What's going on with pledges?
Added 2017-12-09 04:02:24 +0000 UTCtl;dr The minimum amount for each person to pledge is effectively being raised slightly (35 cents), but creators are receiving a larger percentage of pledges.
It's been mentioned around in a lot of places recently, and Patreon will be mentioning it in an e-mail, but Patreon is changing how they are processing pledges. In effect, they are taking a significantly smaller percentage of all pledges, but they are also adding a 35 cent fee to each pledge.
While this is generally positive for creators, since we'll be getting a larger cut of large donations, it does mean that each person will be pledging 35 cents more for each person to whom they are pledging while the creator gets a larger cut of the donation, especially larger ones.
This affects people who have lots of $1 pledges to different creators the most. Essentially, Patreon is either rewarding people who pledge larger amounts to fewer creators or is penalizing people who pledge small amounts to many creators, depending on how you look at it. Either way, they are incentivising larger donations to fewer creators.
This change will probably have a fairly limited impact to each individual person, but I thought it only fair to mention.
Comments
Yeeeeah, the creators of Patreon have gone on record saying that they're uninterested in smaller creators making small amounts, but rather they're interested in large creators making large amounts. This is a trend I'm seeing in a lot of places on the internet. For example, on YouTube, the algorithm favors already-successful channels. I was lucky and knowledgeable enough to break through and hit that threshold. What I don't think Patreon totally realizes is that they're not just a platform for crowdfunding, they're a retailer for the positive emotional experience of giving to creators, no matter how large the contribution may be. I think that their callous understanding of contribution may be their undoing, but we'll have to see.
Fredrik Knudsen
2017-12-11 19:10:37 +0000 UTCI appreciate the heads up - but I appreciate it's going to ultimately give more to creators. You guys deserve it!
2017-12-09 21:23:29 +0000 UTCIMO it is not understandable why they do this. I personally try to give at least 1$ a month to every YouTuber I subscribed to. This adds up to around 22$ including taxes a month. This is more than I pay for Netflix and Amazon combined. Now they want me to give this 22$ to fewer creators than more? This will lead to the bigger channels getting more and the smaller ones less. And it makes me feel bad because I can not support all the channels I watch anymore if I do not raise my total pledge amount.
meisterolsen
2017-12-09 19:09:41 +0000 UTCSure thing. I just knew a lot of people were confused and I've kind of made a name for myself explaining confusing things. =P The most pain that creators are feeling is from people removing their pledges out of protest, at least from what I've seen, but I've been lucky enough to dodge any kind of exodus like that so far. It's possible that this could be a positive thing for me, but we'll have to wait and see, it's too early to be sure yet. Thank you so much for the support <3
Fredrik Knudsen
2017-12-09 04:13:54 +0000 UTC
