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Comment by patcon | Hacker News Reader

Hate to sound pessimistic to your well-intentioned suggestion, but if someone prefers not to support a creator monthly/regularly, then they are unfortunately choosing not to support them sustainably. I feel strongly that to ask for one-off giving is to ask for a badly designed system. People can't dedicate their output to creating value for you when they're living off a tip-jar. Consistency is the key to backgrounding the profit-motive, and allowing for the creativity you've probably come to appreciate in their work :)

Disclaimer: quit my job to contribute to Gittip community, and have lots of a thoughts and feels on the patron/gratitude economy

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Everything is a trade-off. One-time "tips" may or may not provide an income flow as as predictable as monthly pledges. However, the flipside is that it broadens your donor base. I'm more than happy to make one-off "tips" all over the place, if you have a low-friction mechanism through which I may do so. However, I'm simply NOT going to sign up as a monthly subscriber. For pretty much anything, whenever I can help it.

Obviously, you lose money by not providing a mechanism for donors like me. However, I can see the argument that if you DID provide such an option, you might lose money from donors who otherwise would have pledged monthly. So which direction provides the best trade-off? I don't know, and this would probably call for some actual research to come up with real numbers rather than gut feelings. But it's definitely not an obvious no-brainer, regardless.

I wryly note that this community tends to look down upon salaried employment, and seems to think that everyone with any merit should be quick-gig consultants or startup entrepreneurs. Start talking about self-employed artists though, and suddenly people want a safe predictable salary again.

The thing is sometimes you find something helpful, but don't think they are exactly an artist. I'm slightly ashamed that I couldn't figure out how to put the batteries in the Amazon wand they'd sent me, a quick search and a YouTube video showed me what the instructions missing hadn't, tug it forcefully.

That kind of thing isn't useful enough for patronage. But it would be nice to be able to throw a nice little tip.

Interesting: utility vs art. Maybe it's a similar distinction between commission and wage. Art by commission or art by wage... I'm sure there are studies on which type produces happier artists (heh, but in a twist, it's still prob up for debate whether happier artists make their best art, but that line of thinking feels a little gross ;)

Anyhow, guess I was being too simplistic. In the ideal world, I'd hope we'd all have more early (high school) literacy on what these approaches mean, and which works best for which sort of value creation...!

I often would like to tip someone without establishing an ongoing relationship with their site/work - and I'd think that they'd rather get something instead of nothing from me.

While it may be more sustainable, I have to say that personally I strongly associate the subscription model with all sorts of late-capitalist scams, from gym memberships to Juicero. Which isn't to say that I am opposed to supporting people creating cool, ongoing work, but that's the exception, not the rule, to that model.

In what way is a gym membership a scam?

Many of the large gyms in particular make it absurdly complex to cancel a membership, and count on people giving up and letting it ride. Though honestly I dislike most arrangements where you pay for a service whether you use it or not - imagine if your electric bill was always just $100, regardless of how much power you used... I am sure the gym owners will protest that if they only offered pay-per-visit it'd be more expensive, or they'd go out of business, etc.

Where to start?

Most gym membership are auto renewing fixed length contacts with hidden terms that are impossible to get out of early. Even if you want to cancel at the prescribed time they make you do things like come in in person to get the cancellation form and then you have to mail it certified mail rather than handing it to someone.

For the kinds of videos that I find most helpful and am willing to pay for (eg, how to fix my broken whatever), I imagine the creators would get a steady stream of one-time donations, as various people's $whatever broke, and they found the video. As of now, they get nothing, which has to be worse.

Not really, Patreon has nothing to do with people getting tips, they can use their affiliate links, click their ads or just donate the old way via paypal.

Many kinds of businesses work just fine on the "pay it once" model. You produce a pair of shoes, I buy that pair of shoes, and we are done. This classic, standard model doesn't have to be unsustainable.

In particular, look at the gig economy. Thousands of freelance programmers, designers, artists, and tradesmen are making a living through one-time invoices.

I may be an outlier, as I don't subscribe to much of anything on a recurring basis except Netflix and Google Apps. In the real world, I have a mortgage, not rent, and I own my car, I don't lease it.

And to GP: Patreon does give you a "guilt trip" asking for a cause for your cancellation of a monthly subscription immediately after donating, but it's easy and it works.

Right, but you don't get that pair of shoes unless you pay. We've tried with doing things like, "You won't get to watch that video or read that article unless you pay." It doesn't work.

I agree with your point, and it makes perfect sense not to support a "tip-jar" option.

I know there is an option to cancel subscription at any time, but it just doesn't feel right. I would prefer a limited time subscription, similar to the physical magazines. If I like someone, I will sign up for 12 months of support. The author could count on a steady (to a degree) income for the next year and plan accordingly. If a year later I am still interested I will renew my subscription. And the platform could provide an insight on both current and a projected revenue, so consistency aspect is still there.

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