Patreon Blog

This bit from the employee announcement about how they're handling equity vesting [1] is worth highlighting as a pretty classy move, all things considered: > We’re waiving the one-year equity vesting cliff for all departing employees so that everyone has an opportunity to be a shareholder, regardless of your tenure. [...] All departing teammates will qualify for an extended option exercise period of 5 years, and we have extended it to 7 years in regions where we are legally able. It must be jarring to be on the receiving end of a layoff. In the grand scheme of things, a laid-off employee surely has bigger things to worry about... but I still think what they did here with the equity, especially the option exercise period, is a nice touch. Not many companies do this sort of thing, but they should. [1]: https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack

The two questions to me are (a) what content will they ban and (b) how badly do they want to increase their cut of pledges? For (a), they've already banned a lot of adult content (thus the rise of OnlyFans, until they follow suit), and they'll probably ban more if they get enough attention from either media, angry card processors, or both. For (b), they've already narrowly avoided fucking this up once back in 2017 (https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure). They increased fees in 2019 (https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/360024952552-Patreon-Cre… but at least grandfathered in past users, preventing their existing userbase from being too much of a flight risk.

Depends on how popular your project is. 1. Evan you (creator of vuejs) makes kind of a salary via patreon [1]. 2. Taylor otwell (creator of laravel) has created many useful projects like spark and forge that generate amazing revenue. 3. Creator of sidekiq (mike) has created a million dollar business by creating premium upsells [2] 4. And finally of course there are free and hosted versions of the software like WordPress that are in a league of their own (also recently noticed a site called Browserless which has done quite well with this model) [1] https://blog.patreon.com/vue-js-creator-evan-you [2] https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/016-mike-perham-of-sidekiq

Strategy-wise, it makes sense that they're cloning Patreon & Twitch features to keep people on the platform, but I think YouTube is going to need to innovate further if they want creators to trust them with their entire monetization strategy (i.e. ads, subscriptions, merch). Patreon is significantly investing in creators and building tools to help them grow their online businesses. [1] It feels like YouTube wants to be too many things and has lost focus on empowering creators. Also, $4.99 feels too steep – many people only give $1-2 on Patreon. And we'll have to see if the subscription recurs the same day of the month you subscribed or if it's aggregated to the start of the month like Patreon. [1]: https://blog.patreon.com/manage-and-track-what-you-deliver-to-patrons

The thread's title points to a CNBC story by Brandon Gomez. However, the journalism is very light and is missing a lot of context about what CEO Jack Conte is talking about. However, a better story that Dan Olson linked to (scroll down his twitter feed) is the September 2017 announcement of the $60 million round by Jack Conte himself[0]. In that blog, JC laid out in more detail the new products Patreon was trying to build to increase revenue. Excerpt of the bullet points: 1. Business Infrastructure - Think of this as the back office — the tools, workflows, dashboards, and information that you need to get your business cranking. [...] analytics [...] financials [...] 2. Rewards to Energize Patrons This is everything you need to entice and keep your patrons, [...] Actual goods, whether digital or physical, like a signed poster or an extra episode [...] Patreon doesn't want to be just a simple "paypal/stripe" payment middleman that takes a 5% cut of subscribers payments. As a rough analogy, they also want to be a "SalesforceCRM/QuickenAccounting" backoffice and a "Amazon/WooCommerce" for merchandise -- for their creators. JC is hoping that creators will give up more than 5% (e.g. maybe 30% cut) to pay for those services. So when people ask "what does Patreon need all that VC money for?", JC basically told you. The question remains if the creators are willing to pay for those extra "value-added" services to manage the creators' backoffice + storefront. (Examples of…

A fun fact: Patreon had hold a survey for creators, asking which features they need. https://blog.patreon.com/the-first-ever-patreon-creator-census Crypto is the only one creators voted *against*. Yes, Patreon creators, where a lot NSFW content comes from, voted against cryptos. I wonder how they'll think when Visa/Mastercard threat Patreon to ban them (which is just sooner or later).

I once contacted Patreon about re-adding support for non-SMS-based 2FA & while the customer service agent didn't seem to entirely understand, they did forward my request to the dev team when I asked. A few days/weeks later, it was back[1]. I'm grateful for all those involved who made that happen, as most companies don't listen when contacted about 2FA. And tangentially, while I can't be as certain about my involvement in this next part, Nickelodeon eventually uploaded a non-pixelated version of ATLA on Google Play shortly after the second time I contacted them. I still can't understand how an MS Paint quality version was uploaded in the first place, but I'm glad no one else will have to suffer through that like my brother did. [1] https://blog.patreon.com/TOTP-two-factor-authentication

Been a while since I worked on security at Patreon, but I have had some insight to Trust & Safety and Legal teams at Patreon, these allegations sound like absolute junk. Patreon is also pushing back: https://blog.patreon.com/false-allegations-on-social-media

Probably a better link than whatever the Instagram post is (behind a login): https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack

It was announced on the Patreon blog, the poster chose to link to Instagram (annoyingly, for those of us not on Instagram). https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack I assume OP expected the blog post to be taken down or changed, so they captured it and linked to the capture instead of the original. I feel like the protocol for this should be to make a capture, post a link to it as a comment in the thread, and link to the original in the post.

