
Bootstrapping 10er, a Patreon-similar service for Danish creators - nicoserdeir
https://www.failory.com/mistakes/10er
======
Fomite
"I never created a Patreon account for us though. Everytime I began I never
finished signing up. The whole thing just seemed like a hassle. Too many input
fields and things to consider and graphics to provide. Patreon expects
creators to create more content for patrons. We felt we were already giving
away lots with our already free content."

I actually really like this philosophy. I run a tiny, niche miniatures
wargaming blog, and while I have a Patreon account, I don't feel like I really
fit with the Patreon "idea" of heavy engagement with patrons.

~~~
nothrabannosir
Similarly, I find it awkward when creators email me about secret stuff only
available to patrons. The magic is that your stuff is free! I don’t want to be
incentivising this. The free content led me to donate in the first place.

The only way to achieve this is to donate so little, you don’t get any access
to secret material.

Patreon defeats the purpose of Patreon.

~~~
dpau
Completely agree! Patreon misses the point of Patreon.

I guess people are more likely to become patrons if there's some reward, and
Patreon wants to encourage growth. But in doing so they are creating an
environment where there's an expectation that we, the creators, spend precious
time making special, walled-off content when _the whole point of my needing
Patreon is because my content is free_. Besides the irony of the situation,
I'm too busy also making content for other social media in order to promote my
work. Please make it stop!

~~~
PopeDotNinja
That's an interesting idea. I watch videos, and I don't mind videos that
promote their Patreon page and/or other member exclusive benefits. They are
free to make videos how ever they like, but I wonder is promoting member
exclusive content actually undermines their success.

For example, in this SciShow video =>
[https://youtu.be/fsS6d4byK4A?t=143](https://youtu.be/fsS6d4byK4A?t=143)

\- make free content, get free viewers

\- promote Patreon to viewers, get patrons

\- promote premium content to free viewers, alienate free viewers

\- lose free viewers, shrink pool of potential patrons

I guess some pitches are more invasive than others.

~~~
glandium
Here's a counter example:
[https://m.youtube.com/user/Dogen](https://m.youtube.com/user/Dogen)

He does what could be described as stand up comedy around the japanese
language.

And his patreon has comprehensive japanese pronunciation and intonation
lessons. [https://www.patreon.com/dogen](https://www.patreon.com/dogen)

They're different but related things with different but overlapping audience.

------
hjek
I like that they are open about their expenses[0]. That's unusual.

I wish they would be able to accept payments w/o requiring users to run non-
free JS.

[0]: [https://10er.co/open](https://10er.co/open)

~~~
jazzyjackson
If I wanted to accepted payments with open source JS / no JS, are there
libraries that make that easy?

The benefit of using the drop-in iframes / client side AJAX is that I get to
take money without worrying about PCI compliance -- whereas if I hit some API
serverside I'm handling people's credit card information myself, no?

Would be curious to know what options are out there.

~~~
megous
I haven't done web payments for quite a while, but the way it was done 12 or
so years ago was, that you generated some signed data for inserting into a
hidden input inside a <form action=[https://payment-
processor.com/...>](https://payment-processor.com/...>), and put that into a
page server side. This would include all the order and merchant info. You'd
also add a submit button with a "Pay now" text.

User would then submit the form and that would take him to the payment
processor. The rest was payment processor calling some webhooks on your server
with payment verification/other status. You wouldn't see/handle any ccard info
at all.

No iframe trickery, no javascript necessary at all.

~~~
ForHackernews
Users dislike that because it bounces them to a different site.

~~~
megous
Going to a different site was sold as a benefit (given that the different site
is/was the biggest and the most used bank in the country - so this helps with
the trust issue).

Also it's strictly superior to iframe hackery anyway. At least you can check
that the site is not trying to scam you for your CC info, which you really
can't (as a normal user) when the site is using iframes, because you'll not
see iframe's URL in the URL bar.

~~~
ForHackernews
I'm sure that's correct, but I doubt most users are that sophisticated.

~~~
megous
Speaking of which, how do you know?

Not that many people fall for phishing e-mails, for example. It's somewhere
between 10-30% based on email type, if that's anyhting to go by.

I couldn't find any research on purely web based phishing.

~~~
ForHackernews
I'm not talking about people falling for phishing, I'm talking about
legitimate customers getting irritated or suspicious and abandoning the
purchase after being bounced to another domain to put in their credit card
details.

Our conversion rate got much better when we switched to a single-page purchase
flow. My theory is that because "real" sites like Amazon don't force users
over to a separate bank page, users have come to expect that experience.
Redirecting out to Paypal (or whatever) marks you as a "disreputable" fly-by-
night operation in users' minds.

~~~
megous
I guess it depends on the country. Where I'm from, people were used to push
payments (like free wire transfer), or cash on delivery payments, when
shopping online. Banks worked hard to change that in the last decade+, so now
debit cards are used much more than before. Credit cards are used very little
(10% of online purchases).

I only guess that this leads to a feeling where when you give a card info to
someone, it's like giving them access to your bank account. But 1 in 2 users
can't tell a difference between debit and credit, so who knows.

Users don't like giving card info to companies and almost no companies,
including very big online stores, handle card info themselves, or use single-
page purchase flow. I rememeber only two local websites that didn't redirect
me to some payment gateway in the last 10 years. Amazon is not a thing here at
all.

------
mikker
Creator of 10er here! Happy to answer any questions.

