Seeking feedback on idea: alternative to Patreon

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

Hi folks,

I messaged a few of you about this already, but was just given mod permission to post it at top level.

I’m a Patreon creator (http://patreon.com/davidstorrs), and a web developer. My business partner and I are frustrated enough with Patreon that we’re building an alternative. We’d like to make sure it does what people actually want so, if you have a minute, I’d really appreciate your feedback.

We think the site should have:

* No percentage taken from your pledges
* Charge patrons immediately to avoid in-and-out “pledge-dodgers”
* Content management for all your content, past and present
* Specify when things should become visible (a.k.a. a publishing queue)
- ...to whom
- ...and for how long
* Ban abusive or exploitative patrons

As far as creators go, our current plan is that early adopters would receive as much storage as they need (within reason!), and future creators would get 1GB of storage for $9.99/month. Again, these are tentative plans and might change as we do more research.

All comments appreciated; a few questions I'd love answers to:

1) Does this sound like a service you would use?

2) Are there any other features you’d like?

3) What is particularly good about Patreon?

4) What issues do you have with Patreon?

Comments

[traceymordeaux.livejournal.com]

I think a very good thing to have is a choice as a creator to only show new content to patrons that have been subbed for a certain amount of months (1-3) to further foil pledge dodgers.

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

Great idea, thank you!

Maybe that could be reward tiered -- $1 gets you the last post, $5 gets you last month, etc. (Choose your own levels and date ranges, of course.)

[gatekat.livejournal.com]

1) Does this sound like a service you would use?

Maybe. I have serious concerns about joining a pay service to earn an income. Yes, $10 is likely reasonable, but only if you are among those who can earn at least $200/month (assuming a 5% fee is the other option). Maybe both options?

I suspect a flat fee might drive off more folks than a reasonable percentage. I know I'm far less likely to pay up front for something I don't know will work than agree to a % of what it does manage to bring in.

2) Are there any other features you'd like?

Better support for writers, comic artists, flash creators and musicians.
- See Ao3, Fanfiction.net, or at least robotsandracks.g36.net

Polls
Easy to use public feedback system
Private notes

Some kind of ladder system on payments where (if I want), I pay more for larger/more finished works (be it 20 pages over 5 or detailed work over sketches). Either where I give a max and some kind of % is used for less than 'full' work, or I am given levels of 'finish/size' and can dictate what each is worth.

3) What is particularly good about Patreon?

I'm not a user, just a one who's looked at it several times.

4) What issues do you have with Patreon?

The ban on porn.
Lack of protection for both artists and patrons.

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

> maybe both % and fee

I'd been wondering about that, actually, but had been thinking it was maybe too complicated. It's good to hear it from someone else.

> Ladder system

I didn't quite get that -- do you mean where the creator sets individual prices on individual works?

> The ban on porn

Good. Personally, I have no issue with what people put up, as long as they clearly mark it NSFW so no one is surprised.

[everainsley]

Personally, I would be turned away by a flat fee, especially before I start making money on a project. I'm not very well known, so it's not like I have a huge follower base. I'd rather have a percentage taken out, at least until I reached a steady income and could have the option of "You can go with a flat-rate here, or continue having a percentage deducted from pledges."

One of my issues with Patreon is that, due to payment service rules, things with "adult" content are not vieweable to someone searching. This is all well and good to keep the kiddies away, but the project I have for funding on my Patreon right now is not adult, but will skirt to some mature themes later on. This is a case of "How do I mark this? Do I risk having it shut down or deal with less exposure?"

I would like to be able to, say, send something to someone who pledges X-amount right away, but then after they've been subbed for say 3 mos, I can move them into a different tier of stuff.

I do like the idea of payment taken right then, so they are not signing up, getting the tier stuff, then withdrawing support before they are charged.

One of the issues I've had with my Patreon is I wanted to have pledges per page, since my project is a webcomic. Patreon kept reverting to per week. But the idea of per page was to add extra pages each week, based on pledge tiers. I finally gave up and set everything as monthly, though that meant I changed the pledge tier prices.

[gatekat.livejournal.com]

Your problem with # of comic pages has me a bit confused. Last I looked, you get paid for each thing you post, up to the payer's max. If you post more pages, you get paid more.

[ankewehner.livejournal.com]

Huh. A percentage taken out of earnings sounds better to me than a flat fee. I know several creators who have pledges of less than $10 per month, so your model would mean they lose money. It's a barrier to entry.
... Maybe progressively fewer % as earnings go up, or otherwise start with a percentage, but cap what's taken out of earnings at a set amount?

