Fees changing your pledge amounts??

Thank you M, that means a lot to me!! <3

Ginny Di

Staying at 10 I think, even with their profit grab it’s very much worth it.

BlueSaysHello

I’m glad to hear that!! ❤️ Thank you Anna!!

Ginny Di

Really appreciate you discussing this with your patrons. It's such an unfortunate situation for patrons and creators alike. I feel fortunate that my fiinancial situation is such that my pledge to you doesn't need to change!

Cosplanna

I feel like this is definitely a move that's going to hurt the smaller $1 pledges more so than the larger pledges. For me I'm deciding on either raising the amount I pledge to a few different patrons so I feel like it's a bit more worth it for the price (If I'm paying $2 I might as well switch to a $5 tier for more content), or deciding to cut out a few patrons I pledge to completely. Hard moves

I hate typing on my phone. "Allow right" should read "both be right" and I have no idea how predictive text got from one to the.

Alan Hoare

Aha, you could allow right of course. A single $20 pledge goes up to ~$21 but if it were twenty individual pledges of $1 each then the total would go up to nearly $27. And if you aren't in the US then add VAT too!

Alan Hoare

Ahh I haven't had a chance to read the email until now and my sister is the one who told me about the increase. So I suspect when she did the maths she multiplied by .3 instead of by .03. So this is actually great news. If it's just sometime as small as as dollar I don't mind the change personally. Sorry for the misunderstanding, guess that's my fault for accepting what my sister says and assuming its fact without following up on it 😂

Oh thanks, automatically add in the hypertext tag at the end why don't you, grrr

Alan Hoare

I suspect the low-value pledges are intentionally being managed out by Patreon - after all it costs them the same to process a $1 pledge as it does a $1000. It does make sense what they are doing. As to what to do there are -ahem- *other* microtransaction services. The drawback is that they are not automatically recurring and you can't easily tie them to a reward to specifically benefit the donor. But someone need only buy you a &lt;cough&gt; caffeinated beverage once a quarter to match the same dollar pledge now.&lt;/cough&gt;

Alan Hoare

Thank you Kate, I appreciate that so much!!

Ginny Di

Good advice, thank you! I'm already seeing an impact in terms of dropped $1 pledges, I'm just not sure yet what the best way is to deal with it :(

Ginny Di

Donald is right, your pledge would go up about a dollar — still not ideal, but not quite as bad as $7! Regardless, I completely understand why some people may be deleting or downsizing their pledges. It's a terrible situation!

Ginny Di

Yep, that how it looks to me, too. :( It's such a mess. I totally understand why people are deleting pledges, as hard as it is to watch.

Ginny Di

I totally agree about the $1 to $4 v. $1 to $5! Maybe I can massage the tiers a little to make up for it. The update Patreon released later in the day yesterday also made it sound like my mailed tiers will have to be changed up, too, since pledges will be coming in at different times throughout the month... I think I'll need to do more restructuring than I originally planned.

Ginny Di

I so appreciate that, but it's also so frustrating to me that people are going to be forced to consolidate their pledges and support fewer creators :( What a mess

Ginny Di

I so appreciate the Patreons that I support that are open and honest about this change, that I have upped my support of them, yours included!

No... your $20 would become $20.93... it's 20*1.029 + 0.35

Bitter Donald

The maths isn't terribly favourable to smaller pledges - a $1 pledge will become $1.38 so that's a 38% service charge on top. As the pledge rises the service charge as a proportion reduces - a $5 pledge becomes $5.50, 10% overhead, while a $10 pledge becomes $10.64 - around 6% overhead. What that suggests to me is that reducing your pledge levels Ginny means you get less, obviously, but also Patreon gets more as a proportion of the total donation. Ratios suck psychologically - even though you pay more to Patreon at higher pledges it *feels* less because more of the pledge goes to the creator, which is where you, the supporter, want your money to go. I'd suggest not making any changes straight off - wait and see what the impact is to you. If there is an impact to you come 2018 then consider changing the tier levels. And Rachel - yes VAT - the amount the Inland Revenue gets from this makes me think they should be on at least tier 1 of Ginny's scale and she should be sending them content every month! :-)

Alan Hoare

I think this would definitely force me to go down a pledge amount. Right now I pledge $20 and I did the math and I think the new amount would be somewhere around $27, and I just can't really justify spending that monthly on one patron while still pledging to others. Which really sucks honestly because Ive loved supporting you for the few months I've been pledging. Not the best situation 😟

The way I see it, the supporters who can't increase the amount of money they're pledging each month of two options. 1. Cut out a number of people they currently support. 2. Decrease the pledge amount for the people they do support proprtional to the new fees. I don't know which one I'm going to do; I need to properly look at it but I know I can't give much more than I'm currently giving. Also being not American the VAT and exchange rate already hits my ability to pledge. This really sucks. :(

Your idea of slightly reducing existing pledge tiers sounds like a good one to me - especially at some of the lower tiers. (It's also notable that $1 to $5 feels like quite a jump - more for psychological than economic reasons.) I don't think I'll be pledging at $1 for any creator anymore - not because I can't afford it (my financial situation is fine - I could absorb the 38 cents no problem), but because the whole thing annoys me too much. I'll either bump my pledge to the next tier or withdraw it, deciding case-by-case. (In your case, probably bumping it. I was already tempted by the behind-the-scenes videos, anyway.)

Alex Mckenzie

I completely agree, although it doesn't look like they're planning on changing course — it looks like the full story is that they're adjusting payments to make more sense and be more reliable (so if you pledge on the 15th, you'll be charged every month on the 15th, rather than on the 15th and then every subsequent month on the 1st) but that also means more fees. Even so, I'd still have loved the option to choose to eat those fees if that meant allowing my Patrons to keep their current pledge levels!

Ginny Di

Thanks Jeffrey, I'm glad to hear that!

Ginny Di

Pretty much the same here for me. I'm not going anywhere. To be honest I'll be surprised if Patreon doesn't reverse course on this decision. I understand their reasoning, but this pretty much sucks for both the creators and supporters. It shows a disconnect between the people running Patreon and the people that use the service. IMO, it should have been left up to the creators whether they want to pass on this cost to their supporters or not. Personally if I was a creator (which I'm considering for my Gingerbread Theater) I would want control over this.

Adam Paeth

I'm not dropping anyone