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Most of the patron outrage is because this change was done unilaterally (I don't think I had to click through anything to agree to the new fee structure). Ther
by philsnow 9y ago
Most of the patron outrage is because this change was done unilaterally (I don't think I had to click through anything to agree to the new fee structure).
There are two changes, one to pledge amounts and the other to payment schedule / batching. I'm only going to talk about the pledge amounts.
A much more palatable way to roll out the pledge amount change would have been:
1. give more notice. I got an email on Dec 7th announcing that the new fee structure would take effect on Dec 18th. Unless there were some urgent circumstances for the company, this should have been more like 3 months between announcement and implementation.
2. There seems to be at least two options for Fee Change Day:
a) increase 'base' pledge amounts so that the creator gets 95% of the purported pledge. That is if the pledge is for $1 / mo right now, increase it to $1.32 / mo (depending on payment provider) so that the creator gets the $0.95 / mo that Patreon says is "more clear".
b) The other obvious option is to keep the base pledge amount the same and the creator ends up with less money coming in.
I would have made 'b' the default and communicated a lot to inform patrons something like "We had to change fee structures to stay afloat and to make pledges less confusing for everybody. We defaulted everybody to paying the same amount because we don't want to bust anybody's budget. CLICK HERE to review your pledges and make any adjustments to make sure the creators you love get what you think they deserve." and then the resulting page has a super obvious pancake button on each pledge (and one for 'do it for all pledges') that adjusts their pledge to option 'a' above, but critically let them adjust it to whatever they want. I think over time people are more likely to increase pledges if they have the occasion to rather than decrease them, so Patreon could have actually come out ahead through the generosity of patrons.