**Patreon is NOT rolling out its new fee structure**

If you're diseased, I'm right there with you. :) As of right now - now that they didn't go through with the fee change - it's being used in so many different ways. That's what I love about it; it's flexible and you can get creative with it. I have plans for next year that hardly involve any (conventional) rewards, which is why I was freaking out over this fee change; it would have displaced this special, weird thing I wanna try next year. I'll do everything I can to keep them from destroying the best things about Patreon; I'm awfully fond of it the way it is. :)

Danielle Corsetto

I call it Vicarious Empowerment, meaning I don't have enough to support myself but can throw a few bucks this way and that.

Keith D. Jones

I'm starting to sense that I don't think of Patreon in the way it's actually being used. In my own diseased little brain, I support people who are doing something I like and want to help them keep doing it. The whole extra gift thing for supporting via this site just kind-of breaks my brain.

Keith D. Jones

I'm 99% certain Patreon takes their 5% after the transaction fees have been deducted, regardless of how much the creator is making. I think what David meant is "odd" is the sudden change in the feeling of what you're giving. Logically, it makes sense, but Patreon built their company on this novel concept of running credit card transactions en masse, thus severely decreasing the total % of fees per patron (assuming most patrons back more than one creator - I think the average is 12 creators backed per patron). So it's nurtured this feeling of $1 and $2 pledges being a-okay on the patron side. Suddenly, you're punished for giving 10 creators $1, while your one and only $10 pledge to 1 creator is only charged a pinch more. I hope that makes sense! **edited** OH! Maybe the "5% they take" that I said earlier was unclear: I meant that Patreon takes 5% on top of what's taken out of each creator's payout to cover transaction fees. So we, as creators, retain between ~75-85% of what's pledged to us. The reason for the unpredictability in that % is that you may have a bunch of patrons who are ONLY pledging to YOU, which means their one and only $1 or $2 pledge does in fact end up with a 22-38% transaction fee (as opposed to, say, if they were sending out $80 in pledges every month, which would ring up a 3.4% total transaction fee*). *This is assuming the 2.9% + $0.35 is the actual, for-real formula that Stripe charges as a transaction fee; the argument is that it's not, which means Patreon is attempting to nickel & dime patrons for their benefit, under the guise that it's just a regular old transaction fee.

Danielle Corsetto

As to the 5% charge, I think once you get to $15, that covers the credit card processing fee for any plan. For the NPO, we decided that was the rate we would use for calculating handling fees, then adjusted all rates by that amount, so cash payments also got hit with a handling fee. Given the numbers I tend to see for support, I see why Patreon needs to address this more directly than the NPO did. Most of our numbers started at $35, so we could leave the $1 stuff in the slop of the calculation. Here that looks to be the bulk of it.

If you understand how credit card processing fees work, it's actually not odd at all, and the reason why most places that take credit cards have a minimum charge. Processing fees are a fixed fee, plus a percent. So if your fixed fee is 20 cents and your percent is 3%, the fee for a 1.00 charge is 23 cents. On the other hand a $10 charge has a fee of 50 cents. So $1.23 for the $1 contribution and $10.50 for the $10 contribution. There are other charging schemes, but when I was checking into it for an NPO, they all had some sort of fixed fee plus percentage. The nasty ones were the ones that charged you the fixed fee regardless of whether or not the charge was approved. So if Patreon wants to lower the rate, they have to bundle the charges. Which is probably way more complicated than is practical. BUT the credit card companies do their best to hide the actual fees from customers by prohibiting directly passing those fees to customers. I expect this probably had more to do with the decision than all the negative feedback they got.

Aaaahh I just re-read what I said. This: "The solution you suggested still has the possibility of letting someone get a whole month free (opposite issue: someone signs up on March 3rd; they shouldn't get the whole month of April for free)." ... is fairly inaccurate. I just realized that the "charge upfront" goes in the opposite direction of regular Patreon pledges; you're paying NOW for material that's being presented THIS CURRENT MONTH. With *my* page, for example, you pledge any ol' time of the month, and that's a promise that on the 1st of the NEXT month, that pledge will go through. I trust my patrons not to pledge-and-dash, and I have nothing to lose if they do anyway, so I like this format, but some people are offering exclusive material that they don't want to give away unless it's paid for. Understandable.

Danielle Corsetto

Thank you for being so vehemently pro-active about this here and on Twitter. Obviously, your squeaky wheel was heard. So glad I just hung out waiting to see what would happen because even at my meager pledge level, it matters to me. With any luck, next year I can add another creator or two to my mad patronizing skills. :-)

Ruth Merriam

And there _is_ "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" after all, too. There's probably some confusion/bleed over with that in the references.

