Well That Was A Stressful 24 Hours

An ebb and flow of Patrons is all part of the business. Some months we're down a few, others we're up a few. Some people pledge for the long haul, but its unreasonable to expect everyone to do that.

That said, I had more Patrons cancel in the past day than I have in the past three months combined. Losing more than 30 patrons, especially after making a push the last couple of months to get us to our next milestone, stung a little bit. But worse was not knowing how bad it will get still. How many Patrons these fee changes will lose me before the dust settles.

I was pissed off and freaking out last night, up until 2am researching all sorts of alternatives.

"What plugins are available for this sort of thing"

"How would I manage subscriptions if I wanted to deliver rewards via email?"

"What can I do to counteract this within Patreon?"

And I'm far from alone. Patreon creators across the board are dealing with the same thing, many of whome also rely on it for their livelihood like me, and some who have been hit much harder.

It sucks.

With that said, though, I do want to shout out to the handful of you that either increased your pledges, or pledged anew despite the fees, in what I assume is an attempt to offset those that had to cancel. I don't want everyone feeling like they need to overextend themselves in that way, but I just wanted to say the gesture was appreciated.

Patreon still has a chance to reverse course on this; I'm not going to hold my breath, but 97% of Patrons and Creators (I saw a poll) are against this change. So maybe.

But if they don't, we will continue to explore alternatives. Drip by Kickstarter is a possibility when it launches, and Gumroad just announced they're planning to drop their fees in the near future (I would just pay a monthly rate to use the service), so that's another possibility I can explore.

If we can just tread water for a little bit here, I think eventually someone is going to take advantage of the market dissatisfaction that Patreon just created.