
Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture - panic
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/3/16084248/patreon-profile-jack-conte-crowdfunding-art-politics-culture
======
pillowkusis
I have seen so many content creators go full time and create awesome work
because Patreon gives them a format to incentivize their followers to pay
them. The economics are beautiful — turns out just 1,000 people (a pittance on
internet mass media websites) donating $5 a month will totally change the way
you run your life. And even better, these artists are independent in a way no
artist has ever been before. You’re not beholden to advertizers. You’re not
beholden to the whims of a few patrons (church or people). You only need the
loyalty of people who value your work.

Before Patreon, internet content creators (from the BBC to a little indie
band) were in a dangerous place. Paygates couldn't sustain growth but ad-
supported free media couldn't sustain revenue (now more than ever with ad-
blockers). Now there is an answer.

I am totally convinced Patreon (or the patreon model) is the future of content
creation. Ethical, decentralized, economically viable flourishing of the arts.

If anyone at Patreon reads this, I would love to come work for you, please
contact me sparrowmaxx at google’s email service. :)

~~~
PKop
I've seen Patreon kicking people off their platform for political reasons, so
it is not decentralized, though certainly more so than alternatives existing
before Patreon.

The evolution will converge towards content creators being funded through
decentralized crypto currency platforms so that the money cannot be prevented
from getting to creators if someone wants to pay them.

Something more along the lines of [https://lbry.io/](https://lbry.io/) and
similar..

Currently BTC and the like are push vs pull payment systems, so until smart
contracts are widely used to enable subscription payments, this will be a
blocker.

~~~
bryanlarsen
They kicked off 8chan but kept The Sarkeesian Effect so in my opinion they've
got it exactly right. They keep up pretty nasty stuff in the name of free
speech, but don't let you cross the line into doxing and the like.

I much prefer having sensible humans at the helm than have something purely
anonymous.

~~~
dna_polymerase
There is no "getting it right" in free speech. Either you allow free speech or
you don't, if you are keeping one controversial thing but kick out the other
you gave up on free speech. You can't kick someone out because you think its
right and claim allowing free spech.

~~~
azernik
That is a very US-centric view of free speech. In many other (developed,
democratic) countries, a lot of the shit 8chan does would be viewed as
incitement to violence, hate speech, and/or invasion of privacy. The
absolutist conception of free speech in the US is an outlier.

~~~
specialist
It's a very libertarian (puerile) view of free speech. The rest of us
understand principles like civility, that your rights stop where mine begin,
don't yell "fire!" in a crowded theater, balancing rights and
responsibilities, and that hatespeech is a form of assault.

~~~
syshum
No "Hate Speech" is not a form of assault, nor should it be treated as such

Further the entire concept of "hate Speech" is rife for abuse and is
antithesis of Free Speech.

How do you objectively define "Hate Speech", do you trust government to define
this, that is a scary thought if you do...

~~~
specialist
What's the most hateful thing someone ever told you? Or that you heard
(witnessed)?

How did it make you feel?

~~~
cookiecaper
"Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me". This old
cliche is underappreciated in our day and age.

Individuals are free to choose the way they process the information and
commentary they receive. When someone physically assaults you, there is no
choice involved, and your life is legitimately and immediately threatened by
such activity in the real, physical, and non-abstract sense.

It is great that we are all thinking about what we say, but speech is
unequivocally not the same as physical assault, and it's farcical to suggest
it should be.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
If only this were in any way true. There is a such thing as mental abuse,
after all. Some folks lived through this growing up. Gaslighting is just words
too. Folks kill themselves due to harassment. That harassment? Yeah, it can be
nothing more than daily messages and/or phone calls and/or letters.
Widespread, open racist speech generally signals an environment where racist
_actions_ are well-tolerated, I'm assuming (I have no links to back it up at
the time). Oh, and this mental distress from words can produce physiological
symptoms. But hey, they are nothing more than words, right?

