
We’re sorry, and we’re not rolling out the fees change - JoshTriplett
https://blog.patreon.com/not-rolling-out-fees-change/
======
JoshTriplett
This is a remarkably direct and appropriate apology, along with an appropriate
response, a rare thing indeed.

If not for their _initial_ response to the first round of feedback, namely to
put a "we're still doing it" at the bottom of their original blog post (with
completely unreasonable and unjustified explanations for _why_ ), I'd give
them full credit for responding appropriately. As it is, though, at least they
fixed this. They're still going to need to deal with the giant pile of patrons
they drove off; many people lost a significant fraction of their support
because of this change, and that won't necessarily come back.

Between 1 and 2 years ago, I talked to some folks at Patreon about an
unrelated topic (namely, trying to use Patreon for registered charities). They
mentioned at that time that they had a change in the works to shift processing
fees from creators to patrons, which they said at the time would be "better
for creators" for various reasons, but that didn't want to talk about the
details yet. (Since the issue is now public, I don't see any issue with saying
that now.) That discussion naturally didn't include any information about fee
structure or un-aggregation of charges with associated additional fees, e.g.
the "$1 costs $1.37" problem, since that wasn't the topic; the impression they
gave at the time was that the only change was to pass on the (presumably still
aggregated) fees to the patrons, which wouldn't have been as serious a
problem, and wouldn't have killed Patreon's suitability as a wildly successful
microtransaction platform the way this change did. So, they've been thinking
about this for a _long_ time, and yet they sprung it on people without warning
and without running the _full_ details by anyone.

Update: there's now a survey from Patreon asking for feedback:
[https://twitter.com/Patreon/status/941010263385374720](https://twitter.com/Patreon/status/941010263385374720)

~~~
sgdread
I understand why they do it: they trying to bring down transaction costs with
payment processors. These fees on small amounts is death by thousand cuts.

But, I believe, there is a way: they can introduce wallets for $1-2 patrons:
put $10 in a single transaction, then charge the wallet once it is a time to
pay to creator. This should aggregate small transactions into larger ones and
significantly cut the costs.

~~~
ajkjk
Maybe it's just me, but, I think it's _so fucking stupid_ that it costs money
(which goes to private businesses) to spend money in the modern world.

(and no, bitcoin doesn't fix that at all)

I think if we were in an alternate universe where the government managed a
free utility for digital payments no one would find it strange for a second.

~~~
spookthesunset
It has always costed money to to spend money and there are pros and cons to
each method. All that stuff isn't free even if it isn't directly measurable
most of the time.

Cash costs money too--you have to count it, handle it, deposit it, protect it
from theft, verify it's authenticity, make sure you have enough change, spend
time counting change, etc. As a consumer, if a merchant fucks you over you
have little recourse besides suing. Cash takes no time to clear so you can
spend it right after getting it, it is anonymous, it is hard to trace so you
can skip on taxes, etc.

Checks can bounce, you have to deposit them, they take time to clear, they
take forever to write, they can be fake, etc. However, it is hard for your
cashiers to skim off the top, it uses exact amounts so no change to keep, it
is a single slip of paper to carry around instead of a pocket of paper
currency, as a consumer you can stop payment on a check if the merchant fucks
you over, etc...

Credit cards are super quick to use at the register. They don't require any
change (unless handing cash back). As a consumer, if a merchant fucks you over
you can issue a chargeback. It is easy to track your spending as a consumer
because all transactions are recorded electronically. As a merchant you don't
have to handle change or cash, your cashiers can't easily skim off the top,
etc...

It's all trade offs and I'll bet if you did an NPV on all the different
methods taking into consideration all their pros and cons, they'd all wind up
"costing" similar amounts.

~~~
jimmaswell
>Credit cards are super quick to use at the register.

At least they used to be. Chips ruined that. Now I have to stand there staring
at the screen for half a minute waiting to respond to prompts and to pull the
card out at the end. For most transactions, cash is probably faster than using
a chip.

~~~
bbarn
Where are you, out of curiousity? I find most of the chips are no slower than
using a swipe card was before.

~~~
Miredly
I lived in Spain for a year, and everyone had chips there. My US card always
drew eyerolls as they had to find the /old/ machine and dust it off and find
someone who remembered how to use it. I was excited that we were getting chips
here in the US, but of course they fucked it up and for whatever reason it
takes ages for your chip to be read, and there are frequent chip read errors.

------
jasode
_> Many of you lost patrons, and you lost income._

I think Jack at Patreon fundamentally misunderstood the _nature of the
relationship_ between patron and creator. A lot of patrons feel like their
payment is a _donation_ instead of paying a subscription or water bill. Yes,
some patrons+creators have a quid-pro-quo arrangement where payments unlocks
content or extra services. However, many payments are just "appreciation" type
of money. That is a _fragile relationship_ and it was wrong to tamper with it
by charging extra fees to the patron.

Jack was/is a creator himself so he should have known this dynamic and
therefore predicted the bad outcome ahead of time.

Ideally, when you start a multi-sided platform, you want to get the economics
correct from the very beginning so you can leave it unchanged. (E.g. Apple
iTunes charges 30% since 2008 and it's stayed that way.) However, if you have
to readjust the percentages, it's preferable to take it out on the sellers'
side and not the buyers' side. When ebay started, the fees for sellers were
~3.25%. Over the last 10 years, it has crept up in increments to ~10%. All of
those price increases were absorbed by the sellers.

If Patreon needs more than 5% to make the numbers work for a sustainable
business, they need to take it from the creators and not the patrons. Patreon
was riding on the "good will" of patrons making voluntary payments. It was a
terrible miscalculation to destroy that good will and nickel & dime patrons
with extra fees.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
> ebay started, the fees for sellers were ~3.25%. Over the last 10 years, it
> has crept up in increments to ~10%. All of those price increases were
> absorbed by the sellers.

Isn't this a false dichotomy? It's just a matter of how you phrase it, no?

If the increase in seller fees is reflected in real pricepoints on eBay's
market, it could work out as it really being the buyers paying the difference.

~~~
jasode
_> If the increase in seller fees is reflected in real pricepoints on eBay's
market, it could work out as it really being the buyers paying the
difference._

That would be true but that didn't happen. Final ebay auction values for
stable items (e.g. books) did not rise by +7%. The sellers really did end up
paying most of the fee increases.

Yes, some sellers tried to claw back the extra fee commission by adding extra
"handling charges" to the total. That had limited effect because it made
prices higher than (1) other ebay sellers that didn't add handling fees and
(2) competitive Amazon Marketplace prices.

Also, Ebay lets bidders sort search results by _" total price including
shipping & handling"_ so adding handling fees just pushes your items down to
the bottom of the list.

