Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

thoughts.jatan.space

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 351 posts

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#91

Post by uptime »

noirbot wrote: post #61
tootie wrote: post #2

Apple take 30%. You have to understand that you're not paying just for the service, but the reach. You can DIY your donation platform and the tech side isn't rocket science, the issue that platforms like Patreon and Apple have access to orders of magnitude more users than you can ever generate on your own.

I don't think this is exactly right. As other commenters point out, Patreon does nothing to help people find new stuff - what Patreon really provides is a sort of escrow service for subscriptions and payments. The value they offer me as someone who subscribes to things through them is that I know that Patreon doesn't really care that much if I decide to stop supporting something. My $5/month isn't worth them making i…

Yes! I tried to cancel some PRX monthlies and there was no way to do it.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#92

Post by weberer »

jeroenhd wrote: post #36

What I think is something people easily overlook with Patreon and similar platforms is that it's quite hard to make a decent profit on $1 or $5 transactions that most of Patreon's income seems to come from. They're definitely overcharging for more profit, but your margins won't be much lower if you handle payment yourself. Your 3% bank cut to receive money doesn't always work because often there's a minimum fee per t…

This is something crypto was supposed to fix. And maybe smaller coins did, but transaction costs for BTC and ETH are even higher.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#93

Post by tootie »

jfengel wrote: post #27
tootie wrote: post #2

Apple take 30%. You have to understand that you're not paying just for the service, but the reach. You can DIY your donation platform and the tech side isn't rocket science, the issue that platforms like Patreon and Apple have access to orders of magnitude more users than you can ever generate on your own.

As a developer I'm terrified of anything that handles payments. There are so many ways to do it wrong, and each exposes me or my clients to massive losses. Even well funded companies with teams for security suffer breaches daily. I'm happy to outsource anything involving money.

There's plenty of middle ground. You outsource just they payment/donate form and pay a small premium on top of merchant fee. You just to do everything on the content and marketing side yourself.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#94

Post by pilgrimfff »

bratwurst3000 wrote: post #47

I know patreon only because of youtube. Are there many creators not connected to youtube on patreon? My impression is if youtube would allow donations to creators, patreon would be dead. Am I wrong?

Diversification - Google will cut you off with no reason or recourse.

Better to distribute your earnings on a 3rd party so if you get banned from one you still have the other.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#95

Post by rchaud »

kareemsabri wrote: post #42
zippergz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What features should Patreon have? I'm not paying for website features. I am paying to support creators I like. I'd actually be happier if the platform did even less. Just get the money to the people I want to support in a low-friction manner, and get out of the way.

How can they "get out of the way" when you need to use the app to play the content? The player sucks, episode search sucks.

Creators can use ehatver they want. In one case, I was just given access to a private Google Drive folder.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#96

Post by arinlen »

jeroenhd wrote: post #36

What I think is something people easily overlook with Patreon and similar platforms is that it's quite hard to make a decent profit on $1 or $5 transactions that most of Patreon's income seems to come from. They're definitely overcharging for more profit, but your margins won't be much lower if you handle payment yourself. Your 3% bank cut to receive money doesn't always work because often there's a minimum fee per t…

> What I think is something people easily overlook with Patreon and similar platforms is that it's quite hard to make a decent profit on $1 or $5 transactions that most of Patreon's income seems to come from.

Nothing forces Patreon to take a cut for each and every donation, let alone such a hefty fee. Plenty of micropayment services charge instead a fee for transactions into and out of their system, and internal transactions don't incur any cost or transaction fee.

If Patreon insists in taking a hefty cut from each and every donation, that's a problem caused by their business model.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#97

Post by smachiz »

Nowado wrote: post #89
BurningFrog wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can "pool" individuals over time. That is, instead of $3/month you do, say, $9/quarter.

Which is going to lower conversion. Significantly. Whole reason why any service is paid monthly is because it's just makes more money over customer lifetime.

it's not really going to change the lifetime value of a customer, I bet, once they're onboarded. But it will absolutely lower conversion.

People do month to month because they don't know if they'll find value in it, it's totally no commitment.

Asking to think if I'll still like this creator in 3 months requires actual thought... and $9 feels like money whereas $3 just doesn't.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#98

Post by web007 »

michaelt wrote: post #56
zippergz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What features should Patreon have? I'm not paying for website features. I am paying to support creators I like. I'd actually be happier if the platform did even less. Just get the money to the people I want to support in a low-friction manner, and get out of the way.

Your experience with Patreon will depend on what kind of thing you're supporting. For example, if you support a Youtube channel you might continue watching on Youtube and rarely need to visit Patreon's website at all. But if you support an author who is releasing a book, three pages per day? And you're paying for early access? You'll notice there's no bookmarking / next page features. And if that author has three pri…

The author is charging more for access to the feature you want. You need to pay more to get that benefit, just like you need to pay more for early access or whatever other perks are offered.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#99

Post by sumy23 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #36

What I think is something people easily overlook with Patreon and similar platforms is that it's quite hard to make a decent profit on $1 or $5 transactions that most of Patreon's income seems to come from. They're definitely overcharging for more profit, but your margins won't be much lower if you handle payment yourself. Your 3% bank cut to receive money doesn't always work because often there's a minimum fee per t…

I ran a micro-payments platform and our solution was to have users store money in their "wallets" that they could spend on any content with minimum amounts for wallet additions. Unsurprisingly, people don't like spending more money :)

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#100

Post by adamhi »

bratwurst3000 wrote: post #47

I know patreon only because of youtube. Are there many creators not connected to youtube on patreon? My impression is if youtube would allow donations to creators, patreon would be dead. Am I wrong?

I'm not sure how much of Patreon is tied to Youtube. Anecdotally, of the ~15 creators I support on that platform, 3 of them are Youtube channels. The rest are podcasts, web comics, and blogs. Non-YT streamers and game developers are also a big segment, I believe.

Looking at the top 5 creators on Patreon[1], it seems like two of them are primarily Youtube channels. I could be wrong about that, but that's what a quick search implies to me.

In other words, it doesn't look like Patreon is exclusively or even mainly reliant on Youtube. On the other hand, if Youtube was only (let's say) 20% of their revenue, and Youtube went away, it could hurt or kill Patreon. So, maybe?

[1] https://backlinko.com/patreon-users#most-popular-creators-on...

Post reply on HN