Patreon’s (private) new service fee is supposed to help creators keep more money, but many believe it will actually cause fewer patrons to pledge, making it more harmful than helpful to creators.
As it stands now, Patreon takes a 5% fee from each pledge, and creators also pay the fees charged by payments processed through Stripe or PayPal. But starting December 18, patrons will start paying 2.9% plus 35 cents for every pledge they make. Essentially, this means that creators will no longer be getting their pledge money reduced from Patreon, but patrons will have to pay more now if they want to support someone – and that could dissuade some patrons from paying anything at all.
Patreon is focusing on the fact that these policy changes will mean that those creators will get to keep a larger cut of each pledge. “With this update, creators will now take home exactly 95% of each pledge with no additional fees,” the company explained on its update page. “In the past, a creator’s income on Patreon varied because of processing fees every month. They could lose anywhere from 7-15% of their earnings to these fees. This means creators actually took home a lower percentage of pledges than their patrons may have realized. Standardizing our fees across the board provides consistent expectations and more money for creators on Patreon.”
Creators aren’t seeing it this way though. They believe the changes will drive away new patrons and make current ones less inclined to continue pledging, especially people who prefer to pledge small amounts to multiple creators. Many patrons could be paying as much as a third more than they used to, and there are a lot of people out there that might not be okay with that, or able to afford the extra cost.
Some patrons also believe that the new service fee may make people make one large pledge to one creator, rather than splitting up their pledge money to contribute to multiple creators. This will vastly hurt those creators who rely on getting many $1 pledges.
This is just another reminder that any online platform that helps creators make a living can just as easily take that living away.
Featured Image: twitter