1) I dunno, Patreon has the advantage of having been around for a while, so more people are there already.

2) Handling EU VAT

Setting your own preview image as "for patrons only" (I remember someone pinging Patreon on Twitter RE the ugly, huge, grey "For patrons only" graphic that gets posted as preview when you share a post on Facebook.) Maybe also allowing setting the start of a post visible for all, even if the main part is patrons only?

Content filter, like... Creators can flag a post with a warning (NSFW being an obvious one, though I'm wondering if letting people put in freeform warnings would be workable... I know I try to warn for spiders cause I have friends who are phobic.) Watchers can chose if they want to see everything, or if posts that are flagged with a warning only display the warning until they click a "I do want to view this" link.

3) I like that I get email notifications. Some crators I think post too many quick "in progress" things, there I would wish for, like, a filter to exclude WIPs from the notification and only get creations and announcements, but in general, I like that I don't have to catch up at the site itself. (Maybe an option to receive a daily digest rather than every single emails would be nice...)

4) Browsing a creators' past posts sucks. Endless scroll sucks in general, and the version on Patreon is the worst I've seen: If the posts are shorter than the sidebar, there will be a huge white space at the bottom that you have to scroll PAST to trigger loading the next posts.
I'd like a Table Of Contents, and an option for creators to tag posts (so I-the-visitor could look at only comic pages, or only anything featuring a certain character, you get the idea), and a paginated feed.

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

I like the warnings idea; we'll add that to the hopper.

Table of Contents sound smart; again, it's on the list.

Thank you.

[gatekat.livejournal.com]

Have it set up so artists don't have to jump through many hoops to get their money, or for supporters to send it. That's the trouble with adult content. PayPal is a major jerk about it and not being involved.

[okojosan.livejournal.com]

$10/month for 1GB of storage space seems really high to me. On pair.com I can get 15GB for $6. GoDaddy has even cheaper prices, though of course you have to pay the registration fees/domain name.

I am not on Patreon at all, is it possible to host images on one's own site and hotlink them on Patreon?

I'd think a choice between flat fee and a percentage would be best.

[gatekat.livejournal.com]

Yes, but on those servers you are not paying for anything but space and bandwidth. With this (and Patreon) you are paying for much more. The site that regulates access, money exchanges, more intensive 'help-desk' needs and stuff I'm not thinking of.

[kitefeathers.livejournal.com]

I'd love there to be a way to sort content and posts. I pledge to someone who makes both music and video content, it'd be nice if there was a way to find a certain post or creation faster than having them all in one giant mess. Posts and uploads should be able to be sorted by type, date, etc I think.

Also, I think it would be neat if there was an optional community tab or some kind of built-in forum for pledgers to use on each creators page. I think the creator should get to choose whether or not thats enabled though.

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

Great ideas; the sorting would require some thought, but we can probably make something work. Community is definitely something we'd like to integrate.

[houndofloki.livejournal.com]

Pledge-and-runners are the number-one problem with Patreon and the reason so many creators end up abandoning their accounts there. Simply cutting down on that, adding upfront payment and possibly "tiered" content you can only access after a couple months of pledging, would be a massive improvement for the content creators.

[leahtaur.livejournal.com]

A Patreon competitor site would have to be at least as functional and, well, pretty, as Patreon for me to use it. Patreon's not perfect but their site looks modern and well put together and so the competitor site would have to quite frankly have a lot of work and shine put into it before I'd consider it.

I agree with many of the points listed already. I'd also like Patreon more if NSFW showed up in search results, perhaps with an age disclaimer and a box to check off before showing. And this is just a nice-to-have but what if creators could choose to promote their friends' accounts in a sidebar on their profile page? You can see what people contribute to but this would be more of a "like this page? You might also like these creators" sort of thing.

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

I don't see why NSFW content shouldn't be included although, as you suggest, there should definitely be a warning instead of the actual content.

[martes.livejournal.com]

Do you have the financial resources to keep this running if you don't get enough in user fees?

Do you have any kind of track record for long-term projects? With so many of these 'spite' sites (sites started to complete with a major site because people don't like the major site for one reason or another) the operators lose interest and wander off once they realize how much work, hassle and expense it is.

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

Yes to both. This will be the third company I've started; the first ran for two years, the second for three before I exited and is still running.

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

I'd be a little surprised if you can make a flat-fee work. Percentages are taken from pledges in part because that is part of the back-end charge from payment processors.

What happens if someone gets $1000/month in pledges and you have to pay $20 for card processing (or $35 to PayPal) but they only paid you $10/month? It seems like an disincentive to host high-earning members.