The old cliche you speak of only works in a few situations. Someone calling
you names or saying mean things on the street don't really hurt you if they
are isolated incidents. This is the usual context when this is used. But in a
broader sense? It simply doesn't pan out. It isn't the same thing, no, but I'm
not sure why that matters. A slap on the rear someone should be able to get
over, a punch maybe not. I'm pretty sure both can be prosecuted as physical
assult in some situations yet in others, be perfectly acceptable courses of
action. Same with words, it depends on how you use them to how much damage it
will do.

~~~
specialist
I used to be a Chomsky-esque defender of free speech. Believing the correct
response to Holocaust denial was refuting it, not banning it.

But now we know better. How you talk changes how you think. Violent rhetoric
normalizes that behavior. Refuting misbeliefs cements the falsehood.
Propaganda works.

Worse, the hate speech has become a virtue signal, a tribal identifier. It's
become overtly political, a bludgeon.

I now prefer to think of free speech as a form of hygiene. Sure, feel free to
poop on the sidewalk, but don't expect me to accept that as permissible
behavior.

~~~
type0
The problem is that we still keep labeling a satirical speech as a hate speech
and it's getting worse.

> Violent rhetoric normalizes that behavior.

Consider "A Modest Proposal" where Swift normalizes eating babies [http://art-
bin.com/art/omodest.html](http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html)

I see this trend as deeply disturbing where only those official journalist are
allowed to write satirical essays online and common persons are banned because
they become labeled as racists, mysogenists etc. Heck even PewDiePie was
kicked from youtube red because some journalists blatantly mislabeled his
satire as racism.

~~~
specialist
This debate, like most, has a bell curve distribution of positions. Two tails
of snowflakes on either side, throwing tantrums, yelling at each other, and
the majority in the middle who are tired of their shit.

Who's right? Who's wrong? I don't care. I'm fresh out of goodwill.

My only desire is that society stop enabling the bickering. Which will
continue as long as clickbaiting (selling advertisement) makes money.

------
neaden
I like patreon but at the same time I'm a bit uncomfortable with how the
interaction aspect of it sometimes works. Lots of artists are essentially
charging for interaction with them rather than a product. From the article:
"In this system, it’s almost impossible to separate a work of art from its
creator — or, at least, its creator’s public persona. Is there a future for
someone who wants to be a musician, but not a personality? “No. I don’t think
so,” Hollens says. “I don’t think the reclusive thing is going to happen
anymore. That’s not the world we live in." While that works for plenty of
artists I'm sure there are others that can't handle it. In addition it seems
really exhausting.

~~~
empath75
> Is there a future for someone who wants to be a musician, but not a
> personality?

There are tons of edm producers who don't cultivate much of a public
personality, but even then, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes networking
that goes on.

Being a professional artist has always been about cultivating relationships
with people who have money. Whether it's wealthy patrons, or people who own
record labels or galleries, or event promoters, etc.

~~~
godot
One might even argue that being a professional anything (at least, a
successful one at it) is about cultivating relationships with people who
either have money (investors), have network, or have power (to hire you,
etc.). This applies even for software engineers. Even the greatest software
engineers in the world won't get very far by just sending job applications on
a job listing site.

------
raesene9
Personally I like the patreon model, and think it works really well.

Bundling together payments for different creators into one place is handy and
I'm guessing helps reduce fees, so smaller payments work better.

I only have to provide payment details to one site, so that's nice and easy
too.

I get to support creators who's work I enjoy without having to endure web ads,
which I dislike.

From the creators standpoint it seems to provide a nice even revenue stream.
Whilst I don't know any personally, I'd guess it must be nice to have an idea
of the base income you're going to get in a month, rather than relying on
something more variable like advertising or ad-hoc tips.

------
drewg123
Unless I'm missing something, they seem to only have a monthly contribution
model.

There are many times where I find a content creator helpful (for example a
video tutorial on how to fix my broken washing machine), and I'd like to
reward them. But I don't want to do it monthly, as I'll probably never watch
another thing from them. So I'd like to be able to easily leave a one-time
tip.

Can Patreon do this, and it's just not obvious?

