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

[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.