Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets • Hacker News Board

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#221

Post by cuteboy19 » Sat, Jun 18, 2022, 10:33 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #216

cuteboy19 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually had the privilege of attending a seminar by the NCPI guys and someone did ask this question. The answer is different for different players in the ecosystem. But fundamentally, the actual cost per transaction is so low that it really does not matter. Visa/MasterCard are rent seeking parasites. For the apps like GPay and Amazonpay, yes it is data. But of course there is the reference implementation app that…

I hope it works out in the long run. I've seen a version of "banks do payments" before and while it started well, other banks started doing their own thing with quality degrading, and merchants needing to support more options. Until we got to the absurdity of "here's a grid of 30 bank icons, try to find yours"...

> "here's a grid of 30 bank icons, try to find yours"...

UPI exists to solve precisely that problem. It forces everyone to use a common interface. Customers can use any app they want to access the API. They don't depend on the bank for anything except the actual Credits and Debits in your account.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#222

Post by rglullis » Sat, Jun 18, 2022, 10:41 PM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #219

rglullis wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the customer does not trust the merchant, they simply don't make the payment with crypto . Why, oh why is it so hard to understand the concept of multiple alternatives ?

If you don't trust the customer, don't take their business.

Right, shoplifting doesn't exist. Movie theaters run around profitably by getting people to pay whatever they want. They even let them bring their own food. And banks give you a mortgage just because you look like such a trustworthy dude.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#223

Post by rglullis » Sat, Jun 18, 2022, 10:50 PM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #220

rglullis wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a refund is legitimate, the merchant can go on to void the purchase and initiate a refund. The point is not to have a system of final purchases , but final payments .

I sue you. The court demands you appear and return the payment. The Merchant says "No! This was crypto! No give backsies". The Merchant will discover that the state does in fact have finality on the movement of value.

The payment was final. The purchase was not. The refund is another payment.

"But the state can still compel you to pay back". Yes, sure it does. The point is that the cost of doing it now is much higher and it is enough to deter a lot of opportunistic, fraudulent behavior from consumers. This difference in cost can make or break a business.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#224

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Sat, Jun 18, 2022, 10:53 PM UTC

generalizations wrote: post #121

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 looked into this a while back with PayPal, when I was researching a business that would depend on massive quantities of $1 transactions. At the time (dunno if they still do), PayPal had a separate type of account you could sign up for with a different fee structure for transactions of that magnitude. It was pretty good.

ardour.org makes the majority of its income (approx US$200k/yr) via a PayPal micropayment account. Most of our transactions are The one downside is that if PayPal ever stops offering this, the revenue model for ardour.org will have to change, since there are really no viable alternatives.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#225

Post by doliveira » Sat, Jun 18, 2022, 10:55 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #112

Patreon shouldn't even exist. They're here because government(s) have failed so badly that they haven't put any effort into the infrastructure to trivialize the transfer of its paper between the people holding it. It's as useful a function as highways and the internet, but government failures (that lobbyists pay individuals in government to continue failing at) create room for deeply entrenched trusts paypal to be es…

Reminds of Brazil's PIX system: free instantaneous P2P money transfer, no taxes, requires just a phone number.

Thing is, it requires government regulation.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#226

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Sat, Jun 18, 2022, 10:56 PM UTC

There's an awful lot of comments here from people who seem totally unaware that PayPal offers a micropayment account type, with a completely different fee structure from a standard account. For US$1 transactions, a micropayment account saves 23c in fees.

If you're talking about or doing many transactions below US$12 and paying the standard fee structure, you're doing it wrong.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#227

Post by maccard » Sat, Jun 18, 2022, 10:57 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #124

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…

Charge backs should also be less of an issue if the purchase is $1. Same with fraud. The stakes are lower the lower the amount. Who cares? It's not worth disputing. Fire the customer if it crosses a threshold.

This is a very naive view. Stripe have an excellent page [0] on why this doesn't work. The short summary is that each chargeback will cost you $15 (plus returning the transaction), and if you have more than 100 fraudulent transactions in a month you get put on a monitoring list and if you don't bring the number down your account will be suspended. The stakes are very high for the person accepting a merchant agreement with Visa and MasterCard.

[0] https://stripe.com/docs/disputes/monitoring-programs

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#228

Post by noirbot » Sat, Jun 18, 2022, 11:01 PM UTC

whartung wrote: post #194

I appreciate there may be some international issues with this, but at least for U.S. domestic, what's wrong with folks using services such as Zelle? At least for direct gifting, vs "ordering" where you want the payment tied to the transaction.

That's unrelated to what Patreon does? I'm not even sure it's possible to do "ordering" via Patreon - it's a subscription platform, and as far as I know, most of your p2p payment platforms don't offer subscription options.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#229

Post by ezekiel68 » Sat, Jun 18, 2022, 11:01 PM UTC

The alternative platform suggested in OP, Donorbox [0], seems to require a project to be governed by a non-profit organization. At least, all of their top-level landing pages only mention this type of org. Is this true? And if so, does Patreo require the same?

[0] https://donorbox.org/memberships

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#230

Post by mdavis6890 » Sat, Jun 18, 2022, 11:02 PM UTC

e-clinton wrote: post #206

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 reason to have fees as a percentage vs a flat fee isn’t because costs scale with payment amounts, it’s because it’s a more fair way to levy fees. I can either charge everyone $3/transaction, even if the transaction itself is less than or equal to $3, or I can structure it as a percentage to encourage smaller transactions. If people think Patreon is making a killing with their fee structure, they should build a co…

Still, why is a percentage more fair? What definition of 'fair' are you using?

"If people think Patreon is making a killing with their fee structure, they should build a competitor." >> Yes! And honestly this could be applied in so many places where people like to complain, and yet nobody builds a competitor, or they do and it ends up looking like the original. So easy to complain, so hard to do better.