------
cco
Suggested this as a future alternative to the creators I previously supported
on Patreon, I'd love to see some better competition in this space.

~~~
mikker
Thank you for spreading the word!

------
cherrygarcia
I wonder why it’s Danish only

~~~
mikker
It actually isn't! I've recently done most of the work of translating it to
English. So anywhere Stripe Connect is, I am.

~~~
sschueller
Are you at all worried that stripe might pressure you to remove certain users
from your site like patreon is currently doing? Do you have any future plans
to use alternative non-US payment providers?

For example Subscribestar can no longer accept paypal payments. [1]

[1]
[https://www.subscribestar.com/subscribestar](https://www.subscribestar.com/subscribestar)

~~~
mikker
Not really. I have the same policy of not allowing hate speech and the like. I
don't see myself as a "Patreon competitor" in that sense. Without getting
myself into a debate I've only read a little about, I think good on them for
controlling who gets to use their platform. I don't think of that as
censorship, really.

I have no plans to add anything but Stripe, no. I realize how vulnerable that
makes me and my relationship with them but you have to trust someone. I have
used Paypal before and I didn't like it at all.

~~~
raarts
> I have the same policy of not allowing hate speech and the like

For whoever is interested: this is the (Google translated) text in the Terms
of 10er:

"The service must not be used for any illegal activity. Nor should the service
be used in connection with violent, hateful, racist or similar activities.
Brainbow defines in its own right what can be classified as being in one of
these categories."

You are indeed not a competitor for Patreon. The biggest problem people seem
to have with Patreon is exactly this: every company creating its own
definition of hate speech, which could result in their customers (creators)
being cut off their income for things they say, even on other platforms. Which
effectively creates censorship, and a growing administrative cost for all
companies.

~~~
sschueller
I don't understand this.

Why not base it on what is legal by law in your country? Require a court order
to have things removed.

Take Paypal and who ever to court in your country if they deny you service
because of this and threaten to have their permits to do business in your
country removed.

~~~
pjc50
Quite a lot of people don't _want_ to facilitate this kind of thing, and
certainly don't want to have their name associated with it.

~~~
sschueller
There is the underlying issue. If you don't fight for those people who you
don't agree with or despise although legal you will eventually loose your
freedoms too.

If you want free speech you need to protect all of it.

~~~
pjc50
On the other hand, if I facilitate people arguing for fascism I will _also_
eventually lose freedoms if they win. And in the meantime make a number of
other people just that little bit more miserable.

~~~
zozbot123
"Fascism" has never won by _arguing_ , though. It isn't even a well-defined
ideology! Fascism means using political violence (i.e. beating people up, or
worse) to seize power in something very much like a coup d'etat; it really is
as simple as that. That's not _free speech_ , and it's not even something that
our government protects. Threats are illegal. Purported "speech" that poses a
clear and present danger is illegal.

~~~
raarts
Bold hypothesis: fascism has never won in a free-speech environment. Only in
an environment where everybody was a-ok with opposing opinions being
suppressed, which allowed fascists to suppress different opinions.

Following this reasoning, GP's stance _enables_ fascism.

~~~
pjc50
> Bold hypothesis: fascism has never won in a free-speech environment

Ah, why look at history when we can have _hypothesis_! I mean, you could have
chosen some wrong or out of context examples of fascism to cite, but instead
it's much easier to just pretend, right?

------
tomxor
wtf, 100% cpu scrolling at 1fps, no thanks.

~~~
servercobra
What are you browsing with? I had perfectly smooth scrolling on MacOS +
Safari.

~~~
RyJones
I'm on iOS/Safari. I only get a black page with no content. Clicking reader
mode shows text intermingled with ad text, I assume.

I gave up

~~~
code_duck
Strange. iOS on an iPhone 6 here with no problems. It’s a perfectly normal
looking blog page.

~~~
jazzyjackson
Works great with javascript turned off -- 12kb, finished in under a second.

Inspecting the HTML, the rendering seems to be blocked by a script loading the
google fonts.

Huh. Wonder what this is doing here. Probably hiding the whole website while
googlefonts finishes loading.

    
    
      <style>.async-hide { opacity: 0 !important} </style>

~~~
taspeotis
[https://developers.google.com/optimize/](https://developers.google.com/optimize/)

~~~
jazzyjackson
Hide the page until script loads or 4 seconds pass, some optimization that is!

------
Svip
The idea is good, but the execution is lacking. I get it's a one-man project
so far, and that's going to leave you uncertain about its future unlike
Patreon. And while Patreon definitely needs competition, creators also needs
assurances before they rely on a service.

I honestly wonder why he did not reach out to a few people, who were
passionate about the same thing, to help build this service further. As plenty
here have already noticed, the website has some quirks right now that might
take months to fix, if ever, considering it is just one person running it.

However, I hope all that will turn around, as he gets more press interest, and
others might offer to help. And in a year's time, it has become something
people might actually want to rely on. I wish him a lot of luck.

~~~
djaychela
>>and that's going to leave you uncertain about its future unlike Patreon

Given the events of the past month or so, I wouldn't be completely sure about
the future of patreon. It's definitely shown the way forward in terms of
supporting creators, but the repercussions of their actions seem to be gaining
a lot of traction and putting doubt into trusting patreon for people who
supported creators via the platform in the past.

~~~
michaelt

      the repercussions of their actions seem
      to be gaining a lot of traction
    

Is that based on hard figures from Patreon, or more of an impression based on
the people you talk to?

~~~
djaychela
It's based on a significant number of people who are large Patreon account
holders closing their accounts (Sam Harris is the first one to spring to mind,
I believe he had the 13th largest account by monthly donation), and also a
number of people saying their income via Patreon has decreased significantly
as a result of patrons leaving the platform.

Plus there seems to be a lot of disquiet about Patreon and people trying to
set up competition for them (SubscribeStar, Dave Rubin/Jordan Peterson's
project) which seems to be gaining a lot more attention than it would have
otherwise - up to this point many people (myself included) were completely
happy with Patreon.

