Patreon have fucked this whole thing up
Okay.
Thanks to fucking Patreon fucking around with a perfectly good system and fucking it all to fucking hell, things have to change here. No longer can we do it the nice, simple, easy way we used to. You pledge $1 and you get access to everything that i make available for patrons only. No no no, far too sane.
Instead we now have this fucking stupid new system of memberships, in which you can either be a free member (which just means basically that you follow me on this site) and you don't get anything I make available to paid members.
So, from now on, if you want access to my extras, you will have to become a paid member. I suppose this will be instead of the monthly pledges that used to entitle you to my exclusive content? I'm not sure. Try as I might, I cannot make sense of fucking Patreon's useless 'explanation' of this new fucking system.
Patreon automatically set the amount you have to pay for a paid membership to $5 a month so I have changed this. A paid membership of my Patreon is now $1 a month.
Does this mean that I will now get only a dollar from people who used to send me more than that? I have no fucking idea. I guess I'll see!
Thanks Patreon. Thanks a fucking bunch.
Just. Fucking. Great.
Comments (8)
As an aside: have you ever looked into Ghost? They have their pros and cons, as well, but they are owned by a nonprofit foundation, so they have less of an incentive to suck. (If you just want to give people the ability to give you money, Liberapay is also an option, but it explicitly precludes use for paywalls.)
It’s not any clearer on my end. It says that my membership tier is “Member”, but it also prompts me to join the “Member” membership tier. If it’s any comfort I’ve heard Substack isn’t much better. (Patreon is particularly bad at text posts, and Substack is particularly bad at podcasts. Both suck at juggling free and paid tiers.)
My membership was more than $1, which is currently what I will be charged on November first. That they took away the custom pledge, is just shooting themselves in the foot. I’ll try to figure out how to adjust it from my end. This must be so fucking frustrating for you and every creator not at the very top tier 🤬
I’ve seen other Patreon creators offer multiple higher tiers with no additional benefits, just the ability to pay more money.
It's almost as if a company operating within the context of a capitalist system isn't the optimal way for creators and their admirers to associate with one another. But it surely couldn't be that, could it?
I don’t think this is actually a significant change on the user end, so I wouldn’t worry too much. Patreon is attempting a more general shift into being a one-stop Independent Content Creators hub, and so is renaming a bunch of shit and adding new features, but I don’t think it’s disrupting existing Patron relationships.
I mean... I wanted to assume as much but there is no clarity on what this will translate to in practice anywhere in the 'help' section!
I cannot get over how bad this platform is for both creators & patrons. Here is a site with actual cashflow (as opposed to the usual tech-bro smoke & mirrors) & they still cannot achieve a basic standard of usability