Good News and Bad News: Patreon Fees and Life News
Hey, everyone.
The experiment will go up tomorrow, I have been under deadline and then, all of the sudden, Heath proposed and I am engaged. This...took some time. It's a wonderful shock and the world is different today than it was yesterday. My life has been so full of upheaval these last few years. I cling to the light, and the future of our lives together.
And then, there is the news you will all be aware of. Patreon has changed its fee structure to put the burden of service charges on you rather than on me. I don't know a single creator who is in favor of this, and we certainly weren't consulted. I would much rather continue paying the fees to use this service myself. I think everyone would. It was so utterly unnecessary.
We've already lost a number of patrons and, look...I get it. This is horrible and it feels so wrong. We all hope Patreon will hear us and reverse this decision. If you can't stay, I understand.
I hope you can, and I hope they do, and I hope we can all weather this. I, like so many others, completely rely on Patreon to get by. After my divorce, I was left in a bad financial situation I am still trying to clean up. Without you guys, I honestly don't know what I would have done, except lose my house. Thank you so much. There really aren't enough thank yous.
I did crowdfunding before Patreon. Fairyland and The Omikuji Project were more work on the back end than I think most people can imagine these days. I don't want to go back to handling all that myself. It's more than most people who started out with these services in hand can imagine. But if Patreon continues these policies, I am sure other services will arise to fill the hole they've voluntarily made for no good reason I can see. This place thrives on goodwill, and this choice is the opposite of that. It is inserting a company into a relationship we have built, and making that company paramount. I don't like it. I have heard many people warn against creators speaking out against this change, but I've never much listened to warnings like that.
Whatever happens, what we have here is not about them, it's about us. Patreon is just the way we connect. It's a good service, but even good services make mistakes. I will be waiting to see how everything turns out, and focus on creating good content for you. I hope you can wait, too, though I understand if you can't. If we all have to pick up and go elsewhere, well, we've done it before. But many of us desperately hope this situation will right itself, because Patreon stands between us and a very uncertain future.
The Lab will be here, wherever here is. We will keep making glorious strangeness. This month, I will make something wonderful I can post for the lower levels of support, to show my thanks for sticking with me through this craziness, since those levels are the most affected. I will try to trust that better angels will win out. I will try not to think of that uncertain future.
In the meantime, I would ask you to write Patreon directly and tell them what you think. It's the only way to change this. If enough pressure is applied, perhaps they will listen.
This timeline sucks. You guys make my entire world possible. Thank you for giving me hope of a sustainable life, hope of supporting my family. Nothing I post could ever pay a fraction of that back.
Patreon, get it together.
Comments (35)
Congrats on the engagement, and thanks for commenting about this whole mess. I'll be sticking with my patrons at least a month or two to see how this shakes out, but please do let us all know if Drip or some other service will treat you better than Patreon is doing. :/
Congratulations! I was one of those who followed your recent advice and upped my pledge a month or two back (plus I'm one of those that gets charged an extra 19 percent VAT anyway) so the impact for me is small. I am a bit dismayed at Patreon's completely clueless rollout. And sad to see them kill off the small-dollar donation. And generally waiting for the next shoe to drop, since this seems more an act of desperation than anything thought through. But I love your writing, and plan to stick with whatever helps you write it as long as I can -- so, yeah. Still here!
Thank you so much
Congratulations! I'm so sorry that Patreon's incompetance had to cast a pall over a happy occasion, but we're wishing you and Heath all the best!
I want to add my own congratulations to the chorus. That's excellent news! I don't want to cut back on any of my pledges--there are probably a dozen more creators I would back if I could. I did the math and figured out I'd be paying at least $11.50 more per month to back everyone I back at current levels, which means I'll be cutting back on pledges somewhere. I am willing to sit tight for now and see if Patreon comes to its senses. I'll gladly follow you to another platform if you find one that works better for you.
I appreciate that more than I can say, Ian. And that's where the problem lies. It's the $1 pledges that suffer. But lower amounts were always the most reliable. I also support about 20 different people at low levels and am getting screwed on the other end as well.
Congratulations again on the engagement! And I can sorta understand where Patreon is coming from, but on the other hand it sucks so hard for everyone involved! I'm not changing my pledge to you and a few others who I really love, but to keep these pledges up, I've had to ditch a couple persons I was just supporting for 1$. I feel terrible about it, but I also gotta keep my spending in check, especially since I also pay VAT on it. :(
Huzzah for engagement! I only pledge to a few, so I'll be paying $3 more, roughly per month, if my math is correct. I'd much rather be able to send that to 3 other creators. I just read patreon's "update" to their blog post and it really doesn't clarify why they think this change is needed. At all. What stands out most to me from their post, and their thinking as expressed therein, is that “oh no, we get yelled at for this unclear issue for people who pledge using different systems (CUF, monthly, post) who don’t get why their cards were billed the way they were billed.” is the main issue they see as needing a fix. Well, my first idea is simply “maybe we should just explain this better to people, so they will *already understand when/why they’ll get billed* when they see the charges go through, since our current once-a-month billing system minimizes fees quite well.” But instead, Patreon seems to have tried to reinvent a simple machine that worked well, even if people didn’t understand why it did what it did, and new folks had to ask about it. Communication of greater clarity from Patreon may have solved their “thousands of complaints/questions” issue more or less. They don’t seem to say that the *fees imposed on folks* under the current system were poorly applied or egregious, simply that it was confusing to many people? This new system throws out the baby with the bathwater, and tries to complicatedly, *technologically* solve a problem that seems to me to be a *communication* problem at root. In doing so, they basically said, “whoops, this new system has a big flaw: more fees for everyone. guess we have to solve this new flaw rather than re-examine our supposition that Problem A needed a complicated, new techy solution.