~~~
patcon
Hate to sound pessimistic to your well-intentioned suggestion, but if someone
prefers not to support a creator monthly/regularly, then they are
unfortunately choosing not to support them sustainably. I feel strongly that
to ask for one-off giving is to ask for a badly designed system. People can't
dedicate their output to creating value for you when they're living off a tip-
jar. Consistency is the key to backgrounding the profit-motive, and allowing
for the creativity you've probably come to appreciate in their work :)

Disclaimer: quit my job to contribute to Gittip community, and have lots of a
thoughts and feels on the patron/gratitude economy

~~~
TheAnimus
The thing is sometimes you find something helpful, but don't think they are
exactly an artist. I'm slightly ashamed that I couldn't figure out how to put
the batteries in the Amazon wand they'd sent me, a quick search and a YouTube
video showed me what the instructions missing hadn't, tug it forcefully.

That kind of thing isn't useful enough for patronage. But it would be nice to
be able to throw a nice little tip.

~~~
patcon
Interesting: utility vs art. Maybe it's a similar distinction between
commission and wage. Art by commission or art by wage... I'm sure there are
studies on which type produces happier artists (heh, but in a twist, it's
still prob up for debate whether happier artists make their best art, but that
line of thinking feels a little gross ;)

Anyhow, guess I was being too simplistic. In the ideal world, I'd hope we'd
all have more early (high school) literacy on what these approaches mean, and
which works best for which sort of value creation...!

------
fernly
The article is well-done but speaks mostly from the artist's side. From the
patron-side, I think an important factor in Patreon success is that it gives
the donors the good feels for very little cost. I fund several web-comic
artists whose work I enjoy at a trivial level, $0.25 per new comic for
instance, or for some, the minimum $1/month. For a few $ a month, I get
regular doses of warm fuzzies from knowing I am actually helping good artists
continue to make art.

~~~
falcolas
Agreed. Clickspring is my goto example. Stupidly high quality videos with full
subtitles, good filming, and a well narrated explanation of a really niche
activity. There just aren't a lot of detailed videos about clock building from
end-to-end out there.

And it's all effectively funded by Patreon. $3 a video is well worth it.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
Patreon is starting to take off for open source, too, which is great. I set
one up and it offsets a good deal of the infrastructure costs for my projects.
Many FOSS Patreons have pretty low figures - please go looking for them and
support your tools!

~~~
zanny
Let us be honest though, github is bad enough that so many free software
projects are using a proprietary web service for project organization. Having
the primary source of proceeds to keep the project afloat also on a
proprietary web service is really, really dangerous.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
It's a difficult problem for sure. I actually built an open source donation
platform before I did a Patreon page [0]. Over the past 2 years, I've earned
$1500 on it. I've always had an average of maybe $20-30/mo in recurring
donations, plus anywhere from $0-$300/mo in one-offs (usually on the left of
that scale). Until last month, I had been making $30/mo in recurring donations
on the FOSS platform, and now I'm up to $50/mo.

I started the Patreon page two months ago and it was pushing $100/mo within a
week, and without any noticable disruption to my FOSS donations - it
effectively increases my donation flow 3x-4x. Patreon is a platform people
already trust with their CC# and people are already supporting other creators
on. Reducing the barrier of entry can get you way more money, which makes a
big difference. Patreon also makes it clear that your support is meant to be
recurring, which has a big impact on the long term viability of the income
stream.

I still accept donations through the FOSS portal, and point people there first
if they ask me directly how to donate. But it doesn't make sense to turn down
Patreon, either.

Aside: I'm working on an open source git platform too, I feel you wrt GitHub.

[0] [https://github.com/SirCmpwn/fosspay](https://github.com/SirCmpwn/fosspay)

~~~
WesleyLivesay
I can echo this, my Patreon isn't for software, but I get more per month on
Patreon than I was getting per year through donations with basically the same
level of marketing.

