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

331–340 of 351 posts

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#331

Post by rglullis »

karpierz wrote: post #326
cowtools wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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, a…

1) Yes, much like if someone finds your credit card number, they can't use it without your name, CVC code, and zip code. 2) It doesn't matter how secure you make it, because if your payment system is impenetrable, I'll just steal your account on some site where you've already enabled payments.

I'm trying to understand what you mean with your point (2). How do you think that a crypto wallet works? Could you walk me through a step-by-step of how it would be possible to steal "my account"? What do you mean by "account", and what do you mean by "enabling payments for a site"?

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#332

Post by Kye »

pindab0ter wrote: post #291
wodenokoto wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having never paid patronage, I don’t really know, but doesn’t patreon host a lot of content? Or where are all the paid-only content hosted?

In my limited experience the Patron only content that Patreon hosts is in the form of blog posts. The actual content is often an unlisted YouTube video or something.

You can upload any number of attachments in any format, and each one can be up to 200MB. There is no limit. I used this to great effect when I still used Patreon to host FLACs of all my music for supporters in zip archives split in 200MB volumes.

I replaced it with a simple Ko-fi shop where you can just upload anything up to your 200GB quota (if you're a Gold member): https://ko-fi.com/s/7e9f22c63b

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#333

Post by Kye »

brendanyounger wrote: post #133
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

This is why I switched to $10+ tiers on Patreon, and later, Ko-fi. Less than that and you get a lot of impulse pledges. Most of them are fine, but it only takes one person who didn't read what was on the pledge page clearly to make trouble. At $10+, you get people who are mostly there for the journey and aren't troubled if you make big changes. The flexibility is worth not getting a few bucks from people who don't read before buying.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#334

Post by Nextgrid »

unity1001 wrote: post #322
Nextgrid wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patreon is a CRUD app and something you could build in a few months and consider it done if you wanted to. The core value proposition of Patreon hasn't changed since they launched, and the business problem is still "take $$$ from people, figure out how much to pay each creator, pay out $$$ to creators". > And so many of these companies aren't even profitable, either. It's not profitable because it's an engineering pl…

> Patreon is a CRUD app and something you could build in a few months and consider it done if you wanted to. Yeah. EVERYBODY says that for EVERY single app or service that is posted on Hackernews. They could do it with even less people and funding. Yet, there doesn't seem to be anyone who actually did any such thing in a few months with 4-5 people. Apparently, real world works differently.

> Yet, there doesn't seem to be anyone who actually did any such thing in a few months with 4-5 people.

What about https://liberapay.com ?

Also, keep in mind that once a well-funded player with infinite money to spend on marketing enters a market it's often no longer worthwhile for a bootstrapped player to compete even if it's possible on technical grounds.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#335

Post by mgkimsal »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #162
Sebb767 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing forces Patreon to take a cut for each and every donation, let alone such a hefty fee. Payment processors do. Donorbox [0], which the author switched to, states their pricing. For 1$, you'll pay ~32p (Stripe)/ ~51p (PayPal) for the payment processor, so 32%-51%. For 5$, you'll pay ~40p (Stripe) or 59p (PayPal), so still 8%-12%. This is without Patreon/Donorbox having made a single dollar yet, but they do nee…

Paypal lets you do micropayment charges for 5 cents plus 5%, and I've seen other services claim to have similar numbers.

Years ago I ran a service with multiple charge points, and had 2 PayPal accounts. When the payment was under... ~$5, I'd use the micropayment account, and fallback to the 'regular' account for prices over that. I realized I was in some violation of terms with PP, but was never caught. I wasn't doing quite enough transactions to probably hit their radar, and my chargebacks were non-existent, so I was probably lucky.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#336

Post by deanCommie »

cowtools wrote: post #258
deanCommie wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

I mean, he's right. all these file-sharing services like dropbox merely exist because the general public doesn't know how to use something like bittorrent. Maybe you can grift off of that ignorance for a while, but that doesn't mean it's a sustainable business model.

I think you're missing the forest for the trees.

You can apply a variance of that philosophy onto EVERYTHING.

"Automatic transmission merely exists because the general public doesn't know how to use something like manual transmission"

"Calculators merely exist because the general public doesn't know how to use something like a slide ruler"

Note, these are analogies, I'm not saying Patreon is as innovative or world-significant as either. But it IS optimized for a very specific use case, and it does it incredibly well.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#337

Post by [deleted] »

aahortwwy wrote: post #271
Barrin92 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/sub…

Before Patreon people had direct links to donate to them on PayPal. You can still that (or use Stripe, or Ko-Fi, or whatever). So why do people use Patreon? The answer to that is why Patreon can charge what they do.

[deleted]

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#338

Post by crtasm »

unity1001 wrote: post #314
lazypenguin wrote: post #62

I never understood Patreon taking a % of money earned from creators. Seems unreasonable to me. I use Ko-Fi which has an optional “gold tier” with a fixed monthly price for more features. It also has an option for you to contribute a % of proceeds to Ko-Fi if you want. I happily paid for gold. https://ko-fi.com/

> I never understood Patreon taking a % of money earned from creators Possibly because you are not processing and remitting EU VAT and other digital international taxes which you should. Actually, its doubtful that a lot of people who engage in such creator activities are even aware that they should need to file taxes for that kind of income in the first place, leave aside process digital tax. Patreon handles all of…

Patreon could also decide to disable your account. What % of problem payments will they accept before wanting to speak to you about it? I don't imagine it's a massive amount higher than 5%.

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#339

Post by compuguy »

tatertots1234 wrote: post #293
KallDrexx wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only works if all "input parameters" involved in the transaction are verifyably on chain. If I'm buying a physical good with crypto there's no way you can write a smart contract that verifies I did indeed get the good I paid for. Oracles don't count because that's just kicking the can to a different level (how do I dispute the oracle saying something happened that didn't).

Many Patreon payments are simple donations, or gated access to digital media. These can be achieved with smart contract functionality to mitigate the need for costly payment processing.

Yes though I would point out that smart contracts require some knowledge of coding knowledge to implement....

Re: Patreon cuts deep inside creators’ pockets

#340

Post by compuguy »

KallDrexx wrote: post #280
meowkit wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I pay for a good or service via crypto and it is not delivered satisfactorily In this vague hypothetical situation, what a lot of crypto folk would tell you is that you should use a smart contract, and not a regular transaction, to pay. Hypothetically the contract/network will act as an escrow agent, and would only complete the transaction when all input parameters are true AKA all parties are "satisfied". The s…

That only works if all "input parameters" involved in the transaction are verifyably on chain. If I'm buying a physical good with crypto there's no way you can write a smart contract that verifies I did indeed get the good I paid for. Oracles don't count because that's just kicking the can to a different level (how do I dispute the oracle saying something happened that didn't).

Exactly. On top of that and the high transaction fees, it's more complicated to do a Patreon like service with Crypto than just work with the imperfect financial systems we have now....
Post reply on HN