Any thoughts on Patreon's new direction?

So, Patreon just added extra fees on patron pledges. Personally, this kinda sucks. I don’t have a lot of cash, but I have even less time, and so I give up a little cash to support this project where I can. I’m also VERY stubborn and prideful, so I will continue to give my one dollar (and change now) for this project and, with time and improved finances, gradually push up my pledge to really start giving to this project. However, in the here and now I’m fairly sure that a lot of people (including some of Lubos’ patrons) are rethinking their pledges if they were already low committers. Since this is a very important topic, I want to know what you guys all think? @lubos can you tell us in the coming month if the loss in patrons is made up for by the extra cash that Patreon is forcing patrons to pay for a more stable patreon money stream for you? No one other than a patreon creator has enough information to make an informed decision on if this is a bad thing for the creators or not.

Absolutely shitty move by Patreon, I do not know what they were thinking. Smells like greed, and that’s no good thing. I mean the Patreon seems to be overly obsessed with hinting creators with ‘tactics/schemes’ on how to gather the most revenue(so in turn Patreon itself earns more). I am no fan of these mind games, I want to keep everything as clear as possible. Also no problem with posting any stats in the upcoming month. Thanks for support!

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You can always donate through PayPal (donate button on download page) if you want to instead? However, if you are only donating one dollar @lubos will receive less compared to Pateron. Best option would be to use PayPal and add the cost of the fee. That way Lusbos loses nothing, and you lose a simlar amount as with Patreon. See below comparison.

One dollar:
Patreon (new fee): You pay $1.379. Lubos receives $0.95. You lose $0.379, Lubos lose $0.05.
PayPal: You pay $1. Lubos receives between $0.66 (international payment) and $0.68 (non-profit). You lose nothing, Lubos lose ~$0.33.
In order for Lubos to receive exactly $1 you can send between $1.33 and $1.35 through PayPal (depending on non-profit or not). You lose $0.33 - $0.35 to fees.

Ten dollars:
Patreon (new fee): You pay $10.64. Lubos receives $9.5. You lose $0.64, Lubos lose $0.5.
PayPal: You pay $10. Lubos receives between $9.31 (international payment) and $9.48 (non-profit). You lose nothing, Lubos lose between $0.52 and $0.69.
In order for Lubos to receive exactly $10 you can send between $10.53 and $10.72 through PayPal (depending on non-profit or not). You lose $0.53 - $0.72 to fees.

Twenty five dollars:
Patreon (new fee): You pay $26.075. Lubos receives $23.75. You lose $1.075, Lubos lose $1.25.
PayPal: You pay $25. Lubos receives between $23.72 (international payment) and $24.15 (non-profit). You lose nothing, Lubos lose between $0.85 and $1.28.
In order for Lubos to receive exactly $25 you can send between $25.87 and $26.33 through PayPal (depending on non-profit or not). You lose $0.87 - $1.33 to fees.

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@lubos https://liberapay.com might be an alternative also? They don’t take any cut, and there is a only a transaction fee which I think is payed by the donor.

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here the https://liberapay.com/ transaction fee:

https://liberapay.com/about/faq#fees

2.106% + €0.21( Euro ) - 2.925% + $0.35 (US)

I was searching for other solutions like:

Alternative to payment processor

Open source funding:

Another project:

Ideally i would like a personalized and independent Armory web page with funding goals and rewards

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Paypal is an option but the fees are still worse then what Patreon had before and it takes a while for the transaction to occur from my bank (as I don’t always have a balance in my paypal) plus I’d have to set up a timed and repeated payment which I don’t really want to do. Like I said, I’ll take the hit financially to go with Patreon but not everyone will and the sucky bit is that you’re going to lose money anyways because some people just won’t transition to a new method while other methods cost more in fees from Patreon’s old model any ways which begs the question, “what would be the point?” Regardless, @lubos please make sure to read the Patreon guidelines before posting any statistics, they might try to change them to make it a bootable offense to share statistics. Just don’t get caught in the crossfire and have Patreon try and boot you because of some BS involving them changing their policy while trying to make it so no one knows that they did it.

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I think the best alternative might be to find a good Pateron alternative (librapay, one of the alternatives @AndreaMonzini shared, or some other alt) and then the people that want to transition to that alternative can do so, and those that want to stay with Patreon can do so. Statistics could be posted here in the forum or on the Armory main site… no need to post any statistics on Patreon since it might be troublesome to do so…

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I would argue for opening up to another alternative and not moving the patreon fund, obviously. Personally, I won’t move unless Patreon really starts to get ridiculous, but it would be nice to have an alternative that doesn’t go through PayPal.

Just came across this tweet.

https://twitter.com/jephjacques/status/939228279323717633

Just hold on before jumping ship.

Oh ya, it’s early days.

FYI…

Yay, everything worked out in the end. Thread finished.