Charge up front - how would you feel about it?

good

The general consensus on how to do patreon is if pledges are a problem you charge up front. If its not a problem, don't bother. Adapt when necessary, and most people will understand.

hernest

Thanks for your input everyone! I've decided to go with the old system for now at least. This doesn't mean that the change will never happen though, as things can change. But I'll wait until the switch is reversible at the very least.

Eskoz

angelic chaos has a pretty good point if people do decide to take a break from pledging theres a nice pause button that resumes pledging next month if they need to take a break from paying because some inconvieniance came up

Caellan Murphy

Honestly, the charge up would be an inconvenience for one month to new patrons. After that it wouldn't be an issue. If it was me, personally, I wouldn't mind the double charge. It's not like it's getting double charged on your utilities. As long as it's still going to someone I'm happy to support. The affect it would have in preventing fraudulent pledges alone would so greatly improve your quality of life around here that I'd say it more then justifies the SLIGHT inconvenience to new followers. But hey, that's just me. And I know I can be far nicer then most. Haha. :3

AngelicChaos

This seems to only be a problem for people who only pledge for 1 month, leech content, and re-pledge a couple months later to leech again... Why wouldn't you want to protect your content? I've been Patreonning for a couple months now (since I saw the watermark on a video on PornHub), and I'm happy to support you month after month!

JD Zoidberg

I agree with pay upfront to stop the stealing, or lower it. Just change it on the 2nd week of a month and you should be fine.

Watts

Not a Patron because I currently do not have the money to spare, but I'm fine with either approach. In the end it's at most having to pay the same for 1 month less time being a Patron.

Random Guy

It goes to show how honest you are/what value your viewers feel towards your work.

Feedfancier

I'm sure fakes are a problem to all nsfw creators to some extent. I was considering the system pretty seriously yesterday, but after sleeping on it, and seeing some of the user input here, I feel it's not worth it when comparing to the negatives. Despite the relatively positive results of the poll, which I definitely did not expect.

Eskoz

I wouldn't say that we lose support due to it. These people mostly wouldn't pay either way. It's more about giving us false expectations, as we end up getting less than we expect, due to the false accounts. And while that kind of action should be deterred, I'm starting to feel it wouldn't be worth it, with all the negatives, that were listed on the post, and what people have mentioned in the comments. But either way, I appreciate the encouragement :) And I might change my mind in the future, if they tune up the system a bit. The double charge thing at least needs to change, before I'll consider it further.

Eskoz

Well the free releases are already essentially that. The trial is more about making sure people get what they expect. As I've noticed that some people expect the patron videos to have additional content that the free videos don't. As in they might think the free video is not the full length version.

Eskoz

This is pretty close to my own mindset as well. I'm a firm believer of not making things harder for paying customers while trying to stop misuse.

Eskoz

Thanks. Yeah I noticed the increased suspensions, and did some pre-emptive steps, that *should* help. Apparently they're now suspending for just having certain words in public posts, the banner, introduction, and whatnot. So I changed all the tags, and names, to remove any words that might be considered in violation :P I'm considering changing the banner as well, to be on the safe side. Anyway, good luck, I'm sure you'll get it worked out with the review team.

Eskoz

One more thing. Watch out and be prepared, cos a lot of us got suspended in the recent week. MartyZ, I myself and a bunch of other artists, like JollyJack for small reasons, and the support team is stupid slow with responding to requests. I suggests even if you change to up-front, wait with the change for at least a month until things calm down. And wish me luck, I don't wanna get permanently suspended T_T

Freimgul

Well, this might hurt you on the short run but help you in the long run. For me, both version makes sense, but it's a bigger commitment on the patron's side. There will be people who feel strongly about this and will leave. I myself don't really care. All that matters is if you deliver or not, and I'm 100% sure you will.

Freimgul

The thing about charge upfront is that it works best as a way for combating fake pledges, so if you have that problem I'd tell you to go for it. If most people pledging are honest than maybe keep it as it is.

Feedfancier

Make a "Trial" Tier for pledges and let people see older stuff and stuff you don't want to reserve for your $10 donation people.

ZaneofBane

Hit&Runner are quite a big problem on patreon from what I heard. So I'd say do it. if some problems come up, deal with them seperately. Should be a lot easier for you and you have a stable situation.

Flo McHugh

It's more than just the "trail" thing I think, when you don't charge up front I think you give a better first impression. At least for me it feels like "wow that's really cool, a system of trust that actually works for the most part!" but more than that: "wow this artist is really trusting in people" (not to say I look down on those who do charge up front, but not doing it gives off a certain "chill" vibe). I don't know, maybe this sounds stupid, but I really think that (regardless of how fair one might argue it is) you stand to gain more supporters and in the long run more money without the psychology behind the person seeing a "this artist charges upfront" screen and even just a subconscious feeling they could get from being "trusted". I'm not exactly a psychology expert though so...

Ehren

Good to hear that it'll be reversible eventually :)

Eskoz

Thinking about the same topic I think people get around this by email once the payment has gone through. Also to note the CEO Jack said it will be reversible but that update is a few months down the road.

