Back to business as usual!

I don't know if you got a notification because I didn't, but Patreon has announced that they are no longer going to implement the fee and payment structure change that they announced last week: https://blog.patreon.com/not-rolling-out-fees-change/

As such, I am no longer suspending payments. Expect them to go through on Jan 1st just as they have every month, no extra fees.

Patreon had a pretty rough wakeup call in the past 7 days, as tons of users deleted their pledges and creators voiced their dissent. So they changed their mind, even though that doesn't fix how many users they've lost, or lost income to artists.

I'm here because many creators like me are here, and the bundling of payments makes Patreon's 5% fee worth what we save in credit card fees. I know there's folks out there who want to show financial support to all their favourites, and Patreon made that possible through their old business model, which is now still their business model! The more folks you support on Patreon, the more efficiently we all get paid. 

It's a really good system. 

Last week Patreon showed they've gotten out of touch with their users and made a pretty bad mistake. Even though they've corrected it now, they've caused a huge amount of lost time and income for creators, and have lost a lot of goodwill and trust. 

I just lost a week that I had intended to spend finishing a video, and now I don't know if I'll be able to fit it into my schedule or if that video is gone forever. And the stress of possibly losing my income (again) is going to leave a stain on my love of Patreon for a long time.

But while I'm a little more wary of the platform than I was before, it's still the best. This system is so much better for creators than all going it alone and paying the fees alone, and while Patreon's reversal was not exactly fast and graceful, it's still a fact, and I'm here for it.

In the past week I've done a lot of research on other platforms and payment options. I've set up accounts, sent test payments, set up profiles, etc etc. Most of them would be better than a version of Patreon that charges fees per pledge, because other platforms do this too, and without then taking an extra 5%.

But given that Patreon is no longer making that change, those other options only benefit me on transactions with folks who don't pledge to other creators. And so I'd rather keep all the transactions in one place for now, and hope that the efficiency of bundled payments encourages those folks to branch out and support more artists. Since I pay the fee, not you, this is my way of encouraging support of more artists and creators and growing the crowdfunded creator economy, which will come back around to benefit me in the end.

For example, I could offer a Paypal button and encourage you to send me a year's worth of support all at once, instead of paying transaction fees 12 times. Many of you have generously offered to do that, and if Patreon had gone through with the changes this would make a lot of sense!

But I like to imagine a world where people directly support, with small amounts, over a dozen different humans whose unique work cannot be supported any other way. In that case, bundling us all together per month on a platform like Patreon is more cost effective than bundling a year's worth of contributions per creator. Monthly is also very helpful for stability and budgeting.

So if you're happy with the un-change and can afford it, I encourage you to keep supporting creators and maybe find some smaller creators for whom the loss of just a few patrons this week might mean they're now worrying about how to make the rent. I hope for a silver lining where now that more people are aware of just how much bundling payments benefits creators, we'll see a greater diversity of support for creators big and small.

I truly believe in Patreon's mission and I respect their ability to roll back a change after recognizing it didn't align with their mission. It's been a rough week for many of us, but also a reaffirmation that the connection between creator and audience is more important and enduring than any platform or middleman. Beyond Patreon, any company in the business of connecting creator and audience is going to be taking a hard look at what just happened here.

Thank you to all of you who spoke with your voices and dollars and helped encourage this decision!

Vi Hart

P.S. The biggest thing I'm going to change is: set up an email mailing list sooner rather than later. That way, no matter what any platform does, we can still find each other and get to the next place or set up the next way.

P.P.S. A note on alternatives I looked at: aside from paypal portals or basic interfaces for existing payment systems that don't add anything beyond what Patreon does now, there was nothing established enough that I'd be very comfortable using it, especially as a creator of this size. I still trust Patreon more than any other site or system of its kind (though I expect we'll see some competition growing, now). I trust Patreon to not mess up again more than I trust other sites to not mess up in the first place.

I was hoping to find one that enabled more anonymity, for both of our safety and privacy, but Patreon still has other sites beat in terms of keeping our info private and my trust that they'll continue to do so. Eventually when I'm an official business I'll be able to Paypal Business Account, and I'll probably let people send to that if they prefer, but this will take a long while.

The only trusted alternative that can really do something Patreon can't is bitcoin (not that I trust it to be money, but I trust it will transact and won't trade our personal info). So if you'd like to send bitcoin here's an address:  1GCVg2AFGrSgQDaJoxKL3sbiUfSmRddnp5 

P.P.P.S. by popular request, Etherium too: 0x26b78E51EB4E4DD8f8E0D2FfC554959eF2647dD7