~~~
WikipediasBad
I'm thinking of getting a team of friends to make a Patreon platform but
tailor made for software devs/code projects/open source projects rather than
creative content. As someone that's on hacker news and has a patreon but isn't
for software, do you have any suggestions for someone like me that wanted to
develop a patreon focused on software?

~~~
hacalox
Me! It's an idea I've been thinking a lot lately. I have some ideas I would
love to discuss if there are more people interestes in doing this.We can get
in touch if you want.

~~~
WikipediasBad
Ya the idea itself would be so neat. In fact, a super meta way to do it is to
have the campaign to build the platform be the first campaign on the MVP
version of the platform itself! What better way to demonstrate your software
patronage platform by using it to build said software patronage platform. I
truly think a dedicated patreon for coders could really change the entire VC
hypergrowth stress cycle that is Silicon Valley and instead usher in a new
era.

~~~
hacalox
Absolutely. I thought about creating something similar to humble bundle, where
you can pay as much as you want distributed as you want. Or creating a git
tracker, a tool that tells you at the end of the month which packages and
repos have you used /cloned more so it can distribute your monthly donation
budget accordingly. The problem with this approach is that you are not giving
any chance to all those people who are developing stuff on their own and you
don't even know they exist (this happens constantly if you are using a linux
distro). I have many ideas I would be very happy to share. I'm on vacation
right now, but I will write you back if you send me an email to my personal
email. Check my HN personal description to get my email addresss.

~~~
WikipediasBad
Ya, that's not a bad way to execute on the idea, however it does not perform
one of Patreon's chief functions that make it so successful: discovery of
projects on one, unified platform. Essentially the main setup that Patreon has
over all the "tip jar" or decentralized methods that have been tried but never
reached critical mass is that the entire patronage ecosystem has a home on the
web rather than simply living inside everyone's browser extension or
something. That's why a dedicated site for software patronage could really
take off because so many open source projects and software ideas are floating
around with really just donations or VCs as the only funding mechanism in the
valley.

For sure! I will send you an email.

------
just2n
I'm in favor of directly funding creators. I hate everything about ads. That
said, I don't see any real value Patreon provides over other payment services,
especially given their cost.

I definitely don't want politically driven judgement calls made on my behalf
as to whether or not that creator should even be allowed to have my money,
when that person hasn't actually done anything illegal. It's my money, and no
business has any business telling me who I can and can't give money to, or
why, and to step into that position is to trivialize competition. It's a bad
move on Patreon's part, and it's completely antithetical to the service they
should be providing: making it easier to find content you like by creators you
like and then fund it so there's more. They don't do the former, and the
latter is more and more only for "Patreon approved" creators. What is it they
do that makes them invaluable or irreplaceable, because I'm not seeing it.

I've given thousands through Patreon but I've stopped using it for many
reasons. I feel pretty justified in that decision just looking at their
behavior, both lately and in the past. They've allowed pages to remain up for
people who are provably doing nothing but harassing others (and advertising
that behavior as the "activism" their Patreon page is funding), but taken
others down just because they run a service which on principle refuses to
police discussion but which isn't breaking any law because Patreon dislikes
what people on that service say/do. Now they've removed someone because they
disagree with something that person has done unrelated to their content
creation being funded through Patreon (again, not even illegal behavior), and
it looks entirely politically motivated.

I don't support Lauren and never have, but this kind of moral grandstanding
and virtue signaling from Patreon just isn't acceptable to me, and definitely
not from what is a glorified payment processing web interface. Tim Pool as
usual has a fairly solid take on it, and I mostly agree with him:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_yIp7eQO1c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_yIp7eQO1c).

This piece looks like a pretty desperate PR move.

~~~
quxbar
I find it funny that the content creator you linked to still uses Patreon,
despite them not providing any value over other payment services ;)

------
dugditches
I asked this before, but it wasn't really the place:

1\. To those who donate to Patreons, how do you budget/think about/justify
your donations?

2\. Do you have a set budget? What if you really want to support someone
suddenly, do you stop supporting someone else to do so, or reduce how much you
give them?

3\. When do you stop/reduce Patreon support? How long do you typically support
someone? Until you feel they no longer need it?