~~~
neerkumar
I don't get this. Eventually, it is just taking a cut from a transaction. What
does even mean the seller is paying for it or the buyer?

Let's say the final price is 100$ and cut is 10%, so seller gets 90$ and buyer
pays 100$. You could say the buyer is paying for it since the seller was
willing to sell for 90$ and the buyer had to add 10$ to get the item. Or you
could say the seller pays for it, since the buyer was willing to buy for 100$
and the seller has to give up on 10$ out of those 100$.

I really don't see the difference. It seems just marketing in terms of how you
phrase it. I even saw companies saying things like: seller is paying 5% and
buyer 5%, which seems just a way to make it look lower for both sides.

~~~
T-Winsnes
The difference is when the cut increases, but the overall price does not.
Buyer still pays $100, but seller only get $80

------
misterbowfinger
It's hard to believe that Patreon didn't ask for feedback on this model
initially. I'm sure they did, but my guess is that they didn't expect the
blowback from people that depended on $1-2 patrons to have such a large impact
on their image.

IMO, before Twitter/Facebook, this apology would've never happened. They
would've continued to press on with their fee structure and it would've been
yesterday's news.

The real question is - is this still a good move for them? Or should they have
dealt with the blowback either way?

~~~
gcommer
> It's hard to believe that Patreon didn't ask for feedback on this model
> initially.

From their initial blog post announcing this change:

> In preparation for this change, we ran experiments and months and months of
> research to understand patrons’ potential reactions and we found that many
> patrons were happy knowing that this change will send more money to
> creators.

Looks like a somewhat interesting user-testing glitch to me. Perhaps their
sample of patrons wasn't representive, or when you sit people down and discuss
a new feature 1-1 you can be more convincing than when broadcasting it to the
whole world in a blog post.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
Well, something that's gotten elided in a lot of the outrage is that moving
the transaction fees from the creators to the patrons would have given
creators 3-5% more money on the same amount of pledges. And while it seems "no
duh" to point out that a $5 pledge is literally worth five times what a $1
pledge is, in terms of _revenue,_ that means that many creators could have
lost a surprising number of $1 pledges and still come out even (or even
slightly ahead). I ran the numbers for several Patreons, big and small, based
on what I could scour from Graphtreon, and the amount of money _most_ creators
lost over the last few days would have been largely offset by the money they'd
get back.

I'm not saying that this makes the change a good idea, or that it was
communicated well, or that there aren't some really interesting business
dynamics that are likely to come up one way or the other that will piss off
creators. (There are only _six_ creators on Patreon who have more than 10,000
patrons as of now; to earn that $450M valuation, Patreon may need creators who
have hundreds of thousands of patrons.) I'm just not convinced this would have
been the Patreoncalypse.

~~~
rcthompson
If patrons on average adjusted their pledges under the new fee structure such
that they were paying about as much money as they were before, creators would
end up with less money on average, because the new de-aggregated fee structure
results in higher fees as a percentage of the total amount paid in almost all
cases.

------
AlanSE
> Aggregation is highly-valued, and we underestimated that.

To me, at least, this is the core issue. Patreon is supposed to be the way to
support creators in the internet age.

If they're going to make a strong many-to-many funding model impractical, then
why should anyone put money into them as opposed to conventional charities? An
NPR pledge drive will sign me up for a credit card monthly auto-payment, but
that just doesn't really get me excited. Sure, it's a good cause, but good
causes have always been around.

This is critical because of the fact that so many of the creators are actually
doing bleeding-edge things. The tiny sub-categories of creators I fund didn't
exist 3 years ago. A $1 donation isn't just a signal from the supporter to the
creator. It's a signal to the media, it's a signal for potential book deals,
all kinds of things. Those numbers have value. By making those contributions
radically financially inefficient, they are risking a tipping point that
undermines their core value proposition. Even worse, it hurts the frontiers of
creation that we cared about in the first place.

------
myth_drannon
Well at least LiberaPay got their minute of fame from this fiasco. Their stats
shot through the roof.
[https://liberapay.com/about/stats](https://liberapay.com/about/stats)

~~~
craftyguy
Hopefully folks continue to migrate to them. It's pretty clear Patreon is only
looking out for themselves at this point, and the "sudden" change in direction
is because their bank account started to bleed.

~~~
gkya
Every enterprise has to earn a decent amount of money to survive, let alone
succeed in a financial way. They'd just start out as a NGO otherwise.

WRT dumping Patreon and the like, I'd rather see community-efforts and
enterprise compete. That has lead to some very high quality products from both
(e.g. clang vs. gcc, chrome vs. firefox).

------
mcqueenjordan
I doubt it was the feedback that they heard. I think it was the money.

I’m willing to bet that this rollback is because Patreon leadership and Sr.
Managers woke up Monday morning, took a look at their metrics and KPIs and
nearly had a heart attack. It probably looks like a nice upward trend for a
long time then a massive spike down after the announcement.

Always follow the money.

~~~
davidgerard
Not sure it was graphs. I think #4 creator Amanda Palmer posting in open
revolt asking her patrons to sign up for email so they could follow her
somewhere else might have helped:

[https://www.patreon.com/posts/15819420](https://www.patreon.com/posts/15819420)

It turns out the whales remember when they were minnows.

------
WesleyLivesay
While I like that they are walking these back, I have a feeling that people
who lost a lot of supporters won't see a 100% recovery.

I only lost a few, but it already has me poking around at different options
for the future.

~~~
davidgerard
> I only lost a few, but it already has me poking around at different options
> for the future.

Same here. Nobody is going to trust Patreon not to do something equally
damaging again. It's nice they've reversed this, but I really can't think of
anything that will bring back the trust they just trashed.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
From the contributor end, I no longer trust Patreon. Their announcement email
was way too much obfuscation and didn't include the bottom line up front: that
my $X/mo pledges would cost me an additional service fee starting January 1,
and that I would automatically be levied these fees.

