
Show HN: Discover new, trending, and highest-earning creators on Patreon - Axsuul
http://www.pledgesociety.com/?ref=hackernews-1
======
Axsuul
While building a web crawling framework, I became fascinated with Patreon but
was disappointed with its discoverability features. So I decided to put my
crawling framework to the test and track every creator on the platform. The
result of this was PledgeSociety, a side project I put together over the
weekend that helps you discover new, interesting, and popular creators on
Patreon. Please let me know what your thoughts are and if this is useful!

~~~
bwy
Your site looks interesting but I'm mostly curious about your web-crawling
framework - looks like it worked pretty well. Is it open-source?

~~~
Axsuul
I posted a comment about the web-crawling framework below so check that out
for more info. Also, check out this if you'd like to know more about it @
[http://bit.ly/1KiUmlS](http://bit.ly/1KiUmlS)

~~~
ximeng
Shortened link goes to:

[http://roboheart.us10.list-
manage.com/subscribe?u=49bc41b243...](http://roboheart.us10.list-
manage.com/subscribe?u=49bc41b243e888aa8b891065f&id=7e107d99fc)

~~~
goldenkey
Somwhat scummy. Oh look, I used my brain scraper:

''' Crawlspace is a hosted crawling service that handles proxyification and
everything for you behind the scenes. With Crawlspace, PledgeSociety was able
to crawl and track every single creator on Patreon.

If you're interested in a service like this or you happen to do alot of
crawling, we want to talk to you! '''

~~~
Axsuul
Not my intention to be scummy. Just collecting emails and gauging interest. I
had no intention to allow the public to use it but due to some others asking,
I thought I'd set up a landing page for it. Appreciate the constructive
feedback.

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wyager
Huh. I'm surprised by the amount of... niche material in the first few pages.
I guess Patreon is a pretty good platform for industries that have constant
demand for new material, but aren't necessarily large enough that it makes
sense for content creators to manage payment themselves.

~~~
smeyer
For anyone else who wasn't thinking very quickly today, these commenters are
using "niche" as a euphemism for "erotic".

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throwaway999666
What is the euphemism for "prudes"?

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Rygu
Patreon is an incredible crowdfunding platform. "Continuous Funding" is how
I'd like to call it.

Continuous Funding solves the problem many high-value funded
Kickstarter/Indiegogo projects have: not being able to deliver at a constant
pace. It's one thing to write a business proposal to raise funding with
excitement. Another to settle down and budgetize the money to prevent burning
through it too fast or investing it too slow, meanwhile not being able to
focus on the product.

~~~
damcedami
Thing is people at Patreon offer continuous products or contents, while
Kickstarter/Indiegogo, most of it, offer one-time products.

~~~
Rygu
Most of the time that's true. Though I've seen some open source software
projects being put on Kickstarter, and every one of them ends in
disappointment. Either too low pace, or half of the promised features are cut.
(Some joke about software estimates.) It's impossible to complimentary
increase or rightfully decrease your contribution depending on performance
it's one-off funding.

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amuresan
Slightly offtopic, but what are the legal implications of crawling a public
website and building a derived service like this? I know it's usually
considered gray area, but are there any clear limits? What does it take to
build a legally stable business around scraping public content?

Citation from the Patreon Terms of Use on the public area: " Without
limitation, you may not:

13\. Use a robot, spider, manual and/or automatic processes or devices to
data-mine, data-crawl, scrape or index the Service in any manner. "

~~~
markovbling
Would love to hear replies on this - just because it's against their terms of
use, does that mean it's illegal? Just because someone says they don't want
you to look at them and write down what you see doesn't make it illegal. Of
course it might be stalking / harassment in the legal sense but where's that
line for spidering websites?

~~~
lucaspiller
It depends on your local laws and where you and the other website (well, the
legal entity of) are based. As an example if you are both based in the UK the
website could probably bring civil charges (i.e. sue you) for breach of
contract, or even attempt to bring criminal charges under the Computer Misuse
Act for unauthorised access to a computer system. If the website is in the UK,
and you are in China it's probably not worth the effort.

