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> In March, Patreon wrote in a blog post, “Not only are patrons not leaving the platform, we’ve even seen many of them upgrade their tiers to support their favorite creators during this challenging time.” Additionally, the average income for creators was 60% higher in March than in previous months, according to the company. > Around that same time, however, Patreon said it saw patrons exiting the platform more than u…
They're not saying that more people are leaving than usual. They are saying that of the people leaving, more are offering financial hardship as a reason for leaving, than usual.
A corollary would be that the % of people leaving for reasons other than financial hardship has decreased.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In March most of the world went from "everything's fine here, situation normal" to shooting out the radio and diving head first into a trash compactor. That might have affected a few things.
What does shooting out the radio mean?
There are lots of independent artists running Pateron accounts with 200-5000 patrons. Fans sign up to support them but also to get access to their library of content.
Patreon provides a piss-poor UX for getting to this content. There is no list of content. There just "here's the stream of posts by the artist". The stream is JavaScript driven so if you want to go 100 posts back you have to page through multiple pages of posts. If you want to do it again tomorrow, or if the site crashes which it does, you have to start over at post 1 and page through again.
It's telling that so many artists use google drive, dropbox, mediafire, or mega to distribute their works. This seems like money Pateron is leaving on the table if they'd provide for a similar service at similar prices. They do provide a way to upload media but the UX is awful compared to Mega which has arguably the superior UX of those 5 options.
Worse, because these artists are using these separate services there is no way to limit who accesses them. In other words a bad user can share the links with others where as if they did this through patreon you'd have to log in to access the media. Of course bad users can still share the media they downloaded in other ways.
Further, and I don't know if this has been fixed, but I know what one time they only billed once month so bad users would sign up in the middle of the month, download everything, then cancel their patronage and avoid having to pay at all.
I can certainly imagine a service that's significantly better Patreon for this use case.
Let me also add discoverabilty is horrible. Maybe this is mostly on the artists but the #1 way I find one is off of patreon. Compare to say youtube where the #1 way I find anyone is on youtube itself.
And I can't help but suspect that this realization necessitates changing, if not the business model, the business strategy. Patreon in 2017 is fine with Chapo Trap House and Amanda Palmer as the top moneymakers; Patreon in 2020 needs the next Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga. (Better yet, the current Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga.) That doesn't mean they have to actively drive out the podcasters and comics nerds and furries, but it probably means they have to put all their resources into going after whales.
This company never made sense to me from a “venture scale” perspective. It’s big, sure, but are the financials really ever going to be strong enough to go public? I guess I don’t see it. Also annoying to basically admit that layoffs were basically avoidable given the “strong cash position” but made anyway to give the company a little more runway. Doesn’t look too great.
I also think there's a fundamental conflict in their business model. Their nominal goal is to deliver maximum financial support to independent artists, etc. But especially as they go for IPO, their interest is using platform leverage to extract maximum cash from those same independent artists. Personally, I've been using them to support creators for more than 5 years now, so I really believe in the model. But neither…
> In March, Patreon wrote in a blog post, “Not only are patrons not leaving the platform, we’ve even seen many of them upgrade their tiers to support their favorite creators during this challenging time.” Additionally, the average income for creators was 60% higher in March than in previous months, according to the company. > Around that same time, however, Patreon said it saw patrons exiting the platform more than u…
Or something like that perhaps.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is guesswork. Facts: They raised a $60m D in July 2019. Guesses: Patreon loses money (ie, they're a startup). This may be due to solely due to international, the use of the round D, or not. Either way, they -- much like the startup I run -- are immediately planning how to go 24-36 months without any additional investor cash. Because your investors will still expect you to meet growth targets to get that next rou…
Although that makes sense as to why they may cut, none of that addresses the two statements the grandparent quoted, though. They wrote in a blog post in March that patrons are not leaving the platform, and then at the same time they apparently reported that they were in fact leaving. Which is it?
I also suspect some of that type of reporting may lag, and if a ceo or finance team orders it to be shown daily, may be surprised at what a week or two of reporting lag does in the time of the aforementioned events.
I have no idea about the financials of Patreon but their site leaves so much room for improvement. It's actually pretty awful. There are lots of independent artists running Pateron accounts with 200-5000 patrons. Fans sign up to support them but also to get access to their library of content. Patreon provides a piss-poor UX for getting to this content. There is no list of content. There just "here's the stream of pos…
Scrolling down the stream of a large creator brings down my i7 Macbook Pro to its knees. That should not be happening at all.
Finally, Patreon's 'no refund whatsoever' policy is acceptable for donation jars, but with the growth of creators offering $100-$250+ tiers, it is only going to hurt Patreon and its brand, and possibly in contravention of consumer protection laws in many countries (including Australia). When there is an explicit promise to provide XYZ in exchange for $$$, you need to fulfil that promise.
Yes, sellers hate PayPal disputes and chargebacks, but there's a reason why buyers overwhelmingly prefer PayPal and most businesses see a substantial uplift when integrating it: customers feel more confident!
The reality is that small artists and creators are often unreliable, and if patrons feel like they're scammed or unreliable (e.g. pledge $50 for a t-shirt, do not get t-shirt, patreon support tells them there's nothing they can do), that's only going turn away patrons for life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not really representative. If you sort by publically available earnings, you can see 100 Patreons pulling in $10k/month, another 100 making $5k/month, then another making $3/month. the rest are private. Assuming this is a representative distribution of the top 1000 (and I bet it's actually higher!): - $10k/month * 300 + $5k/month * 300 + $3k/month * 400 - ~$285k/month for Patron just from the official cut On t…
Honestly, $600k/month for 300 knowledge workers is horrible revenue if growth and margin aren't on the right track. This is more like a "20-30 pretty decent consultants in a second-tier American city" number.