Juan Chanco

Oh I definitely think they need the money, and were excited to get it. That 5% they take is super generous and I think it should be higher (spoilers: THAT is what I think they should change. Let us creators pay a reasonable fee for their service). Funny enough, I hadn't considered how much simpler it would be to fix the charge-upfront issue one of a dozen other ways! There was some talk about pro-rating the next month after a charge-upfront transaction, which I think is close to what you mean? The solution you suggested still has the possibility of letting someone get a whole month free (opposite issue: someone signs up on March 3rd; they shouldn't get the whole month of April for free). I think the best solution would be - if you keep the charge-upfront option - that your first payment covers whatever's left of the current month PLUS the full next month. Sign up March 15? Pay $1.50 upfront for what's left of March, plus all of April. And then just MAKE THAT VERY CLEAR ("Your first pledge has been adjusted to cover the rest of this month, plus the next full month. After that, your pledge amount will return to exactly what you set it to, and will go through on the first of every month that you continue to pledge." I'm sure you could make that half as long and still be clear.

Danielle Corsetto

Having worked at a dot-com way back in 2000 so have something resembling an idea of how these things can come about, I still have trouble believing the reason they gave you. They were going to get a lot of extra money out of me--for example--because I was giving--and really should reactivate--five bucks per month to a lot of people (okay, around 10 people). While I almost understand their reason for splitting up the transaction, I'm more convinced they realized there were buckets of money to be made by splitting it up and charging a per transaction fee. If the charge-up-front/first-of-the-month thing was causing confusion, then the bloody obvious thing to do is change the charge-up-front option. How about if you charge-up-front then you don't charge again until the month after? In other words, March 29th and then not again until May 1st rather than April 1st.

Keith D. Jones

OH yeah, that was EVERYONE'S problem with them. The reason for it is that they were planning on deaggregating their transactions; currently, they just run your credit card once - for the total that you're pledging to all creators for that month - and then they divvy up the pledges to the correct creators later, which is a BRILLIANT solution to the massive fees that are charged on small transactions. Supposedly their reason for wanting to run every. single. pledge. independently was because they received so many confused complaints about the 1st-of-the-month transaction schedule. When you pledge to a creator who has "charge-upfront" (I do not have this option activated, for this reason), the new patron is charged once right away, and then once on the 1st of the following month. So if you have someone who pledges on March 29th, they're charged on March 29th for that month, and THEN on April 1st for THAT month. Some people thought they were being double-charged, when really it's just a strange thing that no other companies do. Personally? I feel two things: one, they have a MILLION patrons who DO get it (or, at least, aren't so confused by it that they've left), and two, they could fix this by simply having a large pop-up window show up upon your first pledge to a charge-upfront creator that says "This pledge will go through today for [X month]. Your next pledge will go through on the first day of every month unless you choose to discontinue your pledges." followed by two buttons that MUST be chosen between: "I understand" and "cancel my pledge" or even "start my pledges on [Y month] 1st." Communication, as we all now know, has never been Patreon's strongest suit.

Danielle Corsetto

Kool-Aid gets a bad rap but I fully blame their cute name!

Danielle Corsetto

Just to let you know, so you can tell the folks at Patreon, that I am not against paying some slight fee, per se. What bugged me is that if I gave one person 10 bucks, I'd have been charged like 60 cents extra. But give 10 people 1 dollar and now it's $3.50 or so extra. That just seems odd. Hope they can fix whatever is wrong, and continue to let me throw a few bucks in the tip jar.

David Wright

I just wanted to say thanks heaps for keeping us informed and playing such an active role in this whole thing. If the changes had gone ahead I would have left Patreon all together and spent that money on physical books from the same creators instead.

Fizz

And in the middle of this, I even learned something. I'd always assumed it was kool-aid. Thank you (really).

Juan Chanco

That's exactly how I feel, and I say this as a patron! We'll see what happens; I've volunteered myself as a conduit between Patreon and a sample size of users (read: you guys and my fellow "creator" friends) for their next attempt to solve the problems they seek to solve. I really hope they take me up on it.

Danielle Corsetto

Thanks, Danielle, for speaking up and speaking out. I wouldn't mind an option for Patrons to take on fees for Creators, especially if they could figure out a set fee, allowing Creators to have a consistent donation amount each month.

NJGR

I mean, I'm glad they walked it back, but it hurt a lot of people. Just in my little circle of creators there's one who was basically ruined by this since they were essentially exclusively supported by small donations and lost a relatively huge amount of them. It's good they changed course, but it's hard to be happy now.

Matthew Abbott

Wonderful news. Thanks for all you did on this, Danielle.

Laura J Testa-Reyes

good work, Danielle.

Ron Amundson

I love that idea, but I'm sure their investors don't, because it would give off the impression that Patreon's model can't sustain itself (you know, just like the rest of us hacks apparently). AUGH why does money rule our world, and why do people try so hard to look better than everyone else??

Danielle Corsetto

That's true. I was thinking about Kiva's optional donation method, but I'd forgotten the for-profit bit.

Yeah! I mean, I know of at least two micropayment / funding / donation sites that do just that. Neither of them is run by a for-profit company, though.

Janne Peltonen

I'm glad to hear this! I also can't help but wonder why they don't use their own model and set up a Patreon for Patreon? I'd donate $1 a month or whatever to help cover Patreon's fees in order to keep it running and free.

Yay! So they're not over the evil threshold yet. ;) Great to hear this!

Janne Peltonen