[sillygosling.livejournal.com]

I've never had an issue with a percentage of sales taken (bc that guarantees that I can always afford membership).

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

Okay, good to know.

[coffeesheizen.livejournal.com]

The only issue I would have is the $9.99/mo fee. I personally prefer the percentage taken out during sales. Plus it seems fair for everyone.

I would also enjoy it if there was a better system for NSFW artists/content creators.

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

Wow, percentage seems a lot more popular than I had thought. That's good to know; it would end up with us making more money and would be one less thing to implement as it can be handled directly by the payment gateway. Thanks; this helps.

[vickimfox.livejournal.com]

Are you aware of the country and state laws regarding third party billing agency? This is the legal domain of companies like Patreon and the one you suggest.

When I first heard about Patreon, I sent them a query about their compliance. They provided a detail response about their accounting practices, compliance with US IRS regulations for taxes (including submitting the appropriate Form 1099 reporting monies collected and paid to the artists), and more.

Various states have regulations on the span of time allowed between collection and payment, reporting of collection, possible taxes on services, and more.

Further, the matter becomes more complex when you consider many artists may reside outside the USA.

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

I'm aware of the basics and we'll get exact details nailed down before we start.

There's generally four steps to doing a startup: market validation, business validation, technical validation, execution. Right now we're doing market validation, ensuring that people actually want the product we're imagining. The next step is business validation, which is the process of (among other things) talking to lawyers and other experts to ensure there's no regulatory hassles or contact-with-vendors issues. Technical validation is the easiest part -- just design the thing. Business validation and technical validation can be commingled, but there's no point in doing the other two if market validation fails.

Still, great point. Thanks for the warning.

[bearprince.livejournal.com]

I don't want to, like...immediately discourage you from this, or anything, but I think creating a functioning, profitable, and successful competitor for a market that's honesty fairly niche as it is, sounds like a pretty far reach, especially when, from as far as I can see, the sole business plan is just to make something better than Patreon.

If you're serious about going through with this, you're going to need something much more substantial than this to pique interest from both clients and investors/sponsors (because if you really want to make this work, you're going to need some funds to start the site with that ISNT a flat rate from clients who have no idea if their work is even going to be profitable or not).

Do you have any sort of business training? Handling finances? Have you looked into state and federal laws and regulations and licenses?

Like...again, I REALLY don't want to be that guy, but I think it's much, much too early to be trying to gauge interest when you don't even have a mock up or a business model or really much of anything for people to look at yet! :0

edit: I also disagree with the monthly rate, especially when patreon offers free and (I believe) unlimited space? I'd much rather pay a profit margin than pay more than what most patreon creators end up making per month or per work, in reality :/

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

> creating a functioning, profitable, and successful competitor for a market that's honesty fairly niche as it is, sounds like a pretty far reach

First off, I really appreciate the word of caution. The biggest reason that startups fail is because they don't do enough planning in advance; they get caught up in their own excitement about an idea and plunge ahead. David (my cofounder) and I have done this enough that we're being more cautious, but the constructive criticism is very appreciated.

As to business plans and how to make this work -- Patreon is, in my opinion, missing a bet. They've built a platform designed around giving recurring payments from one set of people to another set of people in exchange for mutually understood but free-form services; this is something that can be expanded far beyond the artist market. David and I have already talked about a lot of different sectors that we could expand into once we have a functioning system, some of which are vastly more profitable than the artist community.

We're starting with the artist community for several reasons:

*) Patreon proves that it's a market.

*) Patreon's existence makes it easy to explain the idea. I can make a post in this community saying "it's like Patreon but different in these ways" and everyone understands exactly what I'm talking about.

*) It's easy to locate artists; there are a lot of well-defined art communities on the Web, all of whom would like to make more money from their work, have well-defined contact channels, and are not opposed to contact from strangers.

> it's much, much too early to be trying to gauge interest when you don't even have a mock up or a business model or really much of anything for people to look at yet!

I understand your point, but I think perhaps there's a misunderstanding about what I'm doing. The stage we're at right now is market validation, not customer acquisition. I'm not saying "hey, we're building a service, come sign up for it!" I'm coming in to verify that desire for the service exists. Once we've built it I'll come back and offer people the opportunity to sign up as early adopters.

Does that make sense?

[dodger-greywing.livejournal.com]

Gonna agree with a bunch of other folks here about the flat fee. When this post first went up, that was the one thing that made me immediately wary.

I have zero problems with paying a percentage of my payments or pledges; I consider it just the cost of doing business. But that's the thing with paying out a percentage: it's only a cost when I do business. I pretty much universally shy away from subscription services at this point, because I can't guarantee I'll make at least that much a month from my art.

