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Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

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Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#141

Post by MattRix »

rglullis wrote: post #131
tpurves wrote: post #105

What many people don't realize is that the operational and customer service costs of payments don't scale with payment amount. Customers will cost almost just as frequently dispute, have questions, have problems, ask for help, attempt to defraud etc with a $1 transaction as they will a $100 or $1000 transaction. This is the real killer with micro payment schemes. Customer service costs scale more with number of payme…

> The crypto bros totally miss the point in understanding this too. I don't know which "crypto bros" you've been talking to, but as someone who is building a self-hosted payment gateway for crypto [0], the benefits from using crypto are two-fold: it eliminates the chance of fraud and it moves the cost of customer support to the merchant. Also, once again I will have to repeat that no one sane will try to completely r…

Doesn’t using crypto lead to more fraud, not less?

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#142

Post by munificent »

rglullis wrote: post #131
tpurves wrote: post #105

What many people don't realize is that the operational and customer service costs of payments don't scale with payment amount. Customers will cost almost just as frequently dispute, have questions, have problems, ask for help, attempt to defraud etc with a $1 transaction as they will a $100 or $1000 transaction. This is the real killer with micro payment schemes. Customer service costs scale more with number of payme…

> The crypto bros totally miss the point in understanding this too. I don't know which "crypto bros" you've been talking to, but as someone who is building a self-hosted payment gateway for crypto [0], the benefits from using crypto are two-fold: it eliminates the chance of fraud and it moves the cost of customer support to the merchant. Also, once again I will have to repeat that no one sane will try to completely r…

> it eliminates the chance of fraud

Declaring a priori that all transactions are legitimate doesn't eliminate fraud, it just eliminates the system's ability to handle it. Actual humans can still get victimized. The gateway just says "Lalala can't hear you not my problem."

> and it moves the cost of customer support to the merchant.

Likewise, it moves the consequences of fraud onto the victim.

> for the cases where the cost of existing processors make the transaction not viable.

I assume you realize what kind of transactions end up being nonviable for existing processors that do have fraud prevention, money laundering safeguards.

Your site says:

> When you receive a payment, the money is yours. No hold-out periods, no chargebacks, no forced refunds.

Read that from the perspective of a bad actor. That's exactly the kind of payment gateway they would want. No way for a victim to seek redress once they've sent their money. You seem to be targeting merchants that:

1. Don't want customers to be able to seek any redress when fraud occurs.

2. Are willing to deal with the overhead of customer support in order to get 1.

Hell, your site actually advertises "No KYC" as a feature! OK, so, yes, you do seem to be deliberately building a system targeting ransomware, drugs, scams, and money-laundering.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#143

Post by cultofmetatron »

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.

just use stripe, the fees are small for all the headaches you avoid. refunds are easy and can be handled from a dashbaord

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#144

Post by CJefferson »

rglullis wrote: post #131
tpurves wrote: post #105

What many people don't realize is that the operational and customer service costs of payments don't scale with payment amount. Customers will cost almost just as frequently dispute, have questions, have problems, ask for help, attempt to defraud etc with a $1 transaction as they will a $100 or $1000 transaction. This is the real killer with micro payment schemes. Customer service costs scale more with number of payme…

> The crypto bros totally miss the point in understanding this too. I don't know which "crypto bros" you've been talking to, but as someone who is building a self-hosted payment gateway for crypto [0], the benefits from using crypto are two-fold: it eliminates the chance of fraud and it moves the cost of customer support to the merchant. Also, once again I will have to repeat that no one sane will try to completely r…

You can still have fraud, can't you still get sued to return someone's tokens?

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#145

Post by CJefferson »

wmf wrote: post #118
vzqx wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how Patreon already works - they pool both incoming and outgoing donations for the month into a single transaction to reduce fees. But there are a bunch of donors who only donate $1-$3 a month to a single creator, and these incoming transactions don't benefit from pooling.

I guess the next step would be to have a monthly minimum of $10 or more. You could still split it as 10 $1 donations but at least fees would be reasonable.

