MUH PATREON

[Boogie's Panniculus]

My understanding is the Patreon changes are better for everyone involved but are just weeding out the, "I'm gonna give one dollar," and, "I'm going to cheat the system for free reward perks," right? It's one of those changes that you need to let simmer a bit before you see the good coming from it, or something?

I'm sorry for anyone that actually reads this... I'm tired and generally stupid so most of it will probably sound dumb.

I've said some of this in another thread, but I'll repeat it. And earlier I was assuming some things that were wrong. I might still have some shit wrong though, I only glanced at the pictures of the post explaining the changes because I can't read.
If anyone actually reads this, keep in mind I don't pledge to anyone (I did pledge a couple bucks to someone for a couple months but stopped over a year ago) and I don't receive any pledges, so I don't have a stake in this. I just like to sperg out when people do stupid shit shit I think is stupid.

I'm too lazy and tired to go through this and fix it, but where I mention "transaction fee" I'm specifically talking about the $0.35 set fee, not the 2.9% variable fee.

I don't know why they would want to weed out people who just give $1, unless they're just giving $1 to one person. If they did want to get rid of people just giving $1 to one person, because it was "costing them money" due to fees, they should've modified the change to charge a fee to those people or switched to "you fund a patreon wallet in chunks and then pay people with that" system. Before the change, if someone is giving $1 to 20 people, then patreon should just be charging that person $20 a month so they'd only be paying one transaction fee.

Getting rid of the "pledge, get reward, remove pledge, and never pay" cheats. Absolutely, they mention that was a reason for the change. Everyone is on the "charge when pledged" system now and there is no "double charge" scenario that would occur if someone pledged on the 30th and then were charged again on the 1st.

The problem is that they aren't going to group charges now. So if I pledged to someone on the 1st, someone else on the 2nd, and someone that is "pay per post" on the 3rd, my credit card will be charged every month on the 1st, 2nd, and every time the "pay per post" person makes a paid post.

I wonder how they process the transactions for people that makes multiple pledges in a single day. If I pledge to 20 different people in a single day, they shouldn't be making 20 transactions. If they are, they are fucking retarded and needed to spend a little more time on their processing system.

Another thing... How are they going to charge current pledges? Their blog posts make it sound like current "per month" pledges will all renew on the 1st, in which case why are they charging a transaction fee per pledge when they should just be doing one transaction for the whole amount. If they're not just doing one transaction, again, they're fucking retarded.

The thing that seems dumbest to me is making the person giving the money pay the fees.
The only time I can think of people doing that is some gas stations would have different prices for cash vs charge, but it's been probably decades since I saw that.
It seems as stupid to me as if Amazon charged you their card processing fees, but not only that, they charged you a transaction fee on each item you buy in the same order. Now, I know they do make you pay it by baking it into the price of whatever you buy, but it's dumb as fuck to make it that transparent. Obviously there is no "item" to bake the price of transaction fees into, but that's why the fee should've been kept on the creator side. Sure, creators would've still bitched if they were paying 38% in fees for the $1 pledges, but then at least it would've made more sense. Plus it would've incentivised creators to make people want to donate more.

EEVblog made a video about the change and I noticed he had about 1300 pledges. For December, his pledged amount was about $4400, of which he got about $3900. So on the old system he paid $500 in fees. If they would've kept the fees on the creator, on the new system he would clear about $3600, so he would be paying $300 more in fees. Still, the stupid thing is, why is patreon charging people multiple transaction fees when they're making (or should be making) only one transaction for all pledges that renew on the same day?
Now, in the video he says he only lost about 20 patrons so far. So, assuming more people don't jump ship, he is making more money losing a couple people than if they kept fees creator side.

Though, for all I know they will only charge one $0.35 set fee for all pledges that renew the same day. If so, I wasted a shit ton of time writing this.

TL;DR
My issue with the situation is:
Patreon is stupid for charging fees to the people paying money. It should have been kept creator side.
Patreon is stupid (or shady) for charging multiple $0.35 set transaction fee for a single transaction containing multiple pledges.

[Stranger]

I'm fine with Patreon charging the person making the pledge simply because the point of Patreon is to put the money in the creator's pockets. To me it makes more sense for more of the money to go to the person you're pledging to, if you're pledging to someone.

However, on the point of the 35 cents:

2.9% + $0.35 will be paid by patrons for each individual pledge

I can only imagine that this is to cover any overhead that the company has to deal with from transaction fees as well as putting money into the pockets of the people who run the website.

There's also gotta be something that they're weeding out by doing this. I refuse to believe it's out of nowhere, entirely with the good will of the creators in mind, and just to rake a little cash in on the side.

