![]() There's a sense that Patreon's fee shift may have been to ensure its future as a platform for creatives. The problem, however, is that without those changes, Patreon still faces certain problems that the company had hoped could be fixed under the new policy. It felt like the company was actually listening. Some of Patreon’s most ardent creators applauded the last-minute reversal. The sudden reversal on Wednesday changed all that. "While some patrons may leave in the short-term, we know this will help creators earn more money in the long term," the company wrote in a blog post. They said the proposed change had come from a year of research and user feedback. Patreon appeared adamant about sticking with the changes despite initial outrage. In a FAQ about the new fee, Patreon said the new math "is core to our mission of getting creators paid." Previously, processing fees varied every month based on donations and some creators were losing 7 to 15 percent of pledges. The new system was supposed to allow creators to have a consistent expectation of how much money they'd receive each month. This math is crucial to the success of Patreon. That small change led to an uproar from Patreon's creator community. Someone who just gave a single $10 donation would be charged $10.64. Someone who gave $1 to 10 different projects would be paying $13.79 instead of $10. Under the new structure, a $1 pledge would really be $1.38 and each and every pledge would be charged the additional fee. Donate $1 and the creator gets about $0.94 with Patreon taking a cut and some money going to processing and fees. Creators would take home 95 percent of pledges after a 5 percent chunk went back to the platform.īefore this, fees had come entirely out of the amount patrons had donated. The change that riled up the crowdfunding platform seemed straightforward: Patreon would start charging patrons an additional 2.9 percent and $0.35 for each individual pledge starting Dec. The main question has been how to unlock that value and whether there's any money to be made in doing so.Īs such, the details of the fee structure are crucial. The details of the fee structure are crucial. there’s a lot of untapped value," he said. "What you add to people’s lives and the joy that you bring to people. He sees the Patreon concept and community as a tool to unlock money from art. Patreon began, as many of other creator-focused platforms have, with the best intentions.īack in May, Mashable interviewed Patreon cofounder and CEO Conte who made clear that, "the web is really terrible at turning value into dollars." That ire, however, started to abate and in its place emerged something even rarer than a healthy artist platform: reasoned internet discussion. The change shifted fees to patrons, leading to a near-immediate outpouring of anger from creators who began to see contributors flee - and speculation that the new investors were changing things to begin taking their pound of flesh. Along with the funding came an announcement on how the company planned to take out fees on donations. Then, Patreon did what a lot of burgeoning platforms do - it raised a ton of money from venture capitalists. Patreon, at one time, looked like the one that might have figured things out. Sites like Medium, Etsy, Soundcloud, even Reddit, promote creativity and original work, but have struggled to find a model to get creators paid. Plenty of websites have come and gone over the years in an attempt to get people to pony up the dough for creators. The internet is great at a lot of things, but providing people who create things with value for their work has never been one of them. The question remains whether it can figure it out without destroying itself. The sudden reversal highlights the challenge that Patreon faces as it figures out how to juggle success, investors, and the community that made it a destination for creative people. We’re sorry, and we’re not rolling out the fees change," he wrote. On Wednesday morning, less than a week before the fee structure was set to roll out, Patreon CEO Jack Conte posted a blog entry that bluntly took everything back. The once-niche artist-focused platform was thrust into the spotlight recently when it raised $60 million in venture capital and changed its fee structure. Think Kickstarter but with a focus on the people behind the projects and tailored to providing a sustained monthly income rather than a one-off influx of cash. Schuffman is one of thousands of other creative people that use Patreon, a donation platform that has surged in popularity in recent years. "The system we’ve set up is broken," Schuffman said. Internet strangers and supporters pay $1,080 a month to Stuart Schuffman, better known as his online persona Broke-Ass Stuart, to write things like "8 Ways to Get High for Hannukah."
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