017

Tygre said:
Patreon take a 5% cut and will continue to take a 5% cut after this change. They are staggeringly, unfathomably profitable.

This change is about passing on the Credit Card / Paypal processing feeds to the patron, rather than the creator.

The problem is that, why have the 35c charge on every pledge?
If I have 20 $1 pledges on the same cc, wouldn't it be 2.9% of $20 + $0.35? It's not like you need to charge the card 20 times.

take_marsh · Dec 7, 2017

Wow, that is a godawful move that screws over so many supporters. I feel terrible for those people who will lose so many supporters, including you febLey. That really sucks.

I think their publicly-provided intention of the service fee is good, but the execution is completely terrible.

Vanillalite · Dec 7, 2017

kami_sama said:
The problem is that, why have the 35c charge on every pledge?
If I have 20 $1 pledges on the same cc, wouldn't it be 2.9% of $20 + $0.35? It's not like you need to charge the card 20 times.

Bingo. Hella shady move by Patreon.

CrunchyFrog · Dec 7, 2017

Yeah I can definitely see why this would hurt a lot of current patrons. Only rationale I can think of is that Patreon must be losing hard on all those $1.00 card transaction fees and overhead. But then again how do places like Humble Bundle get by with the same or probably way more of similarly small ones without said transaction fee?

Slayven · Dec 7, 2017

Damn that is mob rates. getting them coming and going.

Tygre · Dec 7, 2017

kami_sama said:
The problem is that, why have the 35c charge on every pledge?
If I have 20 $1 pledges on the same cc, wouldn't it be 2.9% of $20 + $0.35? It's not like you need to charge the card 20 times.

Yeah, I know. I did the math like 7 posts up, it's a horrendous and ludicrous change.

I wasn't defending it, just explaining it.

SliceSabre · Dec 7, 2017

Sounds like I'm going to be cancelling some pledges then.

ReginOfFire · Dec 7, 2017

Doesnt this change hurt alot for those who pledge 1 dollar?

entremet · Dec 7, 2017

While Patreon is good, this just goes to show that content creators can't rely on these big companies alone.

mentallyinept · Dec 7, 2017

kami_sama said:
The problem is that, why have the 35c charge on every pledge?
If I have 20 $1 pledges on the same cc, wouldn't it be 2.9% of $20 + $0.35? It's not like you need to charge the card 20 times.

This is what needs to happen.

It never made much sense to charge the card separately for each pledge.

Volimar · Dec 7, 2017

Cash grab after youtube fucks over the content creators.

TarpitCarnivore · Dec 7, 2017

entremet said:
While Patreon is good, this just goes to show that content creators can't rely on these big companies alone.

Was just thinking how many of the bigger patreons move off to subscription models. A few tech writers I follow already do this. They do one free article a week and all the daily & community features are behind a subscription.

Luxorek · Dec 7, 2017

Seems greedy. I don't know much about Patreon, since I don't use it, but given how prevalent it is for YT content creators I'm sure some of them will be making videos about this soon. It's gonna mess with their livelihoods in some way after all.

Ashdroid · Dec 7, 2017

mentallyinept said:
This is what needs to happen.

It never made much sense to charge the card separately for each pledge.

They already do this. I have several pledges on one card, and they all get combined into one charge. This extra fee is pretty scummy.

TeenageFBI · Dec 7, 2017

This is a bad idea and it's making me reconsider my pledges.

JPS · Dec 7, 2017

Don't fall for this trick. The change was not made to help the creators, it was made because Patreon is greedy.

They take $0.35 per pledge, but only pay that fee once to Paypal and the credit card companies. So they earn $0.35 for every additional creator you support. They hope that we still want to support the creators and because it's only a few $ per user we will accept it - but creators should look for alternatives.

It's not good that users have to pay $1.38 + tax to give creators $0.95. Patreon should help to reduce costs of micro-transactions - instead they try to make additional profit by this trick. They take 31% fees for $1 pledges now!

You should cancel at least all $1 / $2 pledges immediately to make them realize their mistake!

Ultima_5 · Dec 7, 2017

this is really going to hurt some of my favorite things.

hopefully there's a patreon competitor at some point...

Euphony · Dec 7, 2017

I pledge a couple dollars to several patreons. This seriously sucks and I'm reconsidering if I want to keep pledging. Hopefully this gets enough backlash for them to reverse it.

CommandThrower · Dec 7, 2017

I don't support a lot of folks on Patreon for only $1, so this change won't make me cancel any of those pledges.

That said, this is a very unfortunate change.

Terra Firma · Dec 7, 2017

Crapitalism.