Mazel tov on the engagement! As for the rest, well, you're worth the money it takes to let you create and produce, and I would rather I pay extra fees than force you to do it.
First and foremost: Congratulations! I am so, so happy for you, and believe that you deserve all light and goodness in your life. Regarding Patreon: I've already written to them to add my voice to the wave of feedback they must be getting. And, you know, I'm here for you, not for them, and, as you say, wherever "here" turns out to be, I'll be here. Whatever method you choose, I'll be supporting you to the best of my ability. So let's all keep writing!
Congratulations!
It's not either/or with these other services, it's both/and. It's important for our creators to have multiple revenue streams and give fans multiple opportunities to find/enjoy your work, and to give you lovely cash. --filkferengi
I'm sorry that this change coincided with my time to reduce my support from $10 back to $5 - I had temporarily upped it earlier this year to help your vet bill and other financial crises but had said that when my medical co-pays started up again (in January - I had A Year where I exceeded the max co-pays my insurance makes me pay so everything was free for several months) I would roll it back. I intend to stick with supporting my artists here, though if they offer an alternative (e.g., Unwoman has a Bandcamp subscription option) I will switch. Congratulations on your engagement!
Congrats on your engagement!
Congratulations on the engagement! I'm planning to stick around and continue supporting you here
Congrats on the wedding! The fee thing sucks, and I wrote an angry message to Patreon through their comment system. You and Amanda Palmer are my big pledges per month at $5 and $3 respectively. I do a number of $1 and $2 pledges though too. Bcs of the new fee structure, I'll probably have to drop some of my "small" pledges. :(
Firstly, congratulations! And on the fees thing, it’s really unfortunate because I know it will hurt you as creators the most - it seems like a shortsighted and clueless move. But I’ll support you here until you want to go somewhere else.
No such thing as minor support. That's the tragedy of this, it affects the small donations most.
First, congratulations on the engagement, I’m thrilled for you both! As for the rest, I couldn’t agree more. Like a lot of people I’m affected on both ends of this decision, and regardless of their intentions I think this does more harm than good to both creators and patrons. Hopefully this is something they’ll reverse, but regardless, you’ll have my (admittedly minor) support!
Oh, and congratulations!
Well, I only support two people on Patreon so I'm ok, but I admit this might make me think twice about adding more. Sounds like there are gonna be problems with either the old or new model, we need some serious troubleshooting here. Hmmm. But BY THE WAY, Congrats on having an awesome dude make a serious statement!
I feel terrible for the creators losing because of this outrageously stupid move. I seriously hope they realize their gaff and reverse this decision. It may have been motivated from a good place, but it was still a bad decision.
Christine, thank you so much, that means a lot to me.
Ian--I purposely didn't go into the details as they suck and I think people are already aware via many other posts. It's bizarre, all around, and horrifically poorly timed.
They didn't just shift the burden of fees from creators to patrons - first they increased how much fees they are incurring. So previously they added up all your contributions and made *one* credit card transaction per month. Now any all donations are *immediate* - meaning your monthly donations will start happening all over the month with multiple credit card transactions. They claim this is the #1 request they've had, but of course no one tells Patreon they are doing good as-is. IMO the largest service Patreon provided was making it possible to give someone $1 a month without it getting eaten by fees - if you did this with paypal the fee structure would look like the new one, with 40% fees. But if you gave $1-$3 to a dozen folks on Patreon the fees were reasonable until this month, because it only did one credit card transaction.
Just bumped my contribution to help with the folks leaving who can't afford this additional charge. Appreciate all the transparency on your end, and hope that Patreon gets their act together and does the right thing by the creators and patrons that make this whole concept so damned awesome.
Thank you. I hope all this sorts out. We don't need more nonsense right now.
Congratulations on your engagement!!! Thanks for writing this, I know so many people ( along with myself) are so frustrated to see this happen, and I do hope Patreon considers changing how they're planning this. Your description of them inputting a company into the relationship is totally spot on. Although I'm not a patron of yours at this time, I buy all your books and regularly give them to others. You are a talented woman who I appreciate very much.
Also, more importantly, CONGRATULATIONS. ❤️
Congratulations on the engagement!
Congratulations on the engagement! That's great news.
As I said, I'll wait to see their response. New platforms have their own issues. I'd RATHER stay here, for a host of reasons. But if I have to go...well, Patreon is just the middleman.
Hey Cat! Did you see their update to their original blog post? They went into depth about their reasoning and it was extremely helpful to me—basically, it was the most cost-effective way to stop user abuses of the system (those who pledged, got content, then deleted their pledge before getting charged) while protecting creators from getting charged astronomically higher fees. That also explains the per-pledge fee. I definitely agree that they should have consulted more of us, given a heads up so WE had the tools to explain the change to our patrons, and explained in depth from the get-go, but...here we are. Scroll to “Update: 3:57pm PST”: <a href="https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/">https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/</a>
Congrats again on the engagement! I’m sticking with you. And making lots of noise about the fee structure directly to Patreon. Have you seen the list of alternative platforms? I think I got to this link indirectly through Amal... <a href="https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5446.0" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5446.0</a>
Congratulations on your engagement! I am fortunate enough that I can afford to stick around, and I'll happily follow you to another platform if someone creates it. I'm quite curious about Kickstarter's Drip.