~~~
mort96
That is entirely my issue with it too. They said that creators would start
getting almost all of the pledged money instead of just a share of it; what
they "forgot" to mention is that this is purely because they redefined what a
pledge means. They silently redefined it from "the amount of money I pay per
month" to "the amount of money I pay per month minus fees".

Creators would get more money of course, but purely because all patreons would
start paying more money. They didn't mention that either.

------
imiric
This is an admirable response, but I feel like Patreon is just one of the
first approaches towards getting rid of the advertising revenue models so
prevalent on the internet today, which should definitely be our goal. We can't
allow greedy advertisers to hijack online services, as is the current case for
YouTube.

I hope that in the future content creators won't have to depend on a single
company which takes decisions purely based on their own profit. The marketing
team can spin this anyway they want, but ultimately as a company that is their
goal.

For lack of a better term, microtransactions and some form of digital currency
should solve this problem.

I'm not a fan of the Brave browser, but they introduced a micropayment system
last year[0]. It seems to have been launched with Bitcoin support, but maybe
this has expanded (as it should) towards other currencies.

Can someone share their experience with Brave Payments, or with similar
systems?

This seems like the only logical way to go, from a technology standpoint, and
we're not that far off from reaching it.

Creators have their digital wallets, payments are made in the background (with
very limited user interaction, or none whatsoever) after a certain smart
contract is fulfilled between creator and consumer, and the funds are
transferred with very little latency.

The content creation service that launches with this will be huge in the near
future. Bonus points for open sourcing it and making an open system that all
content creation sites can reuse.

[0]: [https://www.brave.com/introducing-brave-
payments/](https://www.brave.com/introducing-brave-payments/)

~~~
jimmaswell
I really liked the idea of websites mining some cpu-mineable cryptocurrency in
place of having ads there. I suspect that might be a more widespread solution
in the future. Maybe even in the long term, the mining will be done through
webGL or some other API so that the browser can take advantage of the host's
GPU/GPU equivalent.

~~~
acqq
It seems you haven't thought about the consequences for such an approach.

~~~
jimmaswell
If you see major issues then you should say what they are. I think trading
some battery/mains power and a bit of wear on the device for using an
otherwise ad-based service sounds fine.

~~~
acqq
First consider how much is "some battery." E.g. do you really want that more
computing work allows higher payments? Bad luck paying anything not cents when
you don't have your computer or a mobile plugged in the wall. Who's "richer"?
Who has a bigger computer. Etc. Also see my other comment here.

~~~
jimmaswell
What's the expected return per pageview for the average ad? Not more than a
few cents either, is it?

------
nbm
The cynical view:

"We took a calculated risk, announcing the set of changes, and seeing what the
fallout would be. The fallout exceeded the threshold we set, so we're now
going to issue the apology we had prepared in case that situation was
reached."

~~~
kbenson
I'm not sure why that requires cynacism. It _is_ a business, after all. I
would rather them do this than blunder along blindly with policies that might
cause them to fail entirely, and adversely affect all those that rely on they
far more than this did.

~~~
aylons
It IS cynicism, by definition. If we have come to expect cynicism from
business as something usual, that's sad, but it is cynic nonetheless.

If they had been upfront about it from the beginning, it would still be a
business decision, only less cynic.

~~~
always_good
FWIW, cynic is a noun.

~~~
aylons
Thanks. Cynical would be the right word, I see. English is not my primary
language.

------
throwawayyx96
I'm scratching my head wondering why they didn't just take the obvious route
of offering an optional 'also pay the processing fees' option like paypal
does. Phrased in a way that lets the patron know that their supported creators
are getting a larger cut as a result. They might have been pleasantly
surprised by how many people will go for that as long as it's voluntary and
the fees are reasonable.

------
pornel
At least Liberapay had a good week:
[https://liberapay.com/about/stats](https://liberapay.com/about/stats) \- 50%
increase in active users, 8x increase in money deposited.

It's still a rounding error compared to Patreon's size, but I'm happy to see
open-source non-profit grow.

~~~
aw3c2
And I really like their model. You sent a fixed amount of money to your
account once and then distribute it over time as you like. For a 100€ load
this is 60¢ in fees. _Withdrawing euros to a SEPA bank account is free._
Totally awesome!

------
glenneroo
I don't understand why they had to make the change global. Why didn't they
just do this for e.g. patrons paying more than $10 (or whichever amount makes
sense)? I support a lot of projects but only the minimum of $1-2 per
month/project and suddenly they were all $2-3 (multiplied by 10 projects is a
huge tax).

------
thisacctforreal
I like the model of having the patron pay the (variable) cc fee, and having
either the patron or creator pay the patreon fee.

$patron_charge = $pledges_to_creators + $cc_fee + ($patreon_fee?)

$creator_payout = $pledges_from_patrons - ($patreon_fee?)

My beef is with aboloshing payment batching, which is the only wholesome value
proposition of patreon (i.e. strictly creates or spreads wealth). Without that
it's just another locked-down social graph.

The goal for this change seemed to be at-cost fee payments with no loss or
profit, and to prevent chargebacks from customers who didn't remember/expect a
payment total or payment date.

The first goal is acomplished with the patron-pays-cc-fee model, and the
second one might be solveable enough with UX tweaks.

Showing how the total is calculated in a big, ledgible table, perhaps after
every new pledge, seems like a useful start. Maybe even showing a calendar,
granting the ablility to change the monthly charge date, and sending/offering
reminders or adding an export-to-calendar button.

Of course those may be overwhelming to users, so maybe KISS and find out what
can be improved later.

------
ebiester
I mean, how many ways can you say "To make this viable, we need more money.
That can come from you, or it can come indirectly via fees to your patrons.
Which would you prefer?"

~~~
michaelt
I don't think any of the blog posts Patreon made said that?

What they said was: "We're changing our business model to make every
subscription a separate credit card charge, instead of bundling all
subscriptions into one monthly charge. The credit card processing fees will be
radically higher, so we're passing them on to you, but we won't make any extra
money from this ourselves"

Personally I found their decision pretty baffling, as in my book the monthly
aggregation was the main thing differentiating their product from Paypal,
Stripe and suchlike.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
Does anyone have any idea what advantage charging each subscription separately
was supposed to have?

~~~
egypturnash
There is a subset of creators who are trying to use Patreon as a paywall for
their content. This change was entirely about trying to make sure that nobody
could ever sign up to support a creator, get access, scrape all their paid
content, then stop supporting that person without ever being charged.

