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Ask HN: How to create a service similar to Patreon?

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Re: Ask HN: How to create a service similar to Patreon?

#21

Post by hardwaresofton »

vincnetas wrote: post #8
hardwaresofton wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One question (since I do like shortcuts) -- what about if you have uses pay each other (through whatever means is available to them), and only act as the sort of negotiation point? Here's what I'm thinking: - user signs up - user registers x supported payment accounts (Paypal, Venmo, etc) - when a user wants to pay another user on their site, you send them to the appropriate payment provider with the details of the o…

Patreon does this automatically. I, as a patreon, do not want to be sent somewhere each month to confirm my payment.

You're saying that patreon provides this for you automatically right -- I wasn't disagreeing with that... That's part of the value that patreon provides and I recognize that.

With regards to your comment, you're right that it's inconvenient but that can be worked on (API integrations?), and even if it can't, the people who are willing to confirm monthly payments to things they support might not be 0.

Re: Ask HN: How to create a service similar to Patreon?

#22

Post by therealmarv »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #18
therealmarv wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't work for sure. Alternative: The only shortcut (which is also interesting from a technical standpoint) I know of is going with this things 100% into crypto (but not develop your own crypto currency, use established ones like BTC, XRP, LTC, ETH). I'm not a big crypto fanboy but this is an area where it shines, of course it will make your audience smaller!

Could you discuss why?

You are not directly dependent on banks, financial companies and all the regulations they have. Actually you only need to concentrate then mostly on the software side and keep sure that nothing really illegal happens on your platform (sooner or later you also need legal advice with this thing!). And it will lower your costs because no middleman needs to be payed here (except maybe you alone)

Re: Ask HN: How to create a service similar to Patreon?

#23

Post by rainydaybook »

mjfl wrote: post #4

This is a really hard problem. You do not want to have to register as a bank or hire an expensive compliance team. Use Stripe.

Does Stripe actually allow this type of use though? Does it have to be special agreement / account with them or just a regular plain stripe account?

Re: Ask HN: How to create a service similar to Patreon?

#24

Post by rainydaybook »

scarmig wrote: post #13

My advice would be to join Patreon/Stripe/some other payment services company, and realize that it isn't something a single engineer, no matter how skilled, can throw together in a week, a month, a year, or a decade.

How did Patreon start exactly? IIRC it was just two guys without major backers, I'm really curious what was their MVP like.

Re: Ask HN: How to create a service similar to Patreon?

#26

Post by makeee »

I built a patreon competitor using stripe connect. It wasn’t super successful, had a handful of creators making $20-$100/month, but it’s definitely doable without a ton of legal work. Stripe makes it pretty easy. You can set it up so payments go directly from supporter to creator’s stripe account, with a percent going to you. If you want to batch payments or have more control over funds then you actually need to collect funds and do the payouts, which makes things a bit more complex. Feel free to email me if you want to chat.

Honestly, dealing with payments is nothing compared to the amount of hand holding required to help creators set up a nice profile, pick good rewards, do a good job promoting their page, actually fulfill their rewards so they don’t lose backers, etc. It often took months of back and forth with creators to finally get their page launched. I’d avoid building a patreon competitor unless you personally know some very big creators (500k+ followers) or have a very specific niche in mind.

Re: Ask HN: How to create a service similar to Patreon?

#27

Post by dob_master »

From a short cut perspective, you could do the following:

Require each of your customers (creators) to sign up for a Stripe account and have them input into your system their processing keys. Whenever somebody wants to pay them, use their keys to process the payment and it goes directly into their Stripe account. This would offload all legal liabilities (Stripe would determine whether their business is okay to operate from a processing standpoint) and tax responsibilities fall completely on them.

Here are the drawbacks:

1) You wouldn’t be able to automatically take a percent of a creator’s billings but rather would have to calculate it and invoice them / charge their card

2) Patrons wouldn’t be able to save a credit card and use it across multiple creators

3) Your fees would be on top of the 2.9% that Stripe charges a creator which would be limited to 2.1% if you want to compete with Patreon at 5%

Re: Ask HN: How to create a service similar to Patreon?

#28

Post by hardwaresofton »

therealmarv wrote: post #22
hardwaresofton wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you discuss why?

You are not directly dependent on banks, financial companies and all the regulations they have. Actually you only need to concentrate then mostly on the software side and keep sure that nothing really illegal happens on your platform (sooner or later you also need legal advice with this thing!). And it will lower your costs because no middleman needs to be payed here (except maybe you alone)

I think I'm misreading your response, those sounds like benefits, not reasons that it definitely wouldn't work?

Re: Ask HN: How to create a service similar to Patreon?

#30

Post by benatkin »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #7
therealmarv wrote: post #5

There is absolutely no shortcut in this things. As soon as you are paying users there will be all sort of legal requirements/side effects which you need to be aware of. Starting with money laundering, taxes (yours and from your users even!), pleasing your payout provider that your content is not illegal, beeing able to payout in US&Europe or even global and ending with costs (you will probably never be able to compet…

One question (since I do like shortcuts) -- what about if you have uses pay each other (through whatever means is available to them), and only act as the sort of negotiation point? Here's what I'm thinking: - user signs up - user registers x supported payment accounts (Paypal, Venmo, etc) - when a user wants to pay another user on their site, you send them to the appropriate payment provider with the details of the o…

https://streamlabs.com/ does exactly this with PayPal. It goes directly to the streamer, and shows the name of the streamer’s PayPal account. For Chess Grandmaster Benjamin Finegold whose stream I watch on Twitch, that’s some chess education center in Atlanta. It also shows their email address and possibly a physical address, and it might show mine to them. I think the privacy issue might not make it work well for casual users like Patreon has, but for commercial users it would probably work better. I feel like I’m more likely to get my PayPal account flagged by donating to random streamers on StreamLabs than with an intermediary like Twitch or Patreon. I’m not too worried about it but I am more careful.

It also helps that tipping is just a minor feature of the product. Their product is an OBS which shows overlays and stuff in the stream, including an animation when someone leaves a tip. They also sell merchandise much like CafePress. I have a coffee mug with Hikaru Nakamura on it. Some info: https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/07/how-streamlabs-is-helping...

If you can find a way to make tipping part of a larger product/service, it seems less likely to be used for money laundering, and to be more likely to work without a huge amount of expertise in the area of payment platforms.

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