A quick note about the new Service Fee
I hear Patreon is changing their pricing structure a little, so I wanted to send you a quick note!
Up until this point, credit card fees and transaction fees came out of my side of things, in addition to Patreon's 5% cut. This is something I've accounted for in the past.
It looks like Patreon is changing things to put those transaction fees on your end, which I understand might be annoying, because now we both need to re-do our budgets! No worries if you decide to lower or delete your pledge to account for the change, as this is money I no longer have to pay.
A good reason to do things this way is that now the number shown on the page will be a little closer to what I actually take home, and things are a little more predictable for everyone.
But I am more than a little annoyed that they made this change without warning. I haven't been notified by Patreon about it even now. There's something about expecting that if you're pledging a tau amount, then it should be tau, not tau+fee, so a heads-up would have been nice!
Not sure exactly how I feel about it all, but I wanted to send you a note anyway! Here's patreon's post on the matter: https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/
Comments (31)
I tried but i can't find it could you provide me with paypal address so i can deposit small amount in advance. So that would take care of at least my contributions for the time being.
To make it plain simple: we donate a certain amount of money to our clients. Then the bank and Patreon are takeing away some percentage from that, the clients will get the rest. It does not make a difference for anyone if Patreon says the patrons pay x % fees and the clients pay y % fees. ALL fees will reduce the amount the clients get. For my part, I’m donating two clients at the moment. In November, paypal sent 30,97 € in total, in December 31,72 €. That’s fine for me. In case of very small pledges like 1 $, I see a problem too. The fee of 35 cent is just too high.
Patreon allowing pledges with payments that recur quarterly or yearly would help. Short of that, while it doesn't solve the fee change's impact on small pledges, one option for those making larger Patreon pledges is to edit their existing pledge to tack on the 2.9% + $0.35, via the Edit button at <a href="https://www.patreon.com/pledges.">https://www.patreon.com/pledges.</a> I've done this just now, and will see what happens. I'm not aware of any charge incurred for making the edit. Chris Pierik a/k/a Twitter @DigitalDeath
Here is a good analysis: <a href="https://kav2k.github.io/patreon_letter/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://kav2k.github.io/patreon_letter/</a> Hopefully patreon will rethink this or someone else will come up with a similar platform with a more reasonable fee structure.
Thomas R Jackson Dec 8 I think the Patreon move was disingenuous. Perhaps that is an unfair assessment, but it is hard to see a decent reason for this. Sure, it allows them to claim that 100% of a donation goes to the creator, but it is just a cheap accounting trick. And while I do not mind giving more to those I support, it is shocking to simply have an increased contribution tagged on to my donation. My donations should be 100% my own decision. Patreon says that they are processing $150 million in donations. So their fee income comes to $7.5 million. Maybe, if they are being so successful at raising money for creators, they should be cutting their fee percentage. I am happy to maintain my contribution to your work, even at the increased rate. But I would prefer that the old system be restored, that Patreon reduce their fee to, say, 3-4% to reflect economy of scale, and I would be fine with you moving to another platform, or direct sponsorship.
Patreon updated their blog to explain that they're planning to implement a rolling payment system option where people pay when they pledge and every month thereafter, and thus multiple small pledges will no longer be able to get combined into a single transaction. This is to fix the exploit where people pledge in order to see patron-only content, then delete before the 1st, which for some creators is a big deal (people do that here sometimes but my rewards tiers aren't too dependent on exclusive content). I still cannot fathom why they rolled out this change without explaining or giving more notice (and I still haven't received any official communications from Patreon about it at all). Anyway it sure makes small pledges less efficient... I'm going to take y'all's advice and look into other services for this use case!
Yah, this is cutting off the nose to spite the face. They could have easily come up with an alternative reward structure where you could 'lock' content based on total $'s pledged, or consecutive months following, or any number of ways. Turning 442 $1 backers away is terrible. In order to keep them paying $1/month they would have to pledge at $0.63 and you would get $0.58/each. This is unconscionable. I guess they are looking for the true 'Patron' model of ancient Greece/Rome where only the rich are the Patrons and the plebeians don't get a voice.
+1 for Liberapay. I am supporting other creators there. I don't think it has any way to do rewards, but I don't care about rewards. I just want to send a small amount of money every month to say thanks for all the great stuff you put out for free.
lower the rewards tiers by (2.9%+0.35)
One of my other $1/month creators has an account on liberapay.com. I'm moving his pledge over there to try it out.
I concur with Shmuel above. The link he posted (<a href="https://www.pretty-terrible.com/funny-money-patreon-style/)" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.pretty-terrible.com/funny-money-patreon-style/)</a> proves the real reason Patreon made this change. The math shows that the real reason Patreon has done this is too line their own pocketbooks. Even though creators get a "larger amount" per pledge, in reality less % of the money you PAY to Patreon goes to the creator. Be outraged! Contact Patreon to express your thoughts about the issue. Vi, do not remain neutral on this. This is NOT good for creators. Please consider making an alternative payment method. Many people have expressed their desire to leave Patreon because of this page. Some have even suggested alternative payment methods.