Unfortunately changing the payment model for EVERY creator site-wide
completely breaks aggregating multiple payments into one charge. Which, as a
creator, is the entire reason I'm on Patreon in the first place - I could just
set up a Paypal widget and try to get my fans to subscribe to that for about
the same fees, minus the 5% to Patreon.

Or at least that was the argument they gave, there are multiple theories about
why they were doing this (those new VC loans they were crowing about last
month wanna see some profit, maybe aggregating micropayments is brushing
perilously close to laws designed to fight money laundering, they're trying to
look more profitable before selling themselves, they just want more money
baths) that are rather less charitable than "they got obsessed with solving
this one problem caused by people trying to use Patreon in ways it was never
designed for and threw the baby out with the bathwater".

~~~
quadrangle
The subset of creators who DO use Patreon as a paywall service seems to be the
_majority_! Patreon _pushes_ perks as a key part of their model, and it's
always easier (thought not as ethical arguably) to restrict otherwise
shareable content than to offer something naturally scarce (dedicated time,
physical goods) to patrons.

But even though most creators do this artificial-scarcity paywall thing, only
a small _minority_ of them probably have even the slightest worry about
freeriders. Most focus on continuing to be productive and don't stress out
about the horror of some freerider "stealing" by getting around the paywall
and then not paying. It's a pathological worry to freak out about that. It's
healthy to just focus on all those who are happy supporters and want to
donate.

Patreon screwed up by focusing their attention on the noisy minority who were
not only using paywalls but demanding that Patreon make the paywalls stronger.

And while they come up with a non-stupid way to deal with charges around
stronger paywalls, they show no indication of stepping back from prioritizing
strong paywalls.

------
ProfessorLayton
I'm glad they're reversing these changes. But these developments scream loud
and clear that no creator should ever rely too heavily on any single platform.
If I was a creator I would certainly still be on the lookout for alternatives.

~~~
minimaxir
Patreon took off because it _was_ the alternative, as traditional
YouTube/website ad revenue has high variance and has been decreasing over
time.

------
AnIdiotOnTheNet
This is probably too late for a lot of creators, so hopefully Patreon feels
the pain of this boneheaded decision for a long time to come.

Several of the people and projects I sponsor have moved to alternative
services, and I followed them. In the future, if a competing service is
offered I will favor it over Patreon.

~~~
gk1
What alternatives are there?

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
One went to LiberaPay, another set up something called SendOwl, and a third
just put their product on itch.io.

There are actually a lot of different ways to setup this kind of funding
stream, depending on what you're looking for. If you're looking for "Patreon,
but not Patreon" then it gets a little more complicated.

~~~
myth_drannon
It's LiberaPay not LibrePay

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Corrected.

------
ashtube
You mean they didn't look at the stats and see how low the average pledge is,
and the many, many users who pledge $1-2?

Whilst it's a nicely worded apology, they F'd up being greedy, and are now
trying to recover by maintaining that closeness with the users. I'm not buying
it.

------
da_chicken
I understand why they need to do something different. It's no mistake that the
rule was $0.35 plus a percentage. All the credit card companies that people
use to pay with Patreon charge the retailer per transaction regardless of the
size, and it's usually $0.20 to $0.35 plus a percentage; debit cards can be as
high as $0.50 plus a percentage. _That_ has to be the motivation for this. So
the first $1 you give is only like $0.65, and that's just the payment
processing fee. It also costs money to transfer the funds to the creator's
account , and then Patreon gets 5% of what's left
([https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/204606125-How-...](https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/204606125-How-do-you-calculate-fees-)). Almost all the money has
gone to fees.

Even if you run the charges once a month, this is a fee for each Patron and
another fee for each creator. If you're a patron and you're giving just $1 to
just one creator, you're probably giving them like $0.10 and Patreon a big fat
penny.

This is why so many stores have a minimum transaction amount for credit cards.
If they don't do that, they can lose money on fees because the profit margin
on what they're selling doesn't even cover the service charge.

~~~
ufo
Patreon originally aggregated all payments into a monthly lump transaction to
Patreon. The new fee structure is consistent with them desegregating the
payments but it is not clear why they would do that.

One theory going around is that having individual payments reduces their
chargeback rate because the number in the credit card bill matches the
individual contributions instead of the lump sum. Another theory going around
is that separate payments would allow payments to be immediately sent to the
creator instead of waiting until the end of the month. But Patreon hasn't been
clear if one of these is the reason or if it was something else.

~~~
da_chicken
> The new fee structure is consistent with them desegregating the payments but
> it is not clear why they would do that.

From what I've read, the credit card companies are complaining about partial
refunds, which apparently occur much more often with Patreon. If I've got 10
creators I'm supporting for $1 each, and I decide I need a refund for one of
them, well, Patreon only ran one $10 transaction. Now it's kind of a pain in
the ass for the credit card company because I'm telling my credit card company
it should be 10 transactions @ $1 and I want to refund $1, but what they see
is one $10 transaction.

------
chx
What is missing from the blog post and from comments here as well is something
I saw on Twitter: if they unbundle and charge on the "anniversary" of the join
date of everyone then anyone shipping physical is utter screwed. They used to
have a single day (say, the 6th) when they shipped out to everyone who paid
and that was it. Shipping every day for small creators doesn't work -- they
need time to create :)

------
ksk
They should put the executive payroll on patreon. That would prevent any
future mishaps. :)

------
xlii
I wonder how long companies will be able to do stuff like this.

I know Hanlon’s razor but lately I get the feeling that most of the companies
try to push shitty stuff on their customers and in case of getting caught with
the hand still in the cookie jar they apologize profusely and move on to
another one.

I refuse to believe that it was innocent accident. As other commenter pointed
out this was discussed for a long time and most likely WAS an educated
decision. The only thing that was underestimated here is amount of outrage
that followed.

------
username223
You had _one job_ , Patreon: aggregate payments to eliminate fixed transaction
fees for the people exchanging money through your platform, replacing them
with a percentage fee. You set the percentage too low and then, instead of
simply raising it, you tried to stop doing the _one thing_ that made you
useful: eliminating fixed transaction fees. It's a pretty good corporate
apology, but it demonstrates a surprising lack of understanding of their
business.