[rabidtictac]

The thing that seems dumbest to me is making the person giving the money pay the fees.
The only time I can think of people doing that is some gas stations would have different prices for cash vs charge, but it's been probably decades since I saw that.
It seems as stupid to me as if Amazon charged you their card processing fees, but not only that, they charged you a transaction fee on each item you buy in the same order. Now, I know they do make you pay it by baking it into the price of whatever you buy, but it's dumb as fuck to make it that transparent. Obviously there is no "item" to bake the price of transaction fees into, but that's why the fee should've been kept on the creator side. Sure, creators would've still bitched if they were paying 38% in fees for the $1 pledges, but then at least it would've made more sense. Plus it would've incentivised creators to make people want to donate more.

TL;DR
My issue with the situation is:
Patreon is stupid for charging fees to the people paying money. It should have been kept creator side.

This is the part where I agree with you. I think that the fees should be applied to Patreon's cut. IE if patreon was taking a 3% cut, now they take 5% or more. Patreon should be passing the cost along to the people receiving the money and not the people paying it.

And obviously being transparent with your customer base is never a good thing. They should have rolled it out in secret as an immediate 3-5% increase in the patreon cut of revenue. Even if patreon was taking 10% of all pledges for themselves, it's not like there's any other service offering a much better split. I don't know what YouTube's split is because we can't see their end of it, but I know what Twitch's split is and it's Scrooge McDuck-tier. Name me any MCN that would propose a 50/50 split in current year.

In short, I agree with you that patreon are fucking the wrong people. They're fucking the patrons when they should be fucking the ebeggars directly.

[Stranger]

I'm not sure why you would think the beggar should receive the fee when the whole point of the website is to give money to someone else. Charge the people giving it to them so that their intended recipient receives more of it.

Charging the person pledging will also kill off a lot more of the beggars than charging the beggars a little more. If I'm being charged for pledging then I'm only going to pledge to very specific, very high quality, very consistent creators. I won't be pledging to DSP when I can keep that pocket money to myself. Also I wouldn't be pledging to a youtuber, anyway.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

I think they just want to fuck people over who pledge to dozens of gay dead muppet furry diaper gangbang porn artists.

My understanding is the Patreon changes are better for everyone involved but are just weeding out the, "I'm gonna give one dollar," and, "I'm going to cheat the system for free reward perks," right? It's one of those changes that you need to let simmer a bit before you see the good coming from it, or something?

Internet nobodies don't have foresight. What matters to them atm is that they're losing money right now.

I hope patreon goes the way of youtube and fucking screws them all. How many times do they need to have this drilled into their fat skulls that shit like blip, youtube, or whatever e-begging method they're using is NOT a reliable source of income.

They refuse to see this, for any reliable alternative they have offers no fame of any kind and includes actual work.

[AwesomePizza]

What are these idiots going to do in ten years? Twenty years? They have no future. You can't review old movies and toys into your fifties.

[rabidtictac]

What are these idiots going to do in ten years? Twenty years? They have no future. You can't review old movies and toys into your fifties.

They'll try. It's hilarious and sad seeing people like pewds, Doge, Fatkara and DSP get older and pick up gray hairs.

[Poonoo]

I don't know why they would want to weed out people who just give $1, unless they're just giving $1 to one person. If they did want to get rid of people just giving $1 to one person, because it was "costing them money" due to fees, they should've modified the change to charge a fee to those people or switched to "you fund a patreon wallet in chunks and then pay people with that" system. Before the change, if someone is giving $1 to 20 people, then patreon should just be charging that person $20 a month so they'd only be paying one transaction fee.

I'm backing only a few people on patreon, but I get charged all of it on one transaction at the end of the month. So them adding this fee is stupid unless you are paying fuck all a month like $3 total or only $1 to one person. They should only add the fee if you are spending fuck all, but like TicTac said there is probably some other reason that makes logical sense but makes you sound like a prick if you go public.

I used to work at a small retail store where the boss was really funny about returns. He would have us do the absolute bare legal minimum for them which pissed off customers returning items that would take 2 weeks to get to the manufacturer and back to assess if it was an actual fault with the product. But he did this because if he had a lot of bullshit returns where the manufacturer wouldn't reimburse him it would cost him a shit ton of money, big franchises can afford to take the loss but he would have been hit hard. You can't tell the customer that is why because you sound like a prick.

I guarantee you it's some internal shit like that but they realised not being transparent is the better option.

[rabidtictac]

It's probably some shit like the cost to process each transaction isn't worth it the smaller the amount you pledge + the usual jewing about wanting a bigger cut because Patreon knows very well how many metric fucktons of dollars are flowing from sperge fans to sperge "content" creators.

[Vaporwear]

I don't know why they would want to weed out people who just give $1, unless they're just giving $1 to one person. If they did want to get rid of people just giving $1 to one person, because it was "costing them money" due to fees, they should've modified the change to charge a fee to those people or switched to "you fund a patreon wallet in chunks and then pay people with that" system. Before the change, if someone is giving $1 to 20 people, then patreon should just be charging that person $20 a month so they'd only be paying one transaction fee.

I'm backing only a few people on patreon,

Here's a thought, don't back anyone on Patreon, you fag.