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How to compete with Patreon

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Re: How to compete with Patreon

#161

Post by notpachet »

jp57 wrote: post #151

I think it's cute that he thinks someone could build and maintain well all the things he wants for less than 5% in commission and also not pass along processing fees, on what he admits is a micropayment processor. That said, I don't understand the motivation for Patreon's decision to stop bundling payments, unless they're being forced to by issuing banks or payment processors for some reason. EDIT: Thinking about it…

> I don't understand the motivation for Patreon's decision to stop bundling payments

The way I understand it, the motivation is that they're losing money on bundled microtransactions until customers cross some monthly threshold (let's say that's the $14.29 mentioned in the article). So let's say a customer has a $1 monthly subscription to Creator A, and another $1 subscription to Creator B, adding up to a bundled $2 monthly charge to their credit card. That's apparently below the price point where the provider is able to offset the processing fees. Whereas if they have two separate $1 charges, that reduces the loss somehow (I'm not a payment processing expert and I didn't read the fine print that the author posted, so I don't understand exactly why that's the case.)

I wonder if the "solution" would be for Patreon to have a minimum subscription model, where each customer is guaranteed to pay, each month, an amount that's above the threshold required for Patreon to avoid a loss on processing fees. You sign up as a patron, and you're automatically dinged $15/mo as long as your account is active. You can choose to route those $15 to whatever creators you want, and you'll see a single line item on your bill. And then obviously you can exceed that threshold if you want to support more creators.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#162

Post by sebzim4500 »

shakesbeard wrote: post #47
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.

I think any Patreon competitor really needs to have a way for people to get access to bonus content when they pay. Even if the content isn't really worth the money, people are more likely to overpay for something they like than make a donation.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#163

Post by karaterobot »

I don't know how common it is, but Patreon's biggest selling point to me is that I already have an account there. If there was a ton of competition, with creators I help support going to ten different platforms, I don't think I would follow them—certainly not all of them. I want as few companies as possible to have my billing information, and (all else equal) I'd prefer if that company had been around for a while. That's Patreon.

And the centralization works for creators, too. I have several times discovered a creator on Patreon whose work I already appreciated, but who had not done a good job of communicating that they even had a Patreon, so I never knew about it. I only found them by accident, and pledged money to them, just because I was already on Patreon.

5% + 5% is a lot (10% if my math is right), but I'm not sure where artists get a better deal these days, at least on the internet.

Further, the Patreon interface sucks for users, and I'm sure it sucks even more for creators who have to engage with it more frequently. But, not so bad that I, personally, am looking to find another alternative.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#164

Post by efdee »

wlesieutre wrote: post #154
mannyv wrote: post #148

There's a lot of talk about tipping, consumers, etc. Being a Patron (which is what Patreon was trying to do) traditionally meant supporting someone, no matter what their output. If your tortured genius put out one work a year, so be it. If they popped out Sunflowers then even better! There doesn't have to be any quid pro quo at all. It's what we now call Basic Income financed by someone's surplus. Don't overthink it.…

When Patreon is structured as “For $5/month you get X, for $10/month you get Y, for $15/month you get Z” can you really argue it’s a gift? It’s very transactional.

I'm not sure how representative my personal data point is, but I don't really pay attention to the perks. I pick a tier based on how much money I want to send their way.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#165

Post by bigstrat2003 »

maccard wrote: post #91
KronisLV wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This might not be entirely realistic, but the idea of passing that choice on to the end user seems interest…

PayPal does this with Friends and Family. Go onto the various scam reddits and see how many people suddenly wish they hadnt listened to the seller and used friends and family instead.

There's no cure for stupid. No matter how many warning labels or hoops you put in front of the potentially dangerous option, someone will hurt themselves with it. That doesn't mean the option shouldn't exist, though.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#166

Post by hbarka »

kmeisthax wrote: post #157

There's one root cause for most, if not all of the things mentioned about Patreon in this post: Jack Conte took VC money. Neophilia is a progressive and incurable disease of venture capital. VCs aren't looking to build sustainable, profitable businesses. They are looking to buy entire market segments for later enshittification. Your job as a founder of a company asking for VC money is to construct a parallel state ar…

I wonder when Varoufakis’ introduction of the word technofeudalist got into the techie vernacular.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#167

Post by sentimentscan »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #155
mannyv wrote: post #148

There's a lot of talk about tipping, consumers, etc. Being a Patron (which is what Patreon was trying to do) traditionally meant supporting someone, no matter what their output. If your tortured genius put out one work a year, so be it. If they popped out Sunflowers then even better! There doesn't have to be any quid pro quo at all. It's what we now call Basic Income financed by someone's surplus. Don't overthink it.…

Almost all succesful creators on Patreon give you benefits for subscribing (early access to content, behind the scenes, etc.), so I don't see how you could possibly convince the IRS that it's a gift.

At EU there is a tax issue so you pay money + 23% VAT.

It isn't consider a gift as you a gaining something (access to page) so you need to pay tax on that.

This is one thing that bothers me with patronite and other platforms. I wish I could simply send a gift (without acces to anything) and not to pay another tax on already taxed money.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#168

Post by kmeisthax »

jowea wrote: post #75
egypturnash wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hahahhaa Subscribestar is Russian? Well that's gonna be fun for all the furry artists posting super-gay stuff on there once it gets big enough for the Russian government to notice.

Wonder if they will care if it's mostly a foreign audience.

Russia's MO - and the only thing they're good at - is information warfare. They don't care about the furry porn as long as it lets them propagandize the far-right in other countries.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#169

Post by kmeisthax »

zztop44 wrote: post #123
twic wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Russian government will probably subsidise them to further weaken the West.

Then they’ll be disappointed. Accepting gay stuff does not weaken any country or region.

That's not Russia's MO. Their goal is to continue funneling money to far-right westerners and having a funding platform lets them do that. Furries using it provides plausible deniability in the same way that anti-censorship activists using Tor provides deniability for CIA agents.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#170

Post by notabennett »

kmeisthax wrote: post #157

There's one root cause for most, if not all of the things mentioned about Patreon in this post: Jack Conte took VC money. Neophilia is a progressive and incurable disease of venture capital. VCs aren't looking to build sustainable, profitable businesses. They are looking to buy entire market segments for later enshittification. Your job as a founder of a company asking for VC money is to construct a parallel state ar…

Yes, and: Patreon is, at its core, a professional services provider for large YouTube artists. That's the segment it's best at supporting and the segment that needs it the most. But its valuation is based on the idea that it's going to capture some percentage of the entire creator economy.

I do think there are some specific details about Patreon's history and leadership that make it unusually bad at running an engineering organization, even for a VC-backed startup. It has some deceptively hard engineering problems and has struggled to attract, retain, and use technical leadership equal to those problems.

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