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

[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?

[bearprince.livejournal.com]

This all still doesn't answer my question about whether you have valid credentials and experience running this particular sort of business. What other businesses and/or start up companies have you founded or been a part of? Have you had education in this sort of thing? I'd like to see the actual results and the actual business that you've been able to create so far! I understand what you're saying, but I don't feel as if you have actually addressed my concerns.

It makes perfect sense to come to an artistic community to ask about a site that will help artists. I wasn't questioning that! I just don't think the current set up you have in mind would actually prove to be very beneficial to us the way you've currently proposed it. There is a very select group of people who make a good profit off of Patreon; well known artists, musicians, podcasts, and among the total users of Patreon they don't make up a very large percent. Many of us use Patreon because there IS no fee, and we can put our work up there for free without fear of ending up with a loss if we don't get the support we need. So what incentive is there for people like me to switch to a pay service in lieu of a free one? Regardless of funds taken out.

In addition, I suspect there's some sort of requirement in place that dictates you MUST take out of client's earnings if you're a third-party service; Paypal, GoFundMe, etc...all these sites take out a percentage of our earnings. How do you know you can actually bypass that?

I'm aware that this is only a gauge of the market, but I doubt that this will give you a good idea of potential future clients when you have nothing to offer but an idea and a list. You still have to have some sort of tangible pitch to gauge client interest, you still have to put that work in.

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your input. This discussion has been very useful; among other things, we had assumed that people would prefer a subscription service so as to pay less, but based on the responses I'm seeing here that doesn't seem to be the case. We're moving back towards a percentage model.

There isn't a requirement to take money out of people's income. It's standard practice in order to cover credit card transaction costs, which is why all of the companies you mentioned do that.

[bearprince.livejournal.com]

I appreciate the response, but you still haven't addressed my concerns about your business expertise.

EDIT: I read above where you mentioned running two businesses for two years, and then leaving another that is currently running; two years doesn't seem like a relatively long time for a company to run. But that's all I wanted to know, so!