~~~
eduren
1\. There's currently only one creator I'm supporting, so its not that hard to
justify for now. But considering that he puts out ~2 hours of quality video
content per day, and I watch 90% of that, makes sense.

2\. I like to compare it to my Netflix subscription. I'm pretty sure I watch
this certain YT channel more than Netflix, so the $1 a month I give is a good
deal IMO.

3\. For most patrons, the goal is to enable the content to be created. My
money goes towards the creator paying their bills (YT is their only job).
Unless I stop caring about the content, or the creator finds an alternative
revenue stream that lets them create full-time, I don't see myself cancelling.

~~~
blhack
2 hours per _day_? Who is that? That is a tremendous amount of video!

~~~
eduren
Relatively small video game channel:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/ManyATrueNerd](https://www.youtube.com/user/ManyATrueNerd)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/ManyATrueNerd/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ManyATrueNerd/)

He puts out 2 videos a day, most averaging 45 min. Lots of good series plus
frequent new game previews.

------
vinceguidry
If anybody at Patreon is reading this, here's some feedback.

I spend maybe $20 a month on Patreon. The main thing keeping me from spending
more is the interface makes artists appear more money-grubbing than they might
want to.

I don't want to scroll down someone's feed only to find half of the content is
locked. This is a negative user experience and makes me want to click off the
site and go do something else.

Suggested fix is a checkbox or setting that allows me to hide content that I'm
not at the right patron level to see.

~~~
pjc50
I don't think they're ever likely to do that; the response to locked content
that you want to see is to decide whether or not to pay for it. This is like
complaining that Amazon shows you products you can't afford.

~~~
vinceguidry
It's cool, I just won't use the Patreon website as a way to explore new
creators, nor will I patronize creators that heavily tier their content. This
means pretty much all of their adult content. If they knew how much time and
money I've spent on that kind of thing, they wouldn't take my complaints
lightly.

~~~
glitch003
You also might be able to fix this with your own stylesheet / browser
extension to hide the locked content.

~~~
vinceguidry
Last time I tried something like this it was completely unreliable. Sometimes
my javascripts / styles loaded, sometimes they didn't. That was when I was
trying to alter HN, so it couldn't have been the site.

------
__s
I've got a pretty niche patreon where I post a stream of consciousness devlog
for Luwa. Only 1 subscriber, but it keeps me motivated having an outlet &
knowing _someone_ thinks it's worth 5 dollars a month for me to flail around
hand writing WebAssembly after work

------
jmcgough
What I've found interesting is the number of smut games and comics creators
that are thriving (sometimes making their creator 6 figures a year) because of
patreon.

------
cdcox
I do wonder how Google, Facebook and the ad sphere sees Patreon. A fair number
of creators I've seen use Patreon to go ad free. It seems small but growing
with strong network effects, and a clear path to profitability. In a lot of
places on the internet it's almost a household name. It also is relatively
platform agnostic and there is a lot of room for it to grow into. This seems
like it might be a deep threat to the current power players of the internet
and the current structure of the internet.

On the other hand, you could have said the same thing about Kickstarter a few
years ago, but then it hit its growth limits and became just another, still
slowly growing but no longer earth changing, feature of the internet
landscape.

------
vijayr
this article (no affiliation with the author, just happen to enjoy his work)
is also worth a read

[https://gaps.com/patreon-earners/](https://gaps.com/patreon-earners/)

~~~
mdpopescu
That site is a goldmine, thank you for pointing it out.

------
RangerScience
There's a part of me that just wants to set up a Patreon, link to it from a
few places with enough content to have a profile (Github, Medium; if I ever
finish an article), and if it starts getting traffic, do more of that content.
See what happens.

(Unlikely to be anything without marketing, but, why not? Cost of the effort
is low.)

------
gregjw
Patreon's office caught fire yesterday! But everyone and everything is
completely fine.

[https://twitter.com/jackconte/status/892888675570208769](https://twitter.com/jackconte/status/892888675570208769)

------
bcheung
It's funny, and a bit unfair, how they can get away with having adult content
and not being labeled `high-risk`.

Most adult credit card processing takes 10-15% before the business even sees
anything, and they are only taking 5% total and providing a service.

In many ways it's an anti-trust issue because competitor platforms geared
specifically towards adult content can't get those same rates.

------
contingencies
I think the hyperbolic title needs an injection of reality. My 2c. Patreon ...
added it 1 year ago to a commercial-friendly (LGPL3) library, in finance of
all areas, that I've ploughed hundreds of hours in to over 8 years ... 14,000+
downloads per month ... and nobody has ever given a cent.

------
mason240
Corporation caught in a scandal over censoring political speech against the
right?

Better have the The Verge write a puff piece on them.