------
fab1an
One thing that bugs me about these types of 'we hear you loud and clear'
statements is the stylistic use of the 'corporate first person plural'. I feel
the "we" in this contexts sounds a lot less authentic than a first person
singular statement from the founder / CEO.

While companies certainly do have a specific and sometimes even unique
culture, do we really think that _they_ have "core beliefs"?

------
manigandham
A patronage/donation model has no reason to worry about pledges being
cancelled early since there no purchase or expectation of goods. Sure some
people might have done that but it's already a community willing paying money
to support people they liked so it seems that behavior filters itself.

Unless they were trying to become a real commerce and subscription business,
it seems rather disingenuous to claim that as a reason, and it looks like that
was the core foundation because taking that away leaves little more than
saying that the existing system was "confusing", which could've be solved
differently. Also I'm not sure how individual payments with even more fees
could be less confusing than a single payment and fee per month but this is a
rather unfortunate incident for all the patrons who have to suffer from the
loss.

------
pilif
I wonder whether this rollback was caused by them actually listening to their
users or the huge dip in revenue as people stopped donating.

Well. Either way. This looks like a good thing. Until the VCs start again to
pressure for more revenue. Let's see what happens then. Probably higher fees
for the creators.

------
stagger87
Is Patreon making a profit right now?

~~~
kuschku
No, they’re making significant losses, and according to rumors, credit card
companies are seeing too high refund rates with Patreon, and are asking them
to either fund that, or unbundle the payments.

~~~
theobon
Do you have a source for these rumors. This is the second comment I've seen on
this post suggesting this but I can't find any supporting evidence.

According to Patreon's blog posts the unbundling was entirely related to the
"date of first subscription" problem.

------
thriftwy
Look how good it is to be customers and not the product? You get to have
apologies.

------
sontek
I wonder if this came out of the SF/Bay Area style growth after taking on
investment? I haven't heard if they've been hiring a ton lately but I saw this
happen with SurveyMonkey when we went from 100 employees to 1500.

The first 100 understood EVERYTHING about our customers and the product.
Something got lost in translation when we grew to 1500 in a few years.

I wonder if they have scaled out to the point where they are hiring people who
don't quite understand the product but are just a butt in a seat?

------
frandroid
I think a major issue that many commentators here don't touch is the idea that
Patreon plainly lied to its users. They said "more money will go to creators"
when the real action was "we're charging more money to users with barely any
more benefit to creators". Everyone understands that $1 going to $1.37 is
"more money going to Patreon" and the stated benefit was spin. It didn't make
me change my pledges but I was shocked by the dishonesty.

------
tensormoon
Good sports. I have about $50/mo going to creators on the site. I would follow
wherever they went. Hopefully they managed to keep this stuff from disrupting
too many people.

------
benkarst
A blog post as an apology? I can picture the CEO in a meeting, "Hey if this
doesn't work out, we can just draft a really sincere sounding letter to our
creators."

~~~
TheCowboy
You should suggest the alternative response for the less imaginative of us,
because what else could they do in response? It just comes across as snarky
for people to hate the changes and dismiss them again when they rollback the
policy everyone hated.

This is an unprofitable startup here, so I don't think they can start giving
out money to everyone who lost support.

Businesses make mistakes, and I'd think it would be a positive when they
listen to their users.

------
quadrangle
Not surprised. There's no way this made sense, and they already freaked out
tons of people who cared only partly about the fee and partly about the
feeling of helplessness when you rely on a for-profit platform that can change
at a seeming whim and pull the rug out from under you.

Pulling back addresses the fee concerns directly and gives _some_ feeling that
the users can have _some_ influence, although they'll stay wary.

None of this changes what drove the fee issue in the first place: Patreon
_tries_ to present itself as a donation platform but is _primarily_ a _paywall
service_. Since _most_ "creators" use it to easily manage _restricted_ access
to shareable perks (i.e. perks that are non-rivalrous in nature and _could_ be
shared with the world), they will continue to have to serve that freemium
business model.

~~~
TillE
As everyone on the internet eagerly pointed out the moment this was announced,
you can get a best-of-both-worlds solution by simply prorating the second
month.

Nothing actually eliminates piracy issues; it's easy to discreetly mirror an
RSS feed, for example. You're ultimately relying on the honesty of the vast
majority of your patrons, a strategy which has worked out for Patreon creators
very well thus far.

~~~
quadrangle
Totally. The point is that the Patreon folks made the stupid decisions about
the new fee because they were blindly thinking about effective paywalls. If
they had been thinking holistically about things, they wouldn't have been so
dumb. Of course, there are better ways to handle even the paywall issue.

The stupidity was clear when they wrote “if you’re a creator on the monthly
plan without the benefit of charge up front, you are constantly worried that
your patrons are going to delete their pledges before they’ve paid”. From
that, we can see how they were just hearing irrational paywall worries from
people and responding irrationally around just trying to please those requests
/ address those worries.

Those worries _should_ have been recognized as irrational. Patreon _ought_ to
be saying that this is about honesty and people who _want_ to support you and
that they aren't in the business to try to stop all possible freeriding, they
are working to help everyone who actually wants to support the creators etc.

------
45h34jh53k4j
The thing everyone is missing is that you CANNOT do $1 credit card payment at
scale. Patreon has been taking a hit for every single dollar pledge made. They
dont want your $1, it costs them too much!

Patreon decided that they were SICK of supplementing all the $1 pledges, and
added a new fee schedule. The internet, was too short sighted to care about
this economic reality, and so they were forced to burn with fees once more.

~~~
byuu
And that's why the older model worked better: a donor would pledge $1 to
twenty creators, and would get charged one $20 transaction fee at the
beginning of each month.

The creators ate the Paypal fee (usually 4-5%), and then Patreon collected an
additional 5% for simply coordinating these exchanges with their service.

I doubt there were many people who only pledged $1 to one creator and that was
it. But if that was truly a problem, then sure, _one_ 35-cent charge per month
would be reasonable.

~~~
encryptThrow32
Thank you for explaining. I never understood the aggregation of donations
process. Maybe a majority of their customers are paying $1 to 1 person? Are
there really people that give away x $1/month to multiple random internet
folks? I don't get it.

~~~
ekimekim
Hi, I pay $1-$3 to about 10 creators, plus some higher pledges.

