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How to compete with Patreon

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Re: How to compete with Patreon

#11

Post by nikic »

hknmtt wrote: post #3

I am actually developing a platform to compete with pateon. And the author is quite naive in his complaints. You cannot do business and be anonymous. The tax man would eat you alive. At least outside of USA. You also need a license as sole proprietor or be incorporated as a company in order to make repetitive sales and not one-offs. So again, no anonymity whatsoever. "by works" payment model is illegal. You can recei…

> You cannot do business and be anonymous. The tax man would eat you alive. At least outside of USA. You also need a license as sole proprietor or be incorporated as a company in order to make repetitive sales and not one-offs. So again, no anonymity whatsoever.

There is no anonymity between the creator and Patreon, or between Patreon and patrons. The anonymity is between the creator and the patrons.

I don't see any reason why this would be illegal, especially as Patreon does this in countless jurisdictions.

> "by works" payment model is illegal. You can receive donations or have subscriptions or pay per view but you cannot "maybe deliver", "deliver maybe one work, maybe ten". Again, illegal as fuck.

This is a model that Patreon already supports (again in countless jurisdictions), so unless their legal counsel is completely incompetent it can hardly be "illegal as fuck".

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#12

Post by hknmtt »

nivethan wrote: post #7
hknmtt wrote: post #3

I am actually developing a platform to compete with pateon. And the author is quite naive in his complaints. You cannot do business and be anonymous. The tax man would eat you alive. At least outside of USA. You also need a license as sole proprietor or be incorporated as a company in order to make repetitive sales and not one-offs. So again, no anonymity whatsoever. "by works" payment model is illegal. You can recei…

One note, I don’t think the author is saying that the person should be anonymous but rather the way they talk to their audience should be. In the backend they will be known but for the audience they have a specific name that doesn’t have to be their full government name.

I get that but you cannot be selling anonymously as long as it is a way for you to make a living, fully or partially, and it is not a one time thing(like selling some used items on ebay or similar website). I cannot speak for all countries but I would say most have a law that requires you to get a sole proprietor license or incorporate as company when you are getting income from repeated transactions. Customers have various protections so they must know the identity of the seller. Not that they want to, mostly they don't, but by law they must be able to get that information, possible even receive an invoice that lists this information. Not to mention that if you are buying works for business purposes, VAT might get involved and other legal and tax complexities.

If you are making a platform you must make it universally usable. Just because one creator does not like or is missing some thing, you just cannot bend the platform to suit his needs. It just does not work like that.

Personally, I have solved the anonymity issue. It's not hard to do but it requires legal layering, which sounds way more complex than it actually is, but i don't want to get out my solution in here.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#13

Post by eichin »

hknmtt wrote: post #3

I am actually developing a platform to compete with pateon. And the author is quite naive in his complaints. You cannot do business and be anonymous. The tax man would eat you alive. At least outside of USA. You also need a license as sole proprietor or be incorporated as a company in order to make repetitive sales and not one-offs. So again, no anonymity whatsoever. "by works" payment model is illegal. You can recei…

The IRS and Patreon need to know who you are. Patrons don't. The article is pretty specific about the distinction. (Looks like the US is 30% of patreon's business, more than any other single country, so I'm reasonably comfortable acting like my US-specific response matters.)

Likewise, are you claiming that the "by works" model that patreon supports today is illegal?

As for the "non quid pro quo" case - as a patron I care about this one in particular - patreon does this (or at least only screws it up in minor ways), the article is just recommending that any alternative handle it too. Maybe your donation management approach handles this?

Finally, "api access to third parties without being able to monetize it" - the request isn't so much for third party access, as first party - primarily for artists, maybe optionally for patrons. (This one is a little less important if you have a broad enough range of artist-CRM options, but really, noone has before, api support for developers is a great way to let other people fail fast so you don't have to...) Also, the API in question is something slightly less sophisticated than "a single google sheet per artist", it's not going to be that expensive.

