My spreadsheet says the total cut of my take that goes to Patreon and payment processing is about 10-15%, but I am an Early Adopter who gets a much better deal from them. For someone like this dude who doesn’t have this deal and has their usurious international fees on top of it, it’s definitely a bad choice.
Patreon did one big thing: they took the concept of “monthly donations to support the arts” and repackaged it in a way that took off. I never got support via the old PayPal donation button like I have via Patreon.
Sounds like Patreon helped you after all.
I'm not saying that they promote or market you, but having the name (much like Apple) seems enough to encourage people to pay you.
OTOH, I certainty don't think that their cut sounds like a good deal; rather, it sounds more like your options are a bad deal or no deal at all.
If you have a design/image creation software and XCode you could make almost any app.
Patreon doesn’t give any tools to creators to directly create.
That dude writes as if he is unaware of the existence of the government and tax laws. He is on a platform that is built for non-profits despite obviously not being a non-profit. And he does not seem to have heard of any kind of thing like international digital tax or the like.
When you just ignore the existence of such things, of course ~14% looks like a lot.
The couple apps and podcasts I've subscribed to that did roll their own payments and subscriptions have been hell to cancel or adjust my subscription, riddled with dark patterns, and one seemingly just... removed the unsubscribe button entirely. There was no way to cancel at all.
A better example of a more ‘reach’ offering would probably be YouTube’s similar offering (although I don’t know their fee structure), which goes beyond just reach and has very low friction for creators who make content on that platform.
Honestly I feel like Patreon as a platform is pretty underwhelming from the donator side of things, nor do I see much in terms of what’s changed to improve the experience over the years as their fees have increased - but I have no idea what has changed on the creator side.
I think the big takeaway (no surprise) is that the creator really owns the donator, not the platform - vs someplace like Apple where they have a much stronger relationship with the customer than your typical app developer does.
I have. It's nice to have a centralized UI for your donations and I would never enter my payment information just to support a single creator with a dollar or two.
I'm happy to outsource anything involving money.
On the other hand, switching away from YouTube would be instant channel suicide, because they are actually the ones providing the reach. I think YouTube must see the existence of Patreon as a critical failure. YouTube is doing all the hard work and Patreon is getting paid for it!
I will never type in my credit card to give some random app developer $1.99. I will frequently click buy on an app in the App Store.
Same is likely true for Patreon. Even if I found your videos or podcast by some other means, the fact you can mention “Thank to to my patrons” means I can easily find you (not discover you) on Patreon and subscribe.
If those are every bit as low friction as the alternatives, I’m willing. (But that includes “I heard a podcast while I was driving mention patron; I should spend 30 seconds and give that creator money.” where I can find and login to Patreon faster than I can find the creator’s random website URL.)
For recurring billing, no, I will not give a random website my CC near as easily as I will Apple or Patreon (or any other platform that stands more to lose by biting my hand than an individual site does).
Is that an OK choice given your preferences? It seems low friction, with the caveat that you have to remember my random website URL.
For a recurring donation, the hover over "A donor account is created automatically for recurring donations. Account setup info will be emailed to you." would remind me the hassle of using a random extra account that I need to keep track of, trust that it won't get breached, and be able to find and login to when I want to stop the recurring donations [and trust that the site will actually stop the donations without hassle].
That's going to be enough to block me for recurring (but you probably have data on the people it doesn't block, meaning people's preferences vary).
However, I get immediate cash access to a donation (recurring or otherwise), and almost everyone covers the transaction fee. This feels less centralized and gimicky than Patreon -- at the cost of losing sokoloff.
It’s not about sokoloff. It’s about what gives your group the most net income after all fees and factors.
Most creators who have "made it" (whatever that may be) should work on setting up their own website with their own payment processing and encourage fans to use it, less for the additional money and more for the security against single-income flows.
It's easy to find "big things" on any platform, the question is which are successful for those trying to grow?
's/the reach/the big-name familiarity/'
's/more users/more legitimacy & perceived security for most potential donors/'