corablue
patreon
Regarding Patreons 'Processing Fee'
🕑 Added 2017-12-06 20:03:01 +0000 UTCToday, Patreon announced a change to the way they calculate fees in order to save Creators more money. I would like Patrons to know that I am vehemently opposed to this change. I believe Patreon is using you, effectively using emotional blackmail to raise your taxes. I will explain why below and let you know what you can do about it.
The change itself is marketed to you as a rate decrease for me. Patreon will tell you I can pay fees of up to 25%. In the interest of transparency here is the money I am paying Patreon every month. I have almost never paid more than a total of 11%. This is important to understand.
That 5-6% processing fee that they're 'removing' is about $160 that I currently pay. Here's the kicker. Instead they'll be charging you $0.35 + 2.9% for every pledge you make. Even being very generous with the math, the money they'll now rake in is over $330 from my page in processing fees alone.
This leads me to believe that the processing fee is a sham. The costs of processing transactions did not double overnight or in the last year or six months. This is a stealth increase to Patreon's service fee and they don't have the guts to tell you that. This is worse than 35 cents to me. This is a 40% rate increase to $1 Patrons. This is a shady underhanded moneygrab. I want you to know that I stand with you, my Patrons, not some service. I'm not 'excited' about a $160 paycheck if it bleeds my fans.
Patreon has disabled comments on this blog release. Patreon acknowledges that Creators like me might want to pay your fees for you, but they make it impossible for me to do so. I owe a lot to Patreon as a service, but the Patreon that uses tactics like these does not deserve what I calculate to be a 25% increase to it's gross income. Patreon is not Kickstarter. You cannot impose a 35 cent transaction fee on a service who's primary pledge is only $1.
If you feel as I do the best thing you can do is to continue to support your creators, but make your voice heard. I personally don't believe a microtransaction service can thrive when users have to worry about fees. I don't believe it's a good move when the lowest possible pledge on the site has increased from $1 to $1.40. I think at the very least Patreon has to allow me to absorb those costs for you.
That's all I got.
Comments
CiPhi
Cora, I don't really know you, but I do know that you've been altruistically honest with us and you also have the best art for MTF. You're a swell person. That is all I wanted to say.
I would be 100 percent ok with this if they bundled the months charges into one transaction but as it stands it feels like a needle to small creators.
ZePompom
It was 1$ per month? or per update?
ZePompom
That suck :-( I have mainly a lot of small pledges instead of few big ones.
Biobasher
Well, They sent me the processing fee on the 1st of this month that came up to $3.60 which, is weird because I only pledged 1 creator, for $1.
Dark NZ
I would understand and could probably live with it if it was a 2.9% + 35c across your pledges combined together, since your money going out is a single transaction and apparently that is standard credit card processing fees, but per pledge is a bit ridiculous ;A;
Desmond Fallout
Love how this comes out not suspiciously three days after net neutrality is very likely to end too.
Bashscript
Cora I stand by you and thank you for bring this to our attention. I give you money because I support the work you are doing. It is a donation, when people give money it is out of the kindness of their hearts. But you are correct people are more or less gonna drop supporting people because if they wanted to donate 2 dollars, they would have from the start.
Basically all of my pledges are $1-3. I'm probably going to cancel everything because of this BS cash grab of Patreon's applying fees to each one individually. Your stuff is great and I'll still be keeping an eye out for other ways to support, but I'm not sure I can let Patreon get away with this.
RozenKnight
Wonder if they realized they fucked up yet, if this goes through I gotta cancel a lot of things, i really cannot sustain this, they may end up backing out, but if not, I am going to be forced to back out.
ArcadeDragon
Yeah, its absolutely a cash grab. Im willing to bet a vast majority of patrons are in the $1-5 range that will end up making Patreon WAY more money than they currently do. It also hides the fact that everyone will be paying more than they currently do. I used to spend $100 a month on $1-3 pledges. I cancelled almost all of them today because that would be an additional $40 every month. I assume most people will do what I did: consolidate their Patreon expenditures to a smaller number of creators. Smaller creators who depend on very small pledges are going to get hosed, and starting a Patreon will be harder than ever since its much more expensive to pledge to multiple creators. But Patreon will make an additional 20-40% monthly. I wouldnt even care that much if they were honest. This "We're only doing this for the creators" is 100% BS. /endrant
danielsangeo
They will be sending out this information to supporters tomorrow.
Spacix
I agree Cora, this move has me considering pulled all support though the site, which is sole source of income for a few of the people I back.
Ngrasta
Thank you for sharing this information Cora. I note that Patreon didn't actively provide this information to supporters.
blazingpelt
As someone with a lot of small pledges spread out across a couple dozen creators, this is gonna end up forcing me to pull a lot of those pledges. My bill would balloon by like 20%+ with this change, and I was already looking to maintain or shrink it beforehand.
CoraBlue
While this is a well reasoned response if it were true, the fee is added per pledge, not per month. If you pledge to multiple people you pay the fee multiple times (according to Patreon's official release).
Kauko Firetale
$0.35 + 2.9% is pretty standard credit card processing fee, so nothing special there. If they're charging it once per month to the patrons, then it should definitely be more money for the creators, who were all being dinged no matter how many patrons someone was pledging to. It's not good if someone is only pledging $1 to a single person per month, but Patreon has to pay their CC processor $0.35 + 2.9% on that $1 anyway.
This is pretty frigging awful >.< I gladly soak the cost of the fees so that patrons can pay what's shown... not have to pay extra and hidden fees and... wow this is awful.
Kah
Yeah I anticipate a lot of my patrons will be dropping because if this too, but Patreon has made it clear they're not open to feedback on this matter.
Alternative yo Patreon when?