With that said, I welcome any solution to the problem of patrons who grab content and flee before paying anything. I've had several friends mention this happening to them on Patreon, and it's definitely driving people away from that site.

Now, people here may seem like they're being critical and distrustful, but quite frankly, we've all been burned by promises of Bigger and Better sites. We've gotten our hopes up for something better many times before and we're pretty jaded about grand ideas with nothing substantial to show. That's why people keep asking for something more than just an "I'd like to do this" statement. The fact that you have experience with running businesses in the past is a huge point in your favor.

There is a desire for something like Patreon but with better artist protections and control. If you build that, and it works, and looks good, you will have users.

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

> Gonna agree with a bunch of other folks here about the flat fee. When this post first went up, that was the one thing that made me immediately wary.

Based on the reactions we've gotten here, we're moving back towards a percentage model. There's more money to be had in it for us, and it apparently sits better with the community, so it seems like a win all the way around. We made an incorrect that subscription would be more appealing because it would cost less to anyone making $200+/month; I'm glad that you guys were able to straighten me out on that.

> Now, people here may seem like they're being critical and distrustful

Oh, that wasn't the sense I was getting! No, I've really appreciated the feedback here -- people have been very open and helpful.

> There is a desire for something like Patreon but with better artist protections and control. If you build that, and it works, and looks good, you will have users.

Thank you, it's great to hear this. We're kicking around ways to be more helpful to the users; early today we were talking about finding ways to help creators grow their revenue...nothing clearly defined yet, but we're trying to come up with ways to help people get general exposure and/or direct commissions. We'll see what we can come up with.

[lovelesskiax.livejournal.com]

Add me as well to percentage over flat fee for the services.

Heres something i havent seen mentioned: have it stated clear-cut that your website is for CREATORS and THEIR creations. There are people who use Pareton's services to gain money, and then use said pledge money to pay people to create their patreon content.
Please make it clear that your service is for creations the account owner makes themselves. Since people who do the above like to say its ok, when its not, because patreon's wording on the situation could be taken either way.

[arinaca.livejournal.com]

omfg, I thought I had nothing to add but there is something I;ve been wanting for a while.

The ability to buy portfolio's, sort of like bandcamp? pay a small or flat fee for hi-res images (or groups of) without monthly support. So I could put up all my art as one portfolio, someone comes along to my "patreon" and can back my work monthly to see constant updates, WIPS etc etc, or can just check out what portfolio's I have up. If they only like my finished work they could outright buy a portfolio of digital files for a once off flat fee. Could have the ability for multiple folio's for people that want to split it into categories, or single images etc.

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

That's brilliant. Thank you, we will definitely do that.

[alriandi (from livejournal.com)]

With the "charge instantly to avoid pledge and runners" matter, wouldn't that cause them to make chargebacks instantly or when they get the content regardless of the tier. I know it will be obvious that they don't get the rewards, but what will be the policy in regards to chargebacks?

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

At that point, there's not much we can do. If a person is actually willing to commit fraud by lying to their credit card, we can't stop them. Charging immediately will stop most of the exploitation, though -- most people are lazy, and going to the trouble of getting a chargeback is more than the majority of them will do.

[eewitsanne.livejournal.com]

I was a patron rather than a creator, and I ultimately ended up dropping all of my artists because none of them did what they said they'd do. I would sign up for certain tiers promising certain things (sketches, livestreams, etc.), and then didn't get those things, would go weeks and months without any content being posted, and yet my pledges would successfully leave my account every month. I'm all for supporting people to do what they love, but I work *really* hard for my money, and it kind of stung to watch it leave my account without getting anything in return.

Everyone here is (rightly) concerned about pledgers not upholding their ends of the bargain, but maybe you should put something in place to ensure that the artist does the same? I feel like a huge jerk writing this, but I faithfully pledged for a few artists for the better part of this year, and saw very little return, and I'm honestly pretty disappointed.

Edited for grammer, sorry!

[eewitsanne.livejournal.com]

oh my god spelled grammar wrong and I can't edit it any more. I'm going home.

[woofstep mutt (from livejournal.com)]

1) For when I do get enough popularity to gain a fanbase, yes I would love this kind of service, but the percentage should remain. It's more fair for everyone.

2) Folders to organize WIPs from completed works, and themed works.

3) That I've seen many be able to pay for food/bills thanks to the money they get from their patrons.