A $1 pledge, to me, is a way to say "I enjoy your content. I want you to keep
doing it, instead of needing to quit and get a 'real job'. And I use adblock
so you aren't otherwise getting any benefit from my enjoyment.". When 1000s of
other people make the same $1/mo decision as me, the creator has a stable
income, and they create more and better content, which is good for me.

------
frandroid
Patreon have built a kind micropayments platform, but suddenly they decided
they weren't happy with being a micropayments platform anymore, charging
PayPal-level fees on transactions, and many more artifically inflated
transactions at that. We already have PayPal, we don't need Patreon as a
second one which isn't competitive.

------
theandrewbailey
Server being internet-hugged. Cache:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IFhxAy...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IFhxAyCJ1fMJ:https://blog.patreon.com/not-
rolling-out-fees-change/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

~~~
gaius
In 2017 it ought to be basically impossible to flatten a typical server
dishing up static content. I suspect all that is getting hugged is the ads and
tracking...

~~~
Xorlev
Quickly browsing the meta tags, it's a Wordpress site, likely running on a
tiny bit of hardware (possibly not even multiple servers). Those are easy to
flatten.

~~~
Goladus
Maybe not even one whole server. Could just be one virtual machine.

------
734786710934
Users who were upset with the change need to reckon with the fact that Patreon
isn't profitable and that it's likely that it's _impossible_ for them to ever
become profitable with their 5% business model (Patreon is based in San
Francisco and has over 100 employees, do the math).

~~~
Analemma_
They can just take a larger share of creators’ aggregate earnings if they need
more money. Obviously the creators won’t be happy, but it wouldn’t destroy the
“many individual $1-2 donations” segment, as this change would’ve done.

~~~
ilamont
This is what Upwork did. Freelancers weren't happy, but the anger died down
and the company is still in business.

Background:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11626864](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11626864)

------
katastic
As usual. If you want a company to change, you have to affect their bottom
dollar. Otherwise, you'll only get a "we have learned through this experience
and will take it forward with us to prevent [our messed up thing we did] from
[ever being noticed by you again]."

------
fapjacks
I waited a few days before canceling my $1-2 pledges, and completed my
cancellations yesterday. So now today I had to spend some time going back
through and _re-pledging_ the stupid $1-2 pledges to lessen the screw to my
beloved creators. What a clusterfuck!

------
Thetawaves
It was my impression that patreon needs to find a profitable footing to
continue existing. Generally I would see increased revenues as a good thing
(it helps to ensure that a service people appreciate continues to exist).

Given that - why has there been such a push back against this?

~~~
gizmo686
A lot of people viewed Patreon as a microtransaction service. They give $1 to
a bunch of creators. Creators liked this because it meant they could get a
bunch of low value supportors instead of a relatively few high value ones.

Previously, Patreaon worked fine for this use-case. You support 10 creators at
$1 each. Patreon charges you $10 each month, and credits $1 to each of your
pledgies accounts. Patreon then eats $FEES from the pledgie's account and
gives them the remaining money. Patreon would aggragate transfers so they only
pay transaction fees on the single $10 charge to me, and on the final payment
to the creator. As a result of this (and maybe other things), the fees were
unpredictable to the creators, because they did not know how many other
creators were splitting the transaction fees. In this example, a single
creator would only see a ~$0.03 fee on my $1 donation; however, if I only had
a single creator, he would see the full $0.30 on my dontation. (There are
other fees at play, but this is the important one).

Under the new system, every donation pays the $0.35 transaction fee. This
means that even if I support 10 creators, they all pay the full $0.35 on my $1
donation.

In contrast, if I instead had a single creator at $10, he would only see $0.38
in fees, or about $0.04 per dollar.

This means that the new system disproportional effects people making small
donations.

It is also not clear that this was a pure money grab. This change coincided
with a change to their payment system where they would stop aggregating
charges. If they do not aggragate charges, it makes sense that they would
charge smaller donations more, because those now have more overhead. The
problem is that this breaks the service for small donation use cases.

~~~
mrguyorama
You missed that the fee was going to be paid by the patrons, not the creators.
Instead of being charged 1$, you would be charged $1.37ish for EACH pledge,
meaning distributing your (for example) 35$ budget out to a bunch of different
creators would screw you over.

------
nicky0
It seems to me that patreon thinks that its customers are the creators, and so
it has been focusing its effort on pleasing them. In fact it is quite clear by
asking "who pays the money" that their customers are in fact the patrons.

~~~
eric_the_read
This seems straightforward, if only from a cash flow perspective-- customers
are the people who give you money; vendors are the people you give money to.

------
james_pm
Are there really that many patrons who feel the value they get from whatever
they are supporting is a single dollar? Leave the transaction fees as they
were going to be, and make the minimum amount of patronage $5 or $10.

~~~
egypturnash
50% of my Patreon money comes from $1 pledges. Many (if not all) of those
pledges are from people who are giving $1 to multiple creators.

I post most of the stuff I make online for free, with no ads. All those $1s
add together to make a sustainable wage for me.

It's the Long Tail in action. It's pretty nice.

------
xupybd
Patreon lost my support when they banned Lauren Southern. They have every
right to do so but I don’t want to support a company that refuses to work with
people based on their political leanings.

~~~
TheCowboy
Platforms aren't neutral parties and have to make calls like this. "Political
leanings" is misdirection.

Participating in attempts to block NGO (affiliated with Doctors without
Borders) ships performing maritime search and rescue missions for migrants is
particularly heinous. If it must be spelled out, this is acting to prevent the
rescue of drowning refugees.

Are you really supporting freedom of expression by allowing your platform to
support people who don't support others right to exist?

~~~
xupybd
I think the argument is to do with political leanings. Some believe that NGO
boats incentivize human trafficking. If this is true more people will die via
human trafficking than would if these NGO were interrupted.

While that argument is not super solid it is a political one and to Ban her
based on her intention to report on this seems political to me.

~~~
TheCowboy
You can rephrase this as much as you want, but this is not just "her intention
to report on this". This is obstructing humanitarian efforts in a way that
leads to loss of life.

You're claiming the motivations here are to protect the lives of migrants by
limiting "incentived human trafficking", but the motive is white nationalism.