Patreon should redo this, particularly for smaller amounts it's ridiculous. However, they did email me a heads-up that this comes early this week (I'm registered as a creator even though I haven't actually done anything with it yet).
Vi, please listen to us. We are unhappy with this change from Patreon, and we want a better option. Please consider taking payments yourself. I urge everyone here to contact Patreon and express your disappointment.
"contact Patreon and express your disappointment" done
My monthly micro-donation is no longer cost effective. I will instead make a yearly donation. I wonder what would happen if Vi just asked for money via her web site. Hmmm...
Thanks for being transparent about this. I hope this doesn't have a negative knock-on effect for you and the other creators I'm supporting.
This is basically Patreon punishing people who make a lot of smaller donations to many people. The amount they pay overall will be increasing by a huge 30% thanks to this new charge.
Vi, how do we message you? I tried the icon to the top right, and clicked New Message, but it doesn't seem to know who "Vi Hart" is, and when I try to type some message content, it just flashes back to the previous screen. Using FireFox on Mac.
Any chance you could set up a Liberapay account? (i have pre-pledged there against your twitter account)
It is very disturbing that Patreon will group my $1 pledges together and bill me once, but charge me fees of 35 cents for each pledge individually. That means a whopping 37.9% fee for me! That's ridiculous. Patreon has to fix this. The surcharge should just be once per billing.
I am fine with this and indeed like it that what Vi gets is closer to the amount I intended. I guess the problem is the fixed fee for those doing many small donations. I guess the numbers just were not working for Patreon in re processing small amounts? Hope it works out for you, Vi!
The thing is, though, Patreon wasn't processing small amounts just because people were pledging small amounts: many people have lots of $1 pledges (I've seen people saying they have 200x $1 pledges in discussions of this change, and I'm sure having that many is rare, but still), but you don't get that many $1 transactions charged to your card; Patreon lumps it all and charges it only once. This means that the $0.35 that they're charging for covering their handling is money they can just pocket after your first pledge. I have only a little issue with them passing along their 2.9% average credit card processing fee, but a lot of issue with this additional fee being assessed on every one of your pledges.
You should be angry. Previously, if I gave you a dollar a month (which I do for a _lot_ of creators), you'd get 80% of what I paid. Now, I pay $1.38 and you get 95c, and while that sounds good to you, you're now getting 69% of what I pay.
Charging patrons for transaction fees is an annoying change, but I don't mind giving you a raise, Vi. You deserve it! 💜
:raisinghand: I'm honestly not really seeing the problem here. 10 day's notice is still 10 days, it's not like they did this after the fact. When it comes to the math sure it's not 1:1 new to old but I donate because I want to creators to be able to create. If I have to pay a little more to get that done then so be it. We have to remember that Patreon is not a financial institution like PayPal so they have to pay fees like the rest of us.
Yeah. "Patreon is changing things to put those transaction fees on your end" is extremely disingenuous on Patreon's part. The transaction fee until now has covered all of the pledges made by a patron in one month, and was divided among the creators supported. Patreon will now by levying that fee for each individual pledge, using the first one to offset the actual fee, and pocketing the rest. For those of us who have lots of small pledges to many creators, that means that we're getting a significant increase, and that most of it is going to Patreon. I'm giving them a couple days to change their minds, after which I'm cancelling my account. (Which I suspect is exactly what they want, eliminating all the small fry in favor of becoming a platform for bigger-ticket supporters.) For math, see here: <a href="https://www.pretty-terrible.com/funny-money-patreon-style/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.pretty-terrible.com/funny-money-patreon-style/</a>
Don't be mad about reality. Patreon takes 5%, they always have and probably always will. It's just a question of the cost of moving money around, and we're part of that issue. I'm paying once a year to reduce the overhead, I'm guessing Patreon will setup something like that soon. Money isn't free, dealing with money isn't free ...
I'll be honest here --- in their writeup they're claiming that previous fees to you amounted to 7~15%. That's crazy talk and if I knew that I would have asked for a way to paypal you. Now that I know their fees because it's on "my" end they want to take 7.81% from me to pay you at the Tau level for a year (you get 75.36 / they get 6.39). They're also taking another 5% off the top. I'm struggling to see why we should pay them this so you can manage access to notes when you post backer-level content. If you're good with it I'm good with it, but I wish they didn't show me how the sausage was made because I'd rather just pay you a flat fee and know that you'd have the ability to be your creative self in the public sphere than pay high fees for backend content
Is there any way to restructure things so that instead of paying $3.14 per month (plus a 35 cent fee each time), we can give you $3.14 × 12 once a year (and just pay that 35-cent fee once)? Or does Patreon force everyone to do things monthly?
Thanks for the tip-off.
just received an email from patreon about this thing