
Patreon’s new service fee spurs concern that creators will lose patrons - djflutt3rshy
https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/07/patreons-new-service-fee-spurs-concern-that-creators-will-lose-patrons/
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aurizon
What goes on? Is this a way to "Monetise" Patreon - hardly, but devil's
advocacy tells me there must be a driving force behind this - and it is not
the bafflegab Patreon gave out, some sort of internal costs must be eating at
Pateron's innards - wages for staff?. Obviously this will chill people who
donate many small amounts - as someone said $1 given to 100 people each has
fees of $38 ($100 given plus fees of $38 = $138). I now see this huge fee
increase and none of that goes to the creator. They call this 'The Law of
Unintended Consequences' \- I predict that many people (like me) will bypass
patreon, and others will get pissed and drop out.

Smarten up Patreon.

~~~
rainbowmverse
They probably didn't expect so many $1 pledges. A lot of creators on there
depend entirely on marginalized people, and for many $1 is already pushing the
limits of what they can do.

I was thinking about throwing some $1s around now that I'm getting some extra
income from Patreon, but at $1.38 I'd rather just save it or use it somewhere
else. It probably doesn't seem like a lot to the VC-juiced people at Patreon,
but that's a lot of money.

It's about 1/12 of a domain name for a project, or an experiment on AWS, or
more than halfway to going out for coffee with a friend at our favorite coffee
shop.

~~~
ghaff
In general, it's probably reasonable to have a per-transaction fee and a
percentage fee for this sort of thing. Because of batching of transactions, it
doesn't really line up with credit card processing charges but presumably
Patreon has some costs that are effectively per-transaction: infrastructure,
dispute resolution, credit card transactions (loosely), etc.

I have no opinion if these new fees are "fair" ones whatever that means. They
certainly bias against small donations though. It's not even so much who pays
the fees. I see the psychological elements. But I assume a lot of creators
(and patrons) would be just as upset if the creators were now only seeing 62
cents out of every dollar with the rest going to "hidden" fees.

