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How to compete with Patreon

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Re: How to compete with Patreon

#41

Post by mattdesl »

Crypto could provide a competitive edge to certain features in Patreon (and Bandcamp).

- Instead of 4-7% payment processing fees, it can be effectively zero[1]

- Instead of 8-12% fees (or 15% in case of Bandcamp), crypto industry standards tend to be in the 0-5% range. It’s not always clear to me as a creator and patron why such a significant amount of value needs to be captured for a digital asset sale.

- Users of the platform could be given more control such as forking the OSS protocol if the core devs go off the rails or try to extract more than what users feel it’s worth. This is especially interesting given the recent polarizing changes to Patreon and Bandcamp’s business structures.

- Settlement times can be measured in minutes or hours rather than days, weeks, or months.

- Anonymity and local-first data privacy could be achieved, at least theoretically. Practically, very few L2s have yet to reach complete privacy using zero knowledge proofs and related cryptography.

- Mitigating centralizing factors such as Patreon’s control over what is a morally acceptable revenue stream. Content like NSFW art might be currently acceptable, but this could change on a dime if the company decides to change its values.

Subscription and recurring payments are notoriously difficult in crypto, but “by-work” as the author puts it, i.e. “microtransactions per each published digital object” is already happening in crypto and with much lower rates than Patreon et al[2].

[1] https://l2fees.info/

[2] https://teia.art/about

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#42

Post by pjc50 »

mattdesl wrote: post #41

Crypto could provide a competitive edge to certain features in Patreon (and Bandcamp). - Instead of 4-7% payment processing fees, it can be effectively zero[1] - Instead of 8-12% fees (or 15% in case of Bandcamp), crypto industry standards tend to be in the 0-5% range. It’s not always clear to me as a creator and patron why such a significant amount of value needs to be captured for a digital asset sale. - Users of t…

The real feature of centralized services is anti-fraud. Conversely, the real service of crypto is easy to commit, hard to trace, irreversible fraud.

(also, you've missed all the points in the original article which crypto does not provide!)

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#43

Post by braza »

mattdesl wrote: post #41

Crypto could provide a competitive edge to certain features in Patreon (and Bandcamp). - Instead of 4-7% payment processing fees, it can be effectively zero[1] - Instead of 8-12% fees (or 15% in case of Bandcamp), crypto industry standards tend to be in the 0-5% range. It’s not always clear to me as a creator and patron why such a significant amount of value needs to be captured for a digital asset sale. - Users of t…

I think this is a great idea, but at least for Crypto the issue is the ergonomics because it needs to be (1) convenient for the creator, (2) convenient for the payer, (3) offer liquidity/withdrawn venues for both parties. All of this discarding the extra friction to make it operational (QR codes with the codes would help here, but I am not sure).

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#44

Post by viraptor »

braza wrote: post #38
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…

> nobody has cracked microtransactions It's hard to agree on this one. Personal anecdote: In 2010's I worked in a micropayments broker linked with all telecom companies. The whole thing was: that NSFW creators used a shared SMS shared code (i.e. a SMS number that receives messages for several creators and the code (for instance HNCODE25) was used to move money to a balance account) and for each of the payments that p…

People like the service that the middle man provides. They may not like the middle man, the fees, etc. but tell someone that "your transactions are not reversible, if you lost your money that sucks I guess, even if we messed up" and they will be happy to pay that transaction fee with another provider instead. Even with the small amounts, you either have to approve each transaction (which leads to another category of scams), or trust someone with access to your account.

If you care about spending just $2/mth and not more... that may not be a risk you wanna take.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#45

Post by kodra »

mattdesl wrote: post #41

Crypto could provide a competitive edge to certain features in Patreon (and Bandcamp). - Instead of 4-7% payment processing fees, it can be effectively zero[1] - Instead of 8-12% fees (or 15% in case of Bandcamp), crypto industry standards tend to be in the 0-5% range. It’s not always clear to me as a creator and patron why such a significant amount of value needs to be captured for a digital asset sale. - Users of t…

Patreon creators actively voted against crypto.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#46

Post by pjc50 »

braza wrote: post #38
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…

> nobody has cracked microtransactions It's hard to agree on this one. Personal anecdote: In 2010's I worked in a micropayments broker linked with all telecom companies. The whole thing was: that NSFW creators used a shared SMS shared code (i.e. a SMS number that receives messages for several creators and the code (for instance HNCODE25) was used to move money to a balance account) and for each of the payments that p…

Under what circumstances can people be banned from PIX?

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#47

Post by shakesbeard »

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…

I loved Flattr ~10 years ago. You said "I have $40/month" and then these funds were allocated based on which things you flattr'd during the month (there were little buttons on the websites/blogs). Of course you could also say "include this content creator every month".

It was so simple and elegant. As a consumer I had cost control, too. Plus there were no micro-transactions, only one charge to me.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#48

Post by BlueTemplar »

charcircuit wrote: post #16

There are patreon competitors. Just none of them have a pay by work feature. Consumers likely prefer a predictable expense so there isn't that much of a demand to do it that way.

There are, Tipeee is one as the author edited in.

> Part of what made Patreon explosively successful, in the first place, was that Patreon had apparently cracked the code on one of the hardest problems on the internet: micropayments.

> By the time Patreon had come along people had been discussing the problem of micropayments on the internet for at least two decades.

I guess the author missed the years where Flattr buttons were popping up on every website, blog, and even comment ?

Flattr 1.0 seems to have been killed by a combination of the 2013 Twitter APIpocalypse, being €-first, and not being based in the Silicon Valley :

https://blog.hsnyc.co/post/flattr-works/

https://thenextweb.com/news/flattr-twitter-payments-ban

Then Flattr 2.0 tried again :

https://www.engadget.com/2017-10-24-adblock-plus-relaunches-...

And I doubt that Flattr was even the first to do the "bundling" trick, heck this is probably also what made the Minitel so successful ?

But as you can see it works in the opposite way : the patrons set a specific sum of money to be distributed each month, which then gets redistributed depending on their engagement with some or other creator (which you can decide to manually boost).

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#49

Post by pjc50 »

hknmtt wrote: post #27
teraflop wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

"publishers" is the keyword here. You have answered your own question.

Patreon is effectively the publisher here? Again, they are already doing it which makes your assertion of illegality questionable. What jurisdiction are you, Germany?

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#50

Post by BlueTemplar »

mattdesl wrote: post #41

Crypto could provide a competitive edge to certain features in Patreon (and Bandcamp). - Instead of 4-7% payment processing fees, it can be effectively zero[1] - Instead of 8-12% fees (or 15% in case of Bandcamp), crypto industry standards tend to be in the 0-5% range. It’s not always clear to me as a creator and patron why such a significant amount of value needs to be captured for a digital asset sale. - Users of t…

Last I checked, NSFW art wasn't currently acceptable, payment processors would refuse to deal with you... so how do the likes of Patreon and OnlyFans managed to get a pass ?
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