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.

[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]

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.)

[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.

[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]

Part of the issues is Patreon's layout, and lack of "This is what this thing means." I have some issues and I need good, clear documentation as to what everything does. (I had a Patreon account for months before I set it live.)

My update schedule is 2 pages/week, so I had tiers priced for that (I think it was $1/page). I would change where it said "week" to "page" and set everything else up... and it would revert all the text that said "page" back to "week." Repeatedly. Which is why it took me months to finally set my Patreon as live.

[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.

[gatekat.livejournal.com]

On the ladder.

No, the person giving the pledge does. At least by my understanding, each posts earns the artist the amount pledged. This creates a situation where people pledge believing the posts will match what public galleries look like, with finished work, only to get a bunch of sketches.

Alternately, it also allows the one pledging to give beyond their baseline pledge for better work.

Though it would be complicated, with tagging it's possible to also use that as a reward system for content. If I love bondage, or a certain pairing or species, it would allow me to give more for the things I really like, and only minimally for things that I don't care for.


on the 'marked as NSFW'. It seems like there should be at least 3 levels.
General -- worksafe, kid safe
Mature -- nudity and mature themes
Adult -- Sex and intense violence/gore

[ankewehner.livejournal.com]

I'd hope the default would be for a supporter to be able to view everything. It wouldn't make much sense to not be able to start at the beginning for anything that has a serial format.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[perldiver.livejournal.com]

I figure it would be a choice of the creator. Those who do serial work can open their entire archive, those who don't can control it.

[traceymordeaux.livejournal.com]

Just to make clear, there is a ban on porn that's not drawn/animated/written etc. All digitally/traditionally or written pornography is absolutely okay with patreon. Just not real life porn, photo, video etc.

[gatekat.livejournal.com]

When did they change that policy? When I looked it up about 6 months ago it was porn of any kind. Same rules as DA, though not as strict as PayPal.

[celestinaketzia.livejournal.com]

It has always been that way. I spoke to Patreon very early on about this when Paypal was first disallowed by adult content creators, and the NSFW flag was implemented.

[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]

You can either be paid per time period or per creation. So, "I pledge $5 for every page you produce" or "I pledge $5 every month". The creator chooses one of the other when setting up the campaign.

[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.