~~~
paulgb
Which case are you referring to? Lauren Southern was literally attempting to
block ships (thereby endangering life) so that goes beyond "speech" in my
book.

~~~
fvdessen
Where did they say they wanted to block ships ? All I've seen is that they
wanted to film & document the ONG's activities, to see if they are not
engaging in human trafficking.

~~~
azernik
See
[https://youtu.be/YmcK6GvgVPs?t=3m27s](https://youtu.be/YmcK6GvgVPs?t=3m27s),
Patreon's presentation of evidence that they _were_ blocking ships, and that
Southern _was_ actively involved. Note that this evidence is video that
_Southern herself published_ before she realized that these actions would
endanger her own income stream, rather than just people in the ocean.

------
Jerry2
How long before Youtube bans private videos and destroys Pateron's business?

~~~
CM30
Probably not happening, since private and unlisted videos have plenty of non
Patreon uses as well.

For example, some people use unlisted videos in thei Ycombinator or startup
accelerator applications. Or on pages on their own sites where the video
merely compliments the content and is useless on its own.

Removing that sort of thing seems illogical.

~~~
VLM
Another example is you only need to be 13 to have a youtube account and the
interesting privacy compromise at school is the kids upload their video
presentation homework to youtube as private videos.

Another example is prepping for launch day, upload and test everything then
change private to public on the big day.

I suspect google can't monetize private videos because it would bring an
uncomfortable discussion about income inequality at youtube (much like
patreon, almost all users make essentially no money, which is not going to
help content provider recruitment if it becomes noticed in wider public eye)

------
Applejinx
I'm [https://www.patreon.com/airwindows](https://www.patreon.com/airwindows)
and I'm writing audio DSP plugins in AU and VST form, for a living. Here are
my observations over the past year of relative success on Patreon.

I'm in the top 3.2% of all Patreon, sitewide. That amounts to only a little
over $700 a month (I'm using it to replace a for-pay business model that
wildly oscillated from $400 to $3000 a month). It's growing.

I'm having to put out twice or three times the work, but I'm happier with a
'free/patronage' model because what was happening to me under the for-pay
model was, I got locked into a 'hype cycle' versus other developers and
companies. The sense I had was, my industry sector is dying. The way we treat
customers is worsening, and it's a race to DRM-based, extremely invasive
monthly software rental and a degree of dishonesty that didn't sit well with
me. I feel that I bailed 'in time' to turn my ten years of reputation and
experience into just-barely a subsistence using Patreon, and that if I hadn't
done so, I would have been run out of business by competitors using every sort
of deceptive and customer-abusing practice, and the epitaph would've been 'A
shame, he was one of the good ones. Tough business'.

As such I feel I have a real-world view of what Patreon actually is. It's a
form of payment processor that can let you bill for basically 'goodwill': the
strong point is, it lets you render your income more predictable, at the cost
of not being able to exploit individual creations which might be more
valuable.

Never, NEVER get sucked into the 'just 0.1% of all living humans donating one
cent a month will make you rich!' argument. If you have a hundred thousand
known fans, MAYBE you can get a hundredth of them to give to you. You've got
no control over what 'the crowd' will do. I don't know how many times I've
revealed on HN that I'm creating mass quantities of code with an open-source
(planned MIT license) future, on Patreon, and of the 347 patrons I've got, ALL
of them are from my existing connections who already use my software. I'm
looking to do an experiment with Facebook ads where I literally link to my
entire library as a free zip to download and say 'I'm paying Facebook to tell
you that I made this for you'. Haven't done it yet, don't have high hopes for
it.