4) The Pledge dodgers. That's why the auto payment to me sounds like a great idea. It discourages more people from doing a fake pledge, and if a chargeback is filed, if enough people to chargebacks, paypal would freeze the account, and the artist can just, stop drawing publicly and screw over the people that tried to cheat their way into viewing art without paying for it. So in the end, only the patrons lose the battle. The artist can still take commissions.

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

Great ideas, thank you. And yeah, the "let artists pay their bills" thing really is the best part of Patreon.

Agree of having an alternative to Patreon

[chin yew (from livejournal.com)]

I'm getting a little frustrated with Patreon's lack of some basic and most logical requirements as a platform. I'm working hard as hell just to get Patrons and only to be disappointed with Patreon's lack of support to help my journey to be smoother. With the monthly declined pledges increasing every month, I'm starting to search for other options of platform that is similar to Patreon. I need a platform where I can post daily comic strips, where my patrons get to choose to have per post notification or weekly or even monthly updates to my posts. Some patrons prefer not to be bombed with emails daily. Some of the other basic features that I would like to have is to keep track of the Patron's coming in, out, an immediate notification of their declined pledges, a detail breakdown of calculation of every month's final calculation of pledges. And also a report of reason when I get a declined pledges so I can communicate with my Patron to solve the problem. Whether it's card details, max limit or security protection from the bank. I'm getting respond from Patreon stating they have no idea. And this bugs me alot as I've to keep reminding my Patrons to reenter their card details. Getting them to pledge at the first place has already proved a lot of effort and seeing their card declined without a specific reason really pisses me off. I need help, I'm a comic artist. Thanks in advance.

How To Jump Way Ahead Of Patreon

[solarstormstud.livejournal.com]

I agree with an alternative to Patreon. Any good market requires competition. Patreon eating up Subbable breeds a monopoly - which is always a bad thing.

Four of Patreon's Problems that you can hopefully solve:

(1) Embedding support for video and other media - sometimes this works, sometimes it does not work. You would think that after these years in operation, Patreon would have fixed this issue by now. Hopefully, your front-end infrastructure would be based around HTML5 - so that these issues would be easily resolved.

(2) Manual Payment processing - its 2016 and they are still doing manual payment processing. Every Creator should receive their payments by the last day of the month - no exceptions. Automated payment processing would also chase away "Pledge Thieves".

(3) Manual Curation of Featured Artists - its 2016 and they are still curating featured artists manually. A number of people have complained to Patreon about this - and they admitted that this is all they can do for now - since they still dont have an algorithm to curate featured artists. Some artists would stay for weeks on the Featured page - while others would disappear in a day or two. A really "backward" process to say the least.

(4) Sloppy search algorithm - what can I say about this one that has not been said already - lol. There needs to be a proper way to search and filter results based on various sets of criteria. Patreon still has not figured out how to setup an Advanced Search page as yet.


If you can solve these four issues, I can guarantee that you would be LIGHT YEARS ahead of Patreon.

Looking forward to your project.

Re: How To Jump Way Ahead Of Patreon

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

Thank you, this is really helpful.

One question about payment processing -- I'm not actually making enough from mine that I hang on it, so I haven't looked at the dates too carefully. Have you had issues with payments coming in late?

I will recommend Ratafire!

[lltbarnes.livejournal.com]

Patreon is a very developed site so I won't comment too much on it. It is good enough for what it is. If you have a lot of fans, then Patreon is the safest choice. Nothing can go quite wrong.

However, I will recommend Ratafire for anyone who just started, because it has everything designed to suit the need for creators who are still growing their fanbase.

First of all, it is free to use.

Ratafire has one time and recurring fan funding at the same time, which largely reduces the traffic requirement for recurring funding.

It also feels like a game, when people start playing with it, those who previously were not your fans may become a fan.

So for anyone who is new, give it a try.

Here it is:

https://ratafire.com

Why would you use Ratafire?

[stovey.livejournal.com]

Ratafire reserves the right to update it's terms of service without notifying you. Why would you enter into a business agreement with someone that can strip you of your rights without you knowing that they are doing so?


From: https://ratafire.com/site/terms/

"We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to modify or replace these Terms at any time. If a revision is material we will not provide notice prior to any new terms taking effect. What constitutes a material change will be determined at our sole discretion.

By continuing to access or use our Service after any revisions become effective, you agree to be bound by the revised terms. If you do not agree to the new terms, you are no longer authorized to use the Service."

I'm cautious of Patreon for using similar language as well as other clear and obvious predatory statements in their terms of service.

Is there a payment portal site that actually treats the people they are earning money from with equality and integrity rather than setting themselves up to be able to rip them off?