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Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

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Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#191

Post by cowtools »

viraptor wrote: post #180
brendanyounger wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having run a B2C business with recurring monthly payments around $15, I assure you that fraud goes UP with lower payment amounts. You preferentially attract the worst possible customers who bank with the lowest common denominator banks and they charge back like crazy. Some choice moments: "Please keep my service on, I only charged back because I needed to make rent this month", "I know that wasn't my card, but that b…

There's also the issue of > with 0% low level fraud like this. It's got its own issues. For example i hope you've got a separate wallet per transaction. Otherwise someone will use their tumbled BTC to pay you and you'll get blacklisted from using it in exchanges.

I think bitcoiners already use a new address for every transaction. They call it "HD Wallets".

>Otherwise someone will use their tumbled BTC to pay you and you'll get blacklisted from using it in exchanges.

This is a non-issue for cryptocurrencies with mandatory obfuscation like monero. Worst case scenario, you swap your tainted BTC for monero[0] and take the monero to an exchange.

[0] https://github.com/comit-network/xmr-btc-swap

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#192

Post by UncleEntity »

gjvnq wrote: post #167
brendanyounger wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having run a B2C business with recurring monthly payments around $15, I assure you that fraud goes UP with lower payment amounts. You preferentially attract the worst possible customers who bank with the lowest common denominator banks and they charge back like crazy. Some choice moments: "Please keep my service on, I only charged back because I needed to make rent this month", "I know that wasn't my card, but that b…

> And it's hard to fire these customers because they come back with a different card and fake names. Perhaps it is time to start asking for government IDs before accessing customer service.

How would that work if you validly didn’t make the charge or were charged incorrectly and were calling to give them a chance to fix things?

I once had someone enter my zip code as the payment amount and completely drained my bank account at a time in my life when I somewhat enjoyed eating and if they told me I would have to send them a copy of a government issued ID before they would even talk to me I don’t even know what would have happened. Nothing good I can tell you.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#193

Post by [deleted] »

mgraczyk wrote: post #146
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…

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.

[deleted]

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#195

Post by cowtools »

karpierz wrote: post #190
rglullis wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can a customer use a stolen credit card to make payments with crypto? And how does a customer initiate a bogus chargeback on the blockchain?

If credentials are stolen, crypto or otherwise, a scammer can then use those stolen credentials to make a payment. All non-reversible transactions do is put the risk of fraud on the consumer. IE, if you buy anything with crypto and it turns out to be defective, or just not arrive, you have no recourse. You're just out the money.

>If credentials are stolen, crypto or otherwise, a scammer can then use those stolen credentials to make a payment.

Crypto credentials are not comparable to bank credentials. Crypto credentials are a public key; you still need the secret key in order to authorize a payment. Credentials are insufficient to make a crypto payment.

Bank credentials are usually just open-source information that anyone can get a hold of, and they are usually sufficient to make a bank payment.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#196

Post by david_allison »

ghostly_s wrote: post #4

This article claims Patreon's true cut is not the advertised 8-10%, but *86-83%*?? Surely this can't be true? We would have heard more people complaining about it by now.

Worked example, numbers from my Patreon, rounded for ease. Worst case is 34-41% fees, with around 14-20% from the Patreon side.

Let's say I make $25/m from Patreon. I receive 79.18% to 86.12% (processing fees, Patreon fee and currency conversion)

Withdrawing every two months via Payoneer ($10 USD fee under $500, minimum $50), I would take home $33.06 to $29.59.

Which is 34 to 41% of the total, before tax.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#197

Post by andreyk »

cowtools wrote: post #126
mertd wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Patreon's reason to exist is because "sending money p2p is hard". There is a lot of room for competition though. As a supporter, my loyalty is to the creator not to the platform.

>I don't think Patreon's reason to exist is because "sending money p2p is hard". Why do you think that? Sending money p2p is hard in a world where cryptocurrency is treated like an investment vehicle and not a payment system. >There is a lot of room for competition though. As a supporter, my loyalty is to the creator not to the platform. You don't clearly speak on behalf of most users here. "Using multiple platforms"…

IMO Patreon exists for creators to create public profile pages on which people can subscribe to support the creator on a recurring basis in return for some perks. It's (IMO) largely succesful on the basis of network effects (once you support one creator on Patreon, the friction to support another is significantly lower). Plenty of creators also have paypal 'tip jars', but I think these are significantly less effective at enabling a steady income.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#198

Post by ribosometronome »

rglullis wrote: post #178
brendanyounger wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having run a B2C business with recurring monthly payments around $15, I assure you that fraud goes UP with lower payment amounts. You preferentially attract the worst possible customers who bank with the lowest common denominator banks and they charge back like crazy. Some choice moments: "Please keep my service on, I only charged back because I needed to make rent this month", "I know that wasn't my card, but that b…

Thank you for your comment, for a moment I thought I was crazy to believe that it can make sense to have a payment system where merchants are protected. When I say the majority of anti-crypto people are privileged, it's because of this. They never got to experience life in a world where people nickel-and-dime on a 5 dollar purchase. They can not even conceive of a world where "evil" business owners have legitimate re…

>When I say the majority of anti-crypto people are privileged, it's because of this. They never got to experience life in a world where people nickel-and-dime on a 5 dollar purchase.

Ah yes, a classic case of "non-business owner privilege". Most of us are blind to how good we have it.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#199

Post by cowtools »

deanCommie wrote: post #182
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…

Patreon is also more than a payment processor. OP even calls this out - they like having different membership tiers. They're a content host for exclusive images. (Videos do tend to be offsite as unlisted Youtube videos)

So they also provide a service that imgur, catbox.moe, google drive, and others do for free?

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#200

Post by ribosometronome »

rglullis wrote: post #156
munificent wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You are thinking only from the side of a customer, who already has it easy with the existing payment networks. If you are a customer that wants to make a transaction that can be reversed, you go for the credit card. If the value of the transaction is not high enough for you to care (micropayments) or if you rather lose some money but not give away your data, you go for crypto. The problem that crypto can solve is for…

>You are thinking only from the side of a customer, who already has it easy with the existing payment networks.

And you're pretending the customer doesn't exist by saying that crypto eliminates the chance for fraud. That's clearly a lie.

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