I'm definitely curious about what you come up with, especially if you get traction with artists - but only about half a dozen of the artists I support through patreon are outside the US anyway, so until you work out US support I'm probably not going to notice. Good luck, though.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#14

Post by hknmtt »

nikic wrote: post #11
hknmtt wrote: post #3

I am actually developing a platform to compete with pateon. And the author is quite naive in his complaints. You cannot do business and be anonymous. The tax man would eat you alive. At least outside of USA. You also need a license as sole proprietor or be incorporated as a company in order to make repetitive sales and not one-offs. So again, no anonymity whatsoever. "by works" payment model is illegal. You can recei…

> You cannot do business and be anonymous. The tax man would eat you alive. At least outside of USA. You also need a license as sole proprietor or be incorporated as a company in order to make repetitive sales and not one-offs. So again, no anonymity whatsoever. There is no anonymity between the creator and Patreon, or between Patreon and patrons. The anonymity is between the creator and the patrons. I don't see any…

> There is no anonymity between the creator and Patreon, or between Patreon and patrons. The anonymity is between the creator and the patrons.

that is exactly the problem. You have two relationships here: author -> patreon and author -> patrons. The first one is irrelevant, the second on is the problematic one. You cannot be anonymous in one case and not in another. That is not how business, law or taxes work - anywhere. Just because patrons do not want to know the legal identity does not mean it is legal to hide it. You could get sued for tax avoidance like that.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#15

Post by raincole »

x0x0 wrote: post #5

I think the real answer may be that patreon is, actually, a bad business; and that nobody has cracked microtransactions. Separately, while Patreon's charging changes seem boneheaded, I'd guess at least a 50% chance that they weren't driven by stupidity but rather by a CFO having a come to jesus conversation with the e-team. Driven by the fact that microtransactions run on a credit card are tough. Their giant raises m…

The author starts the article with "take Patreon's lunch money". What lunch? The one VCs fed them? Is Patreon even profitable?

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#17

Post by timthelion »

jaggederest wrote: post #6
hknmtt wrote: post #3

I am actually developing a platform to compete with pateon. And the author is quite naive in his complaints. You cannot do business and be anonymous. The tax man would eat you alive. At least outside of USA. You also need a license as sole proprietor or be incorporated as a company in order to make repetitive sales and not one-offs. So again, no anonymity whatsoever. "by works" payment model is illegal. You can recei…

> "by works" payment model is illegal. You can receive donations or have subscriptions or pay per view but you cannot "maybe deliver", "deliver maybe one work, maybe ten". Again, illegal as fuck. How can Patreon allow it then? It's a real, existing thing. If you don't deliver, you don't get paid.

By work is common. For example sales people are paid on comission. If they do 10 deals they get 10x the money. Similarly, lawyers can and do work on comission in fields like collection and tort. Farm workers are paid by piece when it comes to harvesting or planting. In tech, pen testers are often paid by exploit.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#18

Post by egypturnash »

KRAKRISMOTT wrote: post #8

OP missed the elephant in the room. Patreon is the only platform that allows you to launder softcore (nothing explicit from in front of a camera) NSFW content with legitimate payments. There is an incredible amount of erotic artwork, drawings etc. that are sold through Patreon instead of having to resort to niche adult video site payment processors.

Subscribestar has successfully pivoted from "Patreon but you can post right-wing propaganda" to "Patreon but with less restrictions on horny stuff". Patreon is slowly but surely becoming more hostile to horny stuff; right now I'm in the middle of going around with their support over horny creators having to provide some additional identity verification through a third-party site that isn't working on my computer or my phone.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#19

Post by teraflop »

hknmtt wrote: post #14
nikic wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You cannot do business and be anonymous. The tax man would eat you alive. At least outside of USA. You also need a license as sole proprietor or be incorporated as a company in order to make repetitive sales and not one-offs. So again, no anonymity whatsoever. There is no anonymity between the creator and Patreon, or between Patreon and patrons. The anonymity is between the creator and the patrons. I don't see any…

> There is no anonymity between the creator and Patreon, or between Patreon and patrons. The anonymity is between the creator and the patrons. that is exactly the problem. You have two relationships here: author -> patreon and author -> patrons. The first one is irrelevant, the second on is the problematic one. You cannot be anonymous in one case and not in another. That is not how business, law or taxes work - anywh…

Do you think it was equally illegal for publishers and bookstores to sell novels written by Richard Bachman, without revealing that that was actually a pseudonym for Stephen King?

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#20

Post by hknmtt »

x0x0 wrote: post #5

I think the real answer may be that patreon is, actually, a bad business; and that nobody has cracked microtransactions. Separately, while Patreon's charging changes seem boneheaded, I'd guess at least a 50% chance that they weren't driven by stupidity but rather by a CFO having a come to jesus conversation with the e-team. Driven by the fact that microtransactions run on a credit card are tough. Their giant raises m…

"cracking" microtransactions is trivially simple
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