[http://www.dw.com/en/defend-europe-identitarians-charter-
a-s...](http://www.dw.com/en/defend-europe-identitarians-charter-a-ship-to-
return-migrants-to-africa/a-39702947)

~~~
xupybd
Most of those quotes are from the activist group Hope not Hate. They are a
group on the left saying a group on the right is bad. Can you see how this is
a deeply political issue?

I hear far too often that people on the right are white nationalist, yet I see
no one presenting evidence they are. There are some white nationalist on the
right but I don't think it's fair to tar everyone on the right with the same
brush.

------
wnevets
Saying you're sorry and not doing it is good enough for me.

~~~
davidgerard
They said they're sorry and they're going to do _something_ toward whatever
the hell it was they thought they were doing in the coming year.

------
rossdavidh
What's odd to me is that they don't seem to have understood that spreading
this charge (basically the credit card fee) across several people the patron
is sponsoring, is more or less their purpose. If a given patron is not
(typically) sponsoring more than one artist (or whatever), then yes they
would/will have a problem, but they also wouldn't have a reason to exist. It's
not like there aren't other ways to accept a credit card online, on a
repeating basis even. Enabling a "tip jar on a monthly basis" was their whole
reason for existence. They may not have known this.

------
xchip
I cancelled my account, glad to see they got the message. It will take a while
until I rejoin, if I do ever join. I might donate directly now.

------
ksk
I think I read it somewhere else too, but why does a company setup for
community contributions need to raise money through venture capital?

------
jknoepfler
It creeps me out to no end when corporations mimic human social behavior using
community relations teams. It's made worse by people thinking that anything
about the content of the apology matters. It was literally crafted by an
expert actor. The only thing we should care about is the reversal and whatever
concrete action Patreon takes to prevent a new fiasco (which I see no mention
of). The company executed a business decision with bumbling incompetence, then
was forced to back it out because of their customers. That later bit _is_
interesting, the fact that it was accompanied by something written by a
trained parrot is not.

I'd still be looking for alternatives, the original decision was a gross
breach of trust and revealed that Patreon's business 1decisions are not coming
from the authentic place we may once have hoped for.

edit: to clarify, the content I'm looking for in a real apology is a plan of
action so that this isn't repeated. Patreon needs to restore trust. Apology
language doesn't do that. Rolling back the act of searing incompetence was
step one. Making sure it doesn't happen again is the real apology.

~~~
dmix
People complain when you're a robot, people complain when you're a human.

> It's made worse by people thinking that anything about the content of the
> apology matters. It was literally crafted by an expert actor.

Yes they are a money making organization...that's why they were able to build
such a useful service in the first place and yes they paid people to write
this letter... who happen to be people that are good at communicating. Does
that mean we should question every action they make as insincere because they
are self-interested?

Most free/open-source projects are so over-burdened with work/bug reports that
they neglect PR pieces like this as they simply don't have the time. It's a
good thing it was written by an expert writer IMO, even if it does contain a
bit of spin people typically have enough common-sense to know the difference
where it matters.

The whole reason they rolled back this change is because they were ultimately
self-interested... the customers were very unhappy about it and protested,
which may hurt their business, so they rolled it back. It's win-win for
everyone. They aren't forcing anyone to use the service, people use it because
it's useful and the company gets rewarded for not pissing them off.

Not to mention there is a real action/behaviour behind this letter... it's not
just PR-speak sidestepping an issue, as we've seen in the past. It's an
announcement that they made a mistake and listened to consumer feedback and
are reversing a bad decision.

I find many of these types of complaints (see: every FB group made after
changes made to FB) are just people looking for something to whine about, or
to feel superior to a company, and they typically aren't representing the
average consumer. Most messaging like this is considering the interests of the
average/majority customer. Not the cynical/high iq minority who is touchy
about copywriting in press releases.

~~~
shrimp_emoji
>Yes they are a money making organization...that's why they were able to build
such a useful service in the first place and yes they paid people to write
this letter... who happen to be people that are good at communicating. Does
that mean we should question every action they make as insincere because they
are self-interested?

Yes! As customers in a cold, realist world, we're doomed to have an
adversarial relationship with the organizations trying to profit from us. The
question is who wins: Joe Six-pack like you and me, or the suits with the
lawyers and PR teams?

~~~
dmix
> The question is who wins: Joe Six-pack like you and me, or the suits with
> the lawyers and PR teams?

... who wins what? The most value which the company provides?

Apologies if I missed some sarcasm here, it’s hard to tell these days.

I’m curious what customers are potentially losing or being ‘manipulated’ here
... because a company wrote a human personal-style press release.

We’re not talking about the special advantages large companies or wealthy
individuals get as a result of government policy or in the court room... where
politicians and law makers can be bought off or influenced in in their favour,
over competitors or consumer interests.

And if customers occasionally reacting negatively, in regards to a service
they clearly care about enough to protect and protest to making a change, is
‘adversarial’ then you’re engaging in your own spin. This seems like a healthy
give and take. The fundamental basis on which our society is built.

------
yuvalr1
The way to prevent such future issues is to move to a decentralized platform,
perhaps using a blockchain.

------
sleepybrett
Too late, the damage is done.

------
nopcode
I already deleted all my subscriptions. I'm too lazy to put it back.

------
Jpoechill
Cancelled a subscription that I had also, will have to return now. yipes

------
ReedJessen
Excellent apology. They are in a tough position.

------
nikolay
I am in the States and I am charged VAT. I emailed them, tweeted to them - no
response! I can't believe this company is run so poorly!

------
fiatjaf
I don't understand why that would have impacted more $1 donors than others.
Someone please explain!

~~~
Majestic121
Because there is a 0.35c flat fee per donation along with the 2.9% (ignored in
the sample).

So giving ten euros to 1 creator actually costs 10.35 to the patron. Giving 1
euros to 10 creators costs 13.50

~~~
fiatjaf
Thank you.

------
reiichiroh
No apology is enough to atone for Pomplamoose.

------
Tokkemon
Hah.

Wait, what happened?

------
macspoofing
They are a young company dealing with money and playing in a very
controversial space (they will be attacked and targeted for providing a
service to people like Sam Harris - who is seen as a bigot by large swaths of
the left). They are going to get things wrong as they mature. It will take
time.

------
nojvek
I really liked that people voted with their wallets. I funded $10/month to a
couple of people and pulled everything out. I'm glad they reversed the fee.
Will start funding again.

I wish we could all do the same with our taxes to make a point to GOP.