ALL your traction on Patreon comes organically from what you're already doing.
In no way does it find you patrons: it's your shopping cart software. That
does have one unusual consequence: since they aggregate patronage together and
bill people in a lump sum, I've never seen anything more effective at enabling
content that is routinely censored by credit card companies. Anyone who knows
anyone who's tried to run an internet content business with NSFW material as
part of the mix (I know a bunch of cartoonists) knows the dangers of getting
banned by Visa and Mastercard (IIRC, particularly Visa won't touch you if
you're dirty-minded). Patreon is a layer of abstraction that has enabled a
startling opening up of opportunity for censored content, and that's shown in
the NSFW side of Patreon. It's still not a 'free ticket to money' as you still
have to generate your own attention, but obviously if you're good at NSFW
content and distributing it free then the internet will beat a path to your
door, and Patreon is accepted (in fact, the paywall model seems popular among
NSFW creators with few objections to the idea. Premium content may not last
long before being 'liberated' but I rarely see objection to the basic concept
of a paywall around the freshest source of the creator's output).

I've been keeping records of what constitutes the top 1% of all Patreon,
because I was keeping records of where I stood (started out at top 10% almost
immediately because I had ten years of existing relationships w. customers).
About a year ago, the 1% mark sat at around $2350 a month, with total creators
between 41,000 and 45,000. It's been dropping, and as Patreon approaches
78,000 creators the 1% mark is dropping below $1890. This is while key patreon
accounts are hitting new records for monthly income. It's definitely the
internet power-law thing in action: the number of participants doubles, but
most people are doing worse: the distribution is NOT staying the same, it's
getting more skewed towards the outliers. I'm guessing this is partly caused
by a flood of people who think it's an internet lottery ticket and not a way
to bill masses of existing customers…

Summary: Patreon is probably even less prone to 'discovery of worthwhile
projects' than Kickstarter, because the mode of engagement is different:
rather than seek out 'discoveries' it's a method of inserting benevolent
digital leeches onto people's credit cards, very much like DRM-based rental
schemes but less coercive. Because it can be used in a 'strictly voluntary'
way, the revenue you'll get seems to be a quarter to a tenth what you'd get on
a 'direct sales' model, but the consistency of a massed small-donation model
combined with billing people's credit cards gives you a steadiness of income
that is a LOT more easy to live with than boom-and-bust product development
(which I did for a decade, pre-Patreon).

If you can budget for a growth month-over-month that's a little better than,
say, the growth of index funds, and you've got created product with a decent
number of people already aware of what you do, it's great. I have no regrets
about going Patreon. I passed up an opportunity to do my whole 'for-pay' model
over again to a market at least twice the size of my original (my whole decade
of for-pay work was Mac only, and I relaunched targeting PC VST) but I'm glad
I did. It let me double down on my positioning as a product maker, and
completely avoid spending any time on being an internet cop. I just give
everything away now, and the patronage gradually gets closer to minimum wage
;)

For now, I am your audio DSP waitress, on roller-skates. I always figured that
was what ten years of creative work was worth ;)

------
AmIFirstToThink
barf. yuck.

I found that article physically repulsive.

Patreon, if you are listening, don't buy into all the power that the article
wants to shower upon you. They want you to influence your exercise of that
power, and they want you to use that power to do their bidding in limiting
free debate of ideas.

Patrons and the person that they support, that's it, that's all there is to
it. The silver coin is being given by hands of patrons and taken by hands of
one that is being supported, that silver coin shouldn't have opinions,
emotions and desires. Stay neutral, that is the greatest challenge of our
time, stay neutral. If a crime is being committed then co-operate fully with
law enforcement, but don't give in to the pressures from lobbying groups with
their own agenda.

