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How to compete with Patreon

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Re: How to compete with Patreon

#211

Post by lolinder »

hknmtt wrote: post #147
lolinder wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am actually developing a platform to compete with pateon. This was you in the original post. If you consider Patreon a competitor, then you need to understand their business model far better than you apparently do. You don't need to copy them, but you do need to understand them. You cannot compete with an established company that you have given zero effort to understand.

No, you don't. That would be simply copying them and going head to head against them. I am doing neither. Just because I am taking the general idea of selling digital content does not mean I have to know what exactly patreon does or or how it does it or that I have to do the same thing. It is like complaining that Yahoo mail isn't exactly the same as gmail. Or Office365 is not the same as google docs. The general ide…

I'm explicitly not saying that you should copy them, I'm saying you should understand them. What makes them tick? Why did people choose them? What do they do well? What do they do poorly?

The fact that you're having such a hard time understanding the difference between researching your competition and copying them is further proof that you aren't ready to be running a startup—you have a lot to learn about business before you're going to get anywhere. If you're dead set on continuing, it would be a good idea to learn a bit of humility and consider that maybe, just maybe, the dozen-or-so people on a startup forum telling you that you're wrong might know something you don't.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#212

Post by lolinder »

fluxem wrote: post #190

I'm not convinced by the arguments. Do the majority of creators want anonymity? I don't think so. They can set up a company and hide behind it if they do. Being an anonymous platform invites tax evasion and money laundering. Do you really want to deal with that? Why would I open up an API so that competitors can swoop in? What benefit that would provide to me? No one will use API over UI. The author clearly wants a d…

> Do the majority of creators want anonymity? I don't think so. They can set up a company and hide behind it if they do. Being an anonymous platform invites tax evasion and money laundering. Do you really want to deal with that?

You're completely misunderstanding their argument about pseudonymity. Patreon isn't magically exempt from KYC, they do have the real life identity of the creator. There's no legal reason why the patrons need to know everything that the company knows.

From the article:

> What that actually means is the platform has to allow creators (the people who charge money) to be pseudonymous (to use their stage name or pen names) in all of their interactions with their patrons (the people paying the money), and the platform, which is legally required to know the legal identity of the creator and have on file their relevant tax ID numbers (e.g. SSN in the US), needs to keep that legal identity confidential.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#213

Post by smeej »

timbit42 wrote: post #115
smeej wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even granting that those things do apply, there's another major hurdle for any platform that would try to do this with crypto: You can't autobill. Every time you want a payment, you need a signature from the sending wallet. The closest you can get is a smart contract where someone pre-loads a certain amount of money and it trickles out as the months/works roll out, but it will eventually deplete. Then what? Subscript…

You seem to mean Bitcoin when you say crypto. Other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum can do autobill.

Only of a pre-funded wallet. It's still different from a credit card. With a credit card, someone else fronts the money and bills me later. Any system that tried to do this on crypto would just be a glorified way of "being a credit card that accepted ETH (or whatever else) for payment."

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#214

Post by joseda-hg »

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.

There's a non zero amount of hardcore artists that kind off manage to avoid patreon's restrictions, I've not looked too deep into it, but at least one does it by making all the explicits public, the patreon rewards are mainly WIP's before they're too graphic or coaching and crediting without showing anything

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#215

Post by kylebenzle »

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.…

Your comment and this post are 100% there for a pateron killer.

Platform that charges "per work" AND automatically does the paperwork for taxes that makes it a gift, not income.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#216

Post by kylebenzle »

Applejinx wrote: post #179
sebzim4500 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't, not the slightest amount, and I still don't try to convince the IRS that my sole source of income is 'a gift'. (not counting the pathetically small YouTube revenue) It doesn't ACT like 'a gift', it acts like a paycheck. If a guy gets paid by a car dealership because he's the owner's kid without having to do anything, the IRS doesn't care whether he has to work for real but it very much cares whether he pays…

But we have a specific word, patronage, to describe a payment that is specifically NOT for work, and of course a platform named for that my might reasonable consider payments on it patronage not payment for work.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#217

Post by defrost »

zztop44 wrote: post #93
defrost wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With two decades of performance and album sales, an 18 year hiatus and a recent reunion you can hardly accuse TISM of "one-off" sales. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TISM The key here is that neither Humphrey B. Flaubert nor Eugene de la Hot Croix Bun were filing tax returns via their nom de guerre's.

Just absolutely loving that TISM is popping up here. They’re the first thing I thought of in this thread too.

TISM made me the Amway sales rep that I am today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxoODPQ4CTM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijx_tT5lCDY

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#218

Post by kalleboo »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #48
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 bu…

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

I mean I sure did. When Flattr was announced I loved the idea, and promised that I'd sign up the second I saw a flattr button on a blog post I liked.

I never once saw a Flattr button outside of brokep's own blog.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#219

Post by meristohm »

I would more-readily give money to support artists if they were very transparent about their finances and how much they wanted to earn.

Say my (made up) target is $50,000 a year, and if my patrons reached this goal, any further donations would cause everyone's to decrease so the ceiling was maintained OR the overflow would go, transparently, to other artists I supprted, like runoff voting. I don't like the feeling of throwing money to already-popular people if they're already earning enough. I know my local food shelf needs to help, and many other causes that align with my values.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#220

Post by solumunus »

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.…

In nearly every case, it’s obviously not a gift. Every single time I’ve ever subscribed to someone on Patreon is because I’m purchasing a subscription for extra content.
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