Deleted member 437 · Dec 7, 2017

kami_sama said:
The problem is that, why have the 35c charge on every pledge?
If I have 20 $1 pledges on the same cc, wouldn't it be 2.9% of $20 + $0.35? It's not like you need to charge the card 20 times.

Patreon isn't interested in your logic.

lastplayed · Dec 7, 2017

I wonder if it's got anything to do with YT's new "support me" option they're starting to roll out.

Squiggely · Dec 7, 2017

Used to follow the dude who set it up and his girlfriend. They made amazing music.

When Patreon was set up at some stage she basically made a cooking video with some little musical tinkles over it. (charging Patreons)

When I pointed this out, she was very unhappy. Unsubbed after that despite donating to all their previous kickstarters.

Just seemed quite greedy.

Sulik2 · Dec 7, 2017

This is to stop $1 pledges would be my guess. Patreon probably loses money on the credit card fees for those.

Tregard · Dec 7, 2017

Really bad move which looks to simplify things but actually really overcomplicates everything.

Ultima_5 said:
this is really going to hurt some of my favorite things.

hopefully there's a patreon competitor at some point...

I think Kickstarter is working on something similar called "Drip"?

Deleted member 7156 · Dec 7, 2017

Sulik2 said:
This is to stop $1 pledges would be my guess. Patreon probably loses money on the credit card fees for those.

If that was the case they could add the fee once per monthly charge, as noted above, they already combine multiple pledges into a single charge.

Ashdroid said:
They already do this. I have several pledges on one card, and they all get combined into one charge. This extra fee is pretty scummy.

HeyNay · Dec 7, 2017

JPS said:
You should cancel at least all $1 / $2 pledges immediately to make them realize their mistake!

Yes, punish the creators for Patreon's choices. I can't say I agree with this move, but I'm not about to cancel any pledges over it. Nor am I hoping any of my patrons leave me because of it - although I'm sure some will. People like to talk about greed, but Patreon as a company deserves to grow and make money for their services. It's more a matter of how they split costs among the users, not just greed.

JPS · Dec 7, 2017

Extollere said:
Yes, punish the creators for Patreon's choices. I can't say I agree with this move, but I'm not about to cancel any pledges over it. Nor am I hoping any of my patrons leave me because of it - although I'm sure some will. People like to talk about greed, but Patreon as a company deserves to grow and make money for their services. It's more a matter of how they split costs among the users, not just greed.

I will support creators using other methods. It's not worth it to give 31% to patreon - that doesn't help creators. If you are a creator you should try to find alternatives how your supporters can send you money with less fees. The idea of Patreon was to bundle micro-payments to reduce fees. This change contradicts that idea and makes Patreon obsolete for smaller pledges.

TinfoilHatsROn · Dec 7, 2017

Wow, that is disgustingly greedy. Sites and projects I love, like EZA, are going to suffer because of this. What the hell Patreon??

Lain · Dec 7, 2017

Ridiculous change. Together with the other change in regard to sexual content some time ago I'm disliking Patreon more and more.

RPG_Fanatic · Dec 7, 2017

Wow, that sounds bad. First Youtube, now this. Is Twitch next.

Hat22 · Dec 7, 2017

How hard is it to setup a website that allows creators to receive monthly donations? Individual creators may start just making their own sites or using a competing platform.

Japan already has several sites that provide the exact same service as Patreon.

They're policing people that receive donations for wrongthink and "offensive content" and now want more money? Seems like they're pushing customers away intentionally.

gozu · Dec 7, 2017

Patreon is just following their natural human greed. Charge as much as the market can bear. Valve does the same with Steam. Apple does it with the App store. Google does it with the play store. Kickstarter does it.

We can't criticize one without criticizing the others, I think. I criticize them all. Many people think I'm too harsh. I don't feel harsh.

Polk · Dec 7, 2017

TinfoilHatsROn said:
Wow, that is disgustingly greedy. Sites and projects I love, like EZA, are going to suffer because of this. What the hell Patreon??

~~Yeah, half of Jim Sterling's patrons pay $1.~~
Wait, I was wrong. But avarage donation is $2 though, so there are plenty of $1 people there for sure.

Kthulhu · Dec 7, 2017

What I don't understand is why it isn't just a flat rate? Doesn't having a percentage disincentivize larger donations?

Vanillalite · Dec 7, 2017

Kthulhu said:
What I don't understand is why it isn't just a flat rate? Doesn't having a percentage disincentivize larger donations?

Percentage (if in theory this is what it's for) is how you'd calculate something like this to cover CC processing.

Patreon service fees about to change on Dec. 18th 2017

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