Gianthurtball

Not to worry, I'll keep posting the free versions. As for the lower resolution on the free version, the only reason I'm spending extra time rendering these at 1080p and 60fps, is to give patrons something special and extra. If not for patreon, I'd just render these out at 720p, as it's much faster, and it's a mostly passable resolution. Without patreon, I also wouldn't have time to do any of this at all, so none of the stuff I've done in the past year would have happened if I didn't start using patreon. I'd still be posting that one short 30 second video once a year, if even that.

Eskoz

Thanks for the comments and encouragements everyone! I'm still not entirely sold on the change personally. I'll have to see how things progress. But as I said in the earlier post, I'd probably at least like a solution for the possible double billing, as it's something many might not be aware of. It's not exactly a standard way of handling payments, and even if I warned about it on the introduction post, many don't read it.

Eskoz

I don't care about hit & run people getting the same content as me. I am not buying a product. I'm giving you money because I like what you do and I want you to create more content for everyone. Although you do have a point on keeping cheaters away from polls.

I really hate when my favorite artists start up a patreon system. Once they do that, it means they will no longer post normal free versions but going for money instead. Say, adding watermarks and reducing image resolution for the free version. I am not specifically talking about you and it's all about the money. Imagine the moment when your favorite artists stop uploading works but all it does is advertising patreon. Not only patreon, "it" ruins everything.

Hola

Honestly, I think you should go for it. I've been a patron for a couple of months now and I'm really glad that I signed up. You make excellent quality work and you consult with your fans often. As for the "trial" runs, I think you have enough quality work here to be worth that initial first payment. If the person is not happy he can withdraw his membership in the following month, but I think you still deserve to be paid for the work you have on here. I'm sure most patrons will agree :)

I like the idea of charging up front! I also appreciate that you consult your fans before such decisions instead of just making big changes on things without asking like so many other companies and people do.

Sunlight Swift

You've shown that you do good work and that you enjoy doing it. If there's a system that weeds out the bullshit to make your job easier, then I support it.

From a random user's perspective - the hit&run types don't affect me in any way. I'm here to support someone creating some really interesting videos...

David Fenger

Yeah, I'm aware that hit & runners won't pay either way. The main advantage to it would be the fairness aspect towards the paying patrons, and keeping them away from polls. But there's not that many of them who touch the polls. Some do, and I try to check for them if a poll is close. But I agree with many of your points. However, according to the FAQ, there would not be a skipped month for current patrons, in this case. They'd get charged normally. The point you make about people expecting more results is a good one especially, and something I didn't actually take fully into account. It wouldn't probably affect the mindset of current patrons, but would most likely affect new ones. That's one more negative to the mix, although it's slightly touched upon with the refund thing I mentioned, with people being disappointed with what they see, after not being able to do a trial first.

Eskoz

But as said I don't really care either way. There's advantages and disadvantages to both systems. Pay up front does mean that you have a legal obligation to make future content though and hence can't stop from one day to another, without refunding at least. And technically can't also not take a break for a month or two. Though I at least wouldn't really care if somethign made you unable to fulfil obligations temporarily or if something happened making you stop immediately. But not everybody have the same mentality as I. Just something to keep in mind, though it probably won't ever be relevant. Just wanted to point it out as you might not have realised that the change involves changing from people paying for existing content to pay getting a legal ground to demand you create content. Also why did patreon change the comment system to make it really cumbersome making long comments? Also hope the above isn't too ununderstandable. I'm really tired so not sure how understandable it is, but hopefully my points carried over. Though personally I don't really care either way.

Signe (dcvfgb1234)

Personally I don't really care much either way though. I don't really like if all creators get it by default now though as some creators are scammers and you can't just charge back without harming genuine creators and with charge up front you can't detect they're frauds until you already have paid. Though hit and runners are a problem too making it a complex problem as both sides have bad apples. Also note with regard to hit and runners then they likely won't pay if you change, or they may have one person pay and then share it via torrents afterwards. Personally I don't care much whethr they manage to get te content or not as they wouldn't pay either way, though others don't want peopleto get paywalled content for free when they themselves pay.

Signe (dcvfgb1234)

One thing to note is that the main difference between the two systems is when you pay for a month. Currently you pay after you have got the rewards delivered. If you change it you pay before they have been delivered meaning that people have paid for stuff you haven't created yet. Which isn't really a problem. Now what is a problem is if some/all rewards are sent by PM as then you might be cheating people out of rewards from the first month as they're paying for it, but not receiving anything. Though you dont' send anything by PM IIRC so that isn't an issue for you. Also note that if you do it then everybody is moved to paying ahead of time instead of after meaning that existing patrons get a free month. Currently we have paid for May and if you ere to change tomorrow then no existing patron will be paying for June as the charge on July 1st would be billed as paying for July.

Signe (dcvfgb1234)

I've been supporting for a while now so it doesn't matter to me whatsoever. Charge up front is neater in general.

Minamoto Terumi