I think it was first posted on their blog here: https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack

A blog post was done other than Instagram: https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack "but as the world began recovering from the pandemic and enduring a broader economic slowdown, that plan is no longer the right path forward for Patreon" So basically, they overhired to meet demands during Pandemic and now as less people are using the platform (??), there is no need for the 17% of people. Interesting.

Nobody looks like they are going to lose their livelihood over this: https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack 3 months' of pay + longer depending on tenure at the company. Healthcare until the end of the year. Mental care up to 6 months. They contracted a placement company to place the laid off staff to other companies in the sector. A lot of those people will already get hooked up by a company within a week or so, even without the placement company being able to take action. This looks as decent as layoffs go.

Actual link: https://blog.patreon.com/on-the-removal-of-come-back-alive

> It's becoming clearer that Bitcoin is the "currency" of the far right. Does this extend to all cryptocurrencies or is it just Bitcoin? A Ukrainian organization called 'Come back Alive' who have just been de-platformed by Patreon [0] are now turning to Bitcoin donations [1]. Does that make them far right? Or maybe the starving Afghans who are under sanctions due to the Taliban are trying to survive by using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies managed and accepted by NGOs helping them survive [2]. Perhaps they are all far-right too? [0] https://blog.patreon.com/on-the-removal-of-come-back-alive [1] https://decrypt.co/93810/patreon-suspends-ukrainian-ngo-come-back-aliv… [2] https://theintercept.com/2022/01/19/crypto-afghanistan-sanctions-talib…

Direct link to Patreon's statement: https://blog.patreon.com/on-the-removal-of-come-back-alive

As a comparision, these are the top Patreon earners as of Dec. 2020. They range from $190M to $2MM per year. https://blog.patreon.com/top-patreon-creators

And the money is not bad. https://blog.patreon.com/vue-js-creator-evan-you

Internet may have killed the prospect of making a living as an author "the traditional way", but it allows other ways. Many artists makes a living out of Patreon. According to them [1], there are people that made $150k+ in a year authoring videos or podcasts. You can find people making a living writing fiction [2], producing music or photography. [1] https://blog.patreon.com/top-earners-2016 [2] https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators

Evan You makes 180k/year just from Patreon, excluding additional gigs such as speaking at conferences. (https://www.patreon.com/evanyou/overview) Some more about his business model: https://blog.patreon.com/vue-js-creator-evan-you

https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/ is the original source, rather than a news site just reporting on that source. (Submissions of the original seem to be auto-killed, probably as part of blocking "patreon.com" links. "blog.patreon.com" ought to be allowed.) (EDIT: that seems to be fixed now; thanks to whoever fixed it.)

This is discussed in the original announcement [0] Essentially, some creators were having a problem where their donations dissapeared at the end of the month because the donator canceled before making the payment. To rectify this, Patreon introduced a pay up front system, where the first payment happens when you pledge, and all future payments happen at the beggining of the month. This introduces a problem when you pledge at the end of the month. In this case you could pay on the 29th when you sign up, and again on the 1st when the monthly pledge ticks. Charging seperatly would enable them to charge you when you first pledge, and monthly, starting with your pledge. So in the above example, they would charge you on the 29th of each month. [0] https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/

Scroll way down on this page https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure ... apparently people were getting confused by the batched charges

The reasons invoked by patreon were a bit different (see the update in their blog post[1]), they argued that - the new model would make it easier to understand for creators (they are now certain to earn 95% of each pledge, where they could earn less before) - it also makes it clearer for patrons, because now they are paying exactly at the date they made the pledge. And it also avoids double spend for CUF (charge up front) payments, where you could pay twice the pledge within a few days. But your point is interesting, I hope patreon will give more details about this. If this is true, the business model itself is flawed, and competitors (drip, gratispay, liberapay) will face the same issue. [1] https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/

EDIT: Due to a blog post I was unaware of, the rest of this post is incorrect. Patreon will still make a bit more money than before, but with the new structure of billing each pledge on its own schedule, not nearly as much as I had outlined. https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/ ORIGINAL: Most patrons provide many small donation amounts. Patreon will, as called out in the article, get a lot more money from those patrons. If you assume a 2.9% + $0.30 CC charge fee (i.e. Stripe), and a patron giving $1 to 100 artists: Before: Patreon gets $5 from their cut from the artists; the patron is charged $100, the artists each get $0.67. After: Patreon gets $5 from their cut from the artists, and $34.70 from the additional fees; the patron is charged $137.50, the artists each get $0.95.

Actually, from Patreon's update, it sounds like Patreon will, in fact, run five different transactions: https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/ Which is frankly insane, but does explain the change.

Patreon is presenting this as solely as an improvement for the sake of the creators (see https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/). If it's a necessity to Patreon alive, they're not presenting it as such. I have yet to find a creator who is not upset about this change. And they seem to be ignorant or uncaring about the uproar it's caused. This is the end of Patreon if they don't course-correct very quickly.

> patron pledges $1, patron pays $1, creator ends up with some amount significantly less than $1, depending on all the fees. from [1], the "previous" (current) situation the creator would receive 85-93% of the amount. So $0.85 from $1, vs .95 from 1.38? Unless I'm completely flobbing the maths, that's ~69% in the new system? [1] https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/