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How to compete with Patreon

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Re: How to compete with Patreon

#91

Post by maccard »

KronisLV wrote: post #79
viraptor wrote: post #44

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. Even with the small amounts, you either have to approve each transaction (which leads to another category of…

> 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.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#92

Post by karl42 »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #51
shakesbeard wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you miss Flattr 2.0 - a browser extension looking at your engagement ? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15557954

I do not want to support anything that optimizes for "engagement". It penalized all the really useful offerings that I use for a minute to solve my problem and then don't touch again in a long time and instead encourages addictiveness.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#93

Post by zztop44 »

defrost wrote: post #32
hknmtt wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but these are true artists that make one-off sales. It is not a business for them(not legally). Where you have no legal obligation to become a "business". Author on Patreon on the other hand cannot claim to be "opportunistic" seller. They make repeated sales there, therefore it is taxable income and therefore they must become a legal entity of some sort and abide by the legal and tax laws of the consumer tax law…

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.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#94

Post by baobabKoodaa »

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…

You make a lot of outlandish claims. I'm confused - are you claiming that Patreon is an organized crime syndicate?

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#95

Post by tester457 »

ok_dad wrote: post #23
hknmtt wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Buddy are you for real? It’s perfectly legal to sell under a fake name (or for instance, as an LLC) as long as you pay your taxes as your real identity! You need to maybe not try to replace patreon if you’re this clueless.

But can't anyone just look up the owner of the LLC, that info is public?

I believe that if someone with a patreon wants their identity to stay private, making an LLC (depending on the name of it) may backfire?

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#96

Post by kelsey9876543 »

Kye wrote: post #86
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.

I don't get the impression Russia's censorship laws are applied outside Russia. You can find tons of gay stuff on Yandex's image and video search without being coy about the search terms.

yandex left russia

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#97

Post by marcosdumay »

pjc50 wrote: post #46
braza wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

In practice you can't. Nobody required banks to implement this, they certainly didn't go out of their way to build it.

You can still have your bank account blocked by a judge.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#98

Post by asddubs »

egypturnash wrote: post #18
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 m…

SubscribeStar still features the golden one, an open neo-nazi, as one of their hand picked "success stories" on their frontpage, so I don't believe they really pivoted, if anything they expanded.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#99

Post by xcdzvyn »

kodra wrote: post #45
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.

Of course, and there was great uproar when Discord implemented linking Ethereum wallet addresses to your account - not because it's harmful, or even because it's a bad idea, but because of this pervasive concept in some internet communities that cryptocurrency is bad simply because it is.
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