I suspect patreon's hope is you onboard people with one small monthly payment, then that person will over time add more which lets them then make a useful profit on you.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#146

Post by mgraczyk »

rglullis wrote: post #131
tpurves wrote: post #105

What many people don't realize is that the operational and customer service costs of payments don't scale with payment amount. Customers will cost almost just as frequently dispute, have questions, have problems, ask for help, attempt to defraud etc with a $1 transaction as they will a $100 or $1000 transaction. This is the real killer with micro payment schemes. Customer service costs scale more with number of payme…

> The crypto bros totally miss the point in understanding this too. I don't know which "crypto bros" you've been talking to, but as someone who is building a self-hosted payment gateway for crypto [0], the benefits from using crypto are two-fold: it eliminates the chance of fraud and it moves the cost of customer support to the merchant. Also, once again I will have to repeat that no one sane will try to completely r…

As somebody who also built a crypto startup that facilitated payments (opentoken.com), crypto does not eliminate fraud. Merchants want fraud protection, they don't know how to handle it and aren't interested in taking on that business. You will end up either handling fraud in the payment layer, or your merchants will find somebody who will.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#147

Post by noasaservice »

Lets not be disingenuous.

CAPITALISM cuts deep inside creator's profits. Patreon is only one such that relies on the creative works of humans, and gatekeep while charging usurious rates for "access".

Patreon DOES cut deep, for little benefit. But so does every company that hires people. By definition, we do not get the full surplus of our labor. We get scraps, and the "job creators" (read: capitalist scam) get the lion's share of our work.

That's how capitalism works - it's a scheme where only a few at the top get the benefits of the rest of us, all the while they tell us that they deserve our benefits of work.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#148

Post by Barrin92 »

eterevsky wrote: post #135

YouTube takes 30% for "joining" the channel.

Youtube is also a genuine platform that gets you an audience and discoverability, gets you ad revenue, and hosts your content (which in the case of streaming video is very much non-trivial technically). Patreon is a donation button with a feed. It's effectively a payment processor and in most of the world the margins in that industry are a fraction of a percent.

This is Youtube vs Patreon (https://www.pymnts.com/subscriptions/2022/vimeo-raises-rates...)

"She says she began making subscriber-only Patreon content in 2020 and hosting it on Vimeo. Then came the notice from Vimeo on March 11 that van Baarle’s bandwidth usage was in the top 1% of Vimeo’s users. So if she wanted to keep hosting her content on the site, she’d need to upgrade to a custom plan that could run her as much as $3,500 a year, given a week to make changes or leave the site. The Verge noted that her experience was just one of many — numerous Patreon creators received the notice, which has resulted in “confusion and panic.”

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#149

Post by tootie »

Anx2k wrote: post #14
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.

In the case of Apple you’re really paying for access to the platform, as you don’t have a choice. But in the case of Patreon, I don’t think they offer anything in terms of reach - by this I mean I’ve never made the decision to support a creator because they were on the platform. Typically if I decide to support someone, I just go to whatever they point me to - and I think this was the authors point (especially for ve…

I think whenever HN readers deride a product because it doesn't suit them, that's not an effective argument. Like do you have any idea how strong conversion rates are on email? Or even paper mail? Stuff we all hate can be very effective at growing an audience. I honestly don't use Patreon at all and we rejected it as a platform for content monetization at my company, but I can also tell you that our first-party approach wasn't exactly a slam dunk.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#150

Post by npc12345 »

munificent wrote: post #142
rglullis wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The crypto bros totally miss the point in understanding this too. I don't know which "crypto bros" you've been talking to, but as someone who is building a self-hosted payment gateway for crypto [0], the benefits from using crypto are two-fold: it eliminates the chance of fraud and it moves the cost of customer support to the merchant. Also, once again I will have to repeat that no one sane will try to completely r…

> it eliminates the chance of fraud Declaring a priori that all transactions are legitimate doesn't eliminate fraud, it just eliminates the system's ability to handle it. Actual humans can still get victimized. The gateway just says "Lalala can't hear you not my problem." > and it moves the cost of customer support to the merchant. Likewise, it moves the consequences of fraud onto the victim. > for the cases where th…

Try zelleing a scammer, call the bank, then get back to us buddy.
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