~~~
tartuffe78
You mean the party pushing for tax cuts?

~~~
nerfhammer
They're raising them for Californians

~~~
Shivetya
why should the Federal government finance the tax methods the states impose on
their citizens. this change is good because it will bring the methods of
taxation, the value of taxes taken in, and their usage, to light.

far too often high taxation states have lived with the idea that the rich
won't complaint too much since they can deduct a large portion from their
federal taxes. yet all those not rich enough to itemize got stuffed.

people need to understand that deductions of state, real estate, and similar
taxes, only serves the wealthy. Yet oddly the very same people who complain
about the wealthy and taxes instantly pivot when they learn how its all done
and that they will be affected.

We are the rich, the vast majority posting here make far more than the average
if not in multiples. people think it takes millions to be rich, but its not
true when you look at the numbers.

~~~
lazyasciiart
Why should states like California finance the federal government's handouts to
other states that refuse to actually tax their own population, do you mean?
And why are you ok with the federal government financing states that use
property taxes, but not other types?

------
smegel
The fact you didn't engage with the community initially or ask for feedback
speaks far more about your arrogance, incompetence and mendacity that the
nature of the change itself. If I was using Patreon I would be looking for
alternatives anyway...how long until the next "surprise"?

~~~
k2xl
That's pretty harsh. They made a mistake and then apologize. While they didn't
"initially" they did "eventually" \- don't they deserve some credit for that?

~~~
PaulKeeble
No. Allowing companies to continuously treat its customers poorly as they test
out pricing structures to maximise profits is how gambling become common in
computer games and makes up 50% of EAs profits. It shows their intent, to work
out how to maximise their earnings and keep everyone grumbling but still using
their service. Look for an exit if you are funded this way, this company is
going to keep trying until it sticks.

------
gigatexal
Most things, if not everything, comes down to economics and not goodwill.

~~~
stcredzero
One of the greatest victories of Human Rights in the past few hundred years
came down to philosophy and goodwill, not economics. The abolition of slavery
cost the British government and Navy a considerable amount in their
enforcement effort. The US paid a terrible price for it.

[http://imperium-europa.blogspot.com/2016/06/thomas-sowell-
br...](http://imperium-europa.blogspot.com/2016/06/thomas-sowell-british-war-
against.html)

Economics is one of the biggest factors deciding what people do. (I'd put it
at #2 or #3) However, there are even mightier factors than money and
livelihood. Otherwise, we'd be Ferengi, not humans, and the Ferengi characters
in Star Trek which are written to be different would be the main characters.
That economics reigns supreme is one of the false cornerstones of the original
Marxian economics which experts in the field now know to be false, but which
persists in zombie form in the popular consciousness.

~~~
ageofwant
That's a comforting fiction, however the truth has more to do with the
industrial revolution, and the fact that a joule from coal is significantly
cheaper than a joule from a slave.

Future high primary energy cost economies will almost certainly be based on
slave labour, like they have in the past.

~~~
stcredzero
_That 's a comforting fiction, however the truth has more to do with the
industrial revolution, and the fact that a joule from coal is significantly
cheaper than a joule from a slave._

Then why not have slaves running your coal powered machinery? The truth is
that the free labor of slaves was just a particular (and ultimately
inefficient) pattern of organizing society, and the human capital of knowledge
is the real driving force. If energy was the ruling force, then West Virginia
wouldn't be so poor and rural, and Japan wouldn't be a world economic
powerhouse.

 _Future high primary energy cost economies will almost certainly be based on
slave labour, like they have in the past._

Even in the historical US, slaves that worked in agriculture and industries
that required knowledge and attention to detail were _paid_. Otherwise, there
is no motivation for energizing the human capital of skill and knowledge.

If the way you see the world were accurate, then totalitarian societies would
be the wealthy ones. Instead, those with some degree of free trade and
individual freedom are the wealthy ones.

~~~
ageofwant
This is what I wrote: "a joule from coal is significantly cheaper than a joule
from a slave", read my comment again. In your reply you stated the same.

My point is that it was cheap coal energy that freed slaves, the economic
realities of coal joules vs human joules, not high justice, economics.

~~~
stcredzero
_My point is that it was cheap coal energy that freed slaves, the economic
realities of coal joules vs human joules, not high justice, economics._

Then you are clearly demonstrating that you didn't carefully read the entirely
what I wrote. The "free" labor of slavery was of little relative utility over
other forms of social organization. In effect, it was just another
(particularly egregious) form of social organization. All forms of human
organization back then had _about the same_ access to human joules. In all
cases, the value of the human joules and coal joules was greatly increased
through the addition of human capital in the form of skill and knowledge.
Having the power of life and death obedience over people only goes so far. It
gets you only a very crude application of those human joules. In order to get
the maximum value out of your working population, you need forms of motivation
beyond life and death obedience.

The key fact is that the productive capacity of _human capital intelligently
combined_ with energy far outstrips the output of poorly applied energy. _The
key is the human capital, not the energy._ If it was just the energy, then
you'd just have slaves running coal powered plants. You would not have had
slaves running business as in the Roman Empire, or artisan slaves and paid
specialist agricultural in the US.

High justice, as a form of human capital, enables economics.

------
ronilan
Great move by YouTube!

Edit: oops, sorry, it's Patreon. That damn dog whistle again...

------
dokem
The sad part is that Patreon has to backtrack and apologize so aggressively. I
read the email the other day while sitting on the toilet and thought nothing
of it. Was there any actual blowback or just a couple of loud mouths on
Twitter that can't afford to rub a few pennies together? You can't make
everyone happy, especially in the quest to make money.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
There was a substantial blowback from both creators and patrons. The problem
wasn't really the switch to having patrons cover overhead, it was that no
attempt was made at all to aggregate pledges in order to reduce that overhead.
This disproportionately affected patrons who pledge small amounts to a lot of
people.

------
megaman22
I'm not sure how patreon is supposed to work; i signed up a long time ago, and
I haven't seen a red cent from them. In the meantime I've gotten hundreds of
dollars from Amazon and add AdWords.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
You are not being sarcastic right? I am finding it hard to be charitable here.

Patreon is just a place for your fans to support your work in a structured
manner (rather than a free-form donate button).

If you are a content creator, it is up to you to market your patreon account
and request your fans to support you there. Did you do that?

~~~
megaman22
Literally have not seen a dollar from them. I get a few dollars every month
passively from amazon affiliate links

