The demise of Patreon; Hello Gumroad

Hello everyone,

what an engaging and upbeat title, isn't it? I should have written about this before, but I kept putting it off until now. For those of you who don't know, I have been using Gumroad for a while now to provide single-offerings of previously published comics and so on.

Since a while as well, Gumroad have been offering Gumroad Memberships, similar to Patreon, but simpler and easier to use. I have been playing with the thought of opening one, as a parallel to Patreon, as a sort of refuge. Now it turns out that Patreon is planning to put out new Anniversary Billing plans, which changes a lot of stuff for both creators AND supporters. I won't go into the details of it, but all I say it's something that's not been well received. Besides this issue, as of today, Patreon have pushed a new conversion system 'to protect creators', in which currency exchange is not equal to the other. One of these issues is less bad than the other, but it's also an accumulation of actions in the past on Patreon's behalf that has made me create an account at Gumroad. Next to that, I know people aren't too keen on using Patreon itself as a platform to support others for various reasons.

Gumroad offers me a far broader spectrum for the stuff that I do, both monthly support AND offerings of single publications. These can also be connected to give monthly supporters discounts on single publications. No need to set up two accounts, but just the ease of one Gumroad account. Gumroad also hasn't suffered from a continuous train of controversies, except a social issue last year, which far outweighs the anxiety Patreon gives its users on a reliable basis. Considering Gumroad has been active since 10 years, this is kind of amazing all on its own.

So, what does it all mean? I've rolled out a Membership on Gumroad @https://gum.co/tb_fanclub with a discount  code for Patreon supporters (displayed in a separate post), so if you feel like slowly stepping away from Patreon, like me, please do consider a membership of the ToniBabelony Fan Club! At some point, I will have to give up Patreon when things change for the worse. All in all, I prefer to engage with a platform that is stable and not in direct contact with their customers, rather than one that doesn't know what it wants, tries to get feedback, only to ignore the majority of the feedback they request. ALSO, with what Gumroad has on offer for creators like me, it will also be easier to offer physical offerings and other digital stuff next to what I'm already doing as well. With the restrictive and ever changing nature of Patreon, I feel like there is a brighter future ahead at Gumroad.

My apologies for things getting so far. As said, I will remain maintaining this account regardless, but if at some point, it's not worth my while any more, I will abandon or delete it. I hope you understand and please let me know what you think!

Yours,

Toni