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rav
I was surprised that Bay 12 Games (who make Dwarf Fortress) are the 22nd most
earning creator on Patreon, even though they created their account only 3
months ago! Well done!

~~~
tikhonj
Interestingly, they also only have a single $1+ tier. Other creators usually
have multiple tiers with a lot more focus on the rewards at each level.

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JayNeely
Well now I understand why Patreon hasn't done more to support discovery on the
site, at least for game creators. Essentially all of the most popular ones are
adult / erotic games.

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21echoes
Adult / erotic games are explicitly marked as NSFW within our system, so it
would be very easy for us to hide them from discovery. We will we be working
on discovery improvements in about two months; we have a quite a few higher
priority things on the plate right now (wrapping up VAT compliance, other
payments improvements, a mobile app, live chat, visual redesigns all over the
place, and plenty more). Stay tuned!

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freyr
Can anyone help me understand why the top earner is the top earner? It looks
similar to a lot of the stuff on DeviantArt.

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petercooper
Fanbase and ability to convert that fanbase into a paying one (this guy seems
to use tutorial videos as an incentive). A lot of less popular, less wealthy
musicians sound as good or better as the top earners as well.

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dharma1
Nice! I always thought this kind of business model would work well for
musicians/artists.

How much bank is Patron making in total?

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Axsuul
Just pushed the stats page. Find it @
[http://www.pledgesociety.com/stats](http://www.pledgesociety.com/stats) :)

~~~
dharma1
Nice! 5% of 3m, $150k/month - nice little earner! And I think they are still
just getting started

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NosajHN
Wonderful site! I've looked for this kind of functionality on Patreon itself
and didn't find it. Two thoughts:

1) I'm also curious about your crawling framework, if you care to share any
details. 2) How do you compute trending? It seems to show a mix of accounts
getting their first backer with those that are already massive. Maybe this
idea would help? [http://www.evanmiller.org/rank-hotness-with-newtons-law-
of-c...](http://www.evanmiller.org/rank-hotness-with-newtons-law-of-
cooling.html)

~~~
Axsuul
Thanks!

1) Many of the projects I do usually have some sort of crawling aspect to it.
So therefore I found myself duplicating crawling code every time and so I
decided to turn it into a hosted service that all my projects could benefit
from. It stores responses, handles proxyification, and has all sorts of
optimizations implemented that's useful and essential to crawling. It passes
data via evented webhooks and is built in Rails, PostgreSQL, and Redis. As of
now, it's not open to the public but if there's interest, that could change :)
For more information, please see:

[http://bit.ly/1KiUmlS](http://bit.ly/1KiUmlS)

2) Right now the "trending score" is calculating based on the current and
previous Snapshot. The formula is as follows:

current_snapshot_earnings - previous_snapshot_earnings
\------------------------------------------------------------------
previous_snapshot_earnings

Very simplified I know :) Your formula is much better and I plan on
implementing that soon! Thanks for checking out PledgeSociety as well as the
lovely feedback.

~~~
NosajHN
1) Awesome! I've signed up. Hope to hear more. 2) Absolutely, thanks again for
making the site. For what it's worth, the same author recently went into much
more detail on how to make an optimal 'hot' algorithm, looking at Reddit as an
example. I thought it was pretty interesting, even if it's a bit more
complicated. [http://www.evanmiller.org/deriving-the-reddit-
formula.html](http://www.evanmiller.org/deriving-the-reddit-formula.html)

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kohanz
Very interesting - well done! Small UI recommendation: round the earning
numbers to something visually simpler (e.g. 60k, 1.5k, or at the very least
take out the cents).

~~~
Axsuul
Thanks for the suggestion, that would definitely be an improvement :)

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moron4hire
Interesting. "Kinda Funny" and "Kinda Funny Games" are the same people. If
they were combined, they'd be in the #2 spot.

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JDiculous
Wow some of these people are making incredible money. This is awesome and eye-
opening, thanks for making this.

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J_Darnley
Why would you discover new things through patreon? Aren't you supposed to
discover things on the wider internet then their creators link you to their
patreon page or other funding method?

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nindalf
It currently says Zach Weinersmith (of SMBC) is paid per creation, but he's
actually paid per month. Could indicate a bug in the crawling framework.

~~~
Axsuul
Fixed, thanks for the report :)

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goeric
Really well done. Could you also calculate their overall network stats?
Average creator earnings? Etc.

~~~
Axsuul
That's a great suggestion and it's something I will be implementing next. This
seems to be something most people are curious about.

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cfontes
Nice, I never had heard of this thing.

But Crash Course is awesome I am happy they are 4th.

Their space course is just great.

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rasz_pl
Any plans for adding search?

~~~
Axsuul
Not atm!

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wwung
Whoa, awesome!

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kelukelugames
Lots of adult content. :/

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gadders
Not sure why Amanda Palmer bothers. She has a multimillionaire husband.