Don't get carried away into the corrupting power the platforms like youtube,
facebook, twitter exercise on the discussion carried out on these platforms.
They have absolute power, and you can see that once you use it, it's
addictively corrupting. Stay neutral, it is going to be hard to do, I hope you
find the power within you to do so.

Good luck.

~~~
AlwaysBCoding
They've already fucked it up.

Here's an hour long interview with Patreon's CEO, Jack Conte, where he goes
through some ridiculous mental gymnastics trying to justify why it's ok he is
kicking conservative journalists off his platform.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofpbDgCj9rw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofpbDgCj9rw)

~~~
wfo
Yes, now white supremacists trying to make sure brown people die in the ocean
using patreon funds are conservative journalists. Won't anyone think of free
speech? Next he'll ban patreon crowdfunding the creation of snuff films, what
a monster. It's almost like he doesn't want to be knowingly complicit in
murder.

I'll give you this, though, the man is devious -- can you imagine the mental
gymnastics involved in watching a video proudly filmed and posted online by
these people of them doing a thing and discussing that very thing in the
middle of doing it? And using that as evidence? Truly disgusting.

~~~
amscanne
> Yes, now white supremacists trying to make sure brown people die in the
> ocean

This kind of gross distortion is counterproductive. (Unless your goal is to
alienate others and hurt your own credibility.)

------
nilved
A lot of creators I appreciate use Patreon, so I signed up to donate to them.
They started sending me spam emails. It was like I was paying extra (giving
Patreon a cut) for the privilege of getting annoying emails. Now I just donate
directly to the creators, and I have a checklist that I go through every
month.

I think something like Patreon is a great idea, but having a centralized
company handle it and take a cut is not the way to go about it.

~~~
jonathanjaeger
Do you they not offer an unsubscribe option?

~~~
Ermenwyr
The default is to email you every time someone you support publishes anything
on Patreon. You turn this off, but the annoying thing is that you need to turn
it off separately for each person you support.

~~~
falcolas
> need to turn it off separately for each person you support

This doesn't seem unreasonable, particularly since many offer early access to
content, and these emails are the gateway to that content.

------
kareldonk
There should be no middle men. Only a direct P2P model will truly benefit
everyone.

~~~
Veratyr
I disagree. There are shared services that Patreon provides that would be a
pain for creators:

\- Payment processing: Patreon consolidates all payments under one gateway
account so fees are low for everyone.

\- Support: What happens if the payment fails? Creators don't want to deal
with that mess every month, it's less time to do useful stuff.

\- Abuse handling: Patreon can deal with spam comments and the like.

\- Service hosting: They integrate all this stuff in one place that creators
don't have to host themselves.

\- Consolidated management for Patrons: As a subscriber it's nice to see all
the stuff I'm supporting and how much I'm paying for it in one place.

~~~
WesleyLivesay
I would also like to add Ease of Use to your list.

I have had to help several of my Patrons with basic tech support issues, like
setting up RSS feeds in their podcast app. And I doubt that they would be
able/comfortable with working with a service that is not as easy and straight
forward as Patreon.

------
phry
Laura Southern literally advocates for the death of migrants, pardon me for
not giving a fuck about her losing an income stream.

~~~
nostrebored
Cite your sources, because you're objectively wrong.

Stop saying that people literally advocate for death. This is something that
has happened in the past, something that will probably happen in the future,
and being a sensationalist about it just makes you an asshole.

~~~
phry
oops it was laura loomer, apologies for mixing up my moronic racists. the line
between the two is thin to the point of being non-existent regardless.

~~~
nostrebored
Right, so you're saying that some other woman is a white nationalist,
therefore Laura Southern is? It kind of sounds like you are smearing her
because you disagree with her

------
model_m_warrior
In my years on the internet I find the content works itself out, so I'm unsure
why I'd pay anyone anything. Half the reason I like most of it is because it's
free.

~~~
gizmo686
Every I support on Patreon publishes there content for free. Some have token
perks, like early access or occasional patron only content, but not enough to
justify paying. It is a patronage model. Donors donate so the create has the
resources to create.

