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If you were a content creator with no technical know-how, how else would you set up a system that would let your supporters donate $x periodically, also assumin
by lgessler 8y ago
If you were a content creator with no technical know-how, how else would you set up a system that would let your supporters donate $x periodically, also assuming no technical know-how on your supporters' part?
- toomuchtodo 8y agoPayPal monthly subscription button on Wordpress site. I’m sure there are WP plugins that make this stupid simple.
- jdietrich 8y agoChargebacks.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoYou can’t charge back a Patreon charge? I’m sure you can.
- lccarrasco 8y agoYeah you can, but what's more likely, PayPal closing your small account due to many chargebacks in a little time, or them closing a big account with close to average number of chargebacks due to volume?
- toomuchtodo 8y agoI don’t think you can make the assumption that Patreon is better simply because you might be able to hide in the chargeback background noise. There will be alternative solutions that exist after Patreon sunsets, simple solutions.
- jerf 8y ago"There will be alternative solutions that exist after Patreon sunsets, simple solutions." There are alternate solutions that exist now. The only truly hard part of creating a Patreon clone is getting the approval to accept credit cards, charge them on a recurring basis, and dealing with the red tape around that. Probably the entire rest of the site is comparable to that in complexity. It's not the legendary "replicate in the weekend" project beloved by HN readers, because that whole credit card thing is nontrivial, but it's no "create a new distributed database backend from scratch and pass the Jepsen suite" either.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoA Stripe token for accepting credit cards isn’t a barrier IMHO.
- jerf 8y agoISTR hearing that getting approved for point-in-time credit card transactions isn't that difficult, but subscriptions where the user is not directly approving every individual transaction is a higher bar. The potential for chargebacks is much higher in the latter case.
- marcinzm 8y agoPatreon also provides an easy means for distributing subscriber only content which is more annoying to manage otherwise.
- johnnyfaehell 8y agoOk, you're a YouTuber with no technical knowledge, how do you get a WordPress site? Pay for hosting, pay for someone to build you one, etc. Then you have to maintain that site, keep it secure etc. Again, you have no technical knowledge. Or you can sign up to a site like Patreon give x% of the money you're not even making yet for no hassle.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- newnewpdro 8y agoThis sounds like an obvious business opportunity for the myriad dirt-cheap tiny VPS providers out there: One-click install of your own wordpress-based paypal-coupled panhandling site. I don't understand why paypal doesn't just jump on this directly and kill off Patreon though.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- naniwaduni 8y agoThe niche is already filled by shared web hosts.
- rmc 8y agoThat exists. And out of date, unpatched, Wordpress sites get hacked to pieces in no time. So now the simple button on your blog gives money to someone else
- cc81 8y agoPatreon is also about enticing people to support you through the tiers. So you will release content through Patreon that is subscriber only.
- sschueller 8y agohttps://liberapay.com https://liberapay.com no fees
- godzillabrennus 8y agoIf they don’t charge then you must be the product. I wonder how they monetize the data they collect.
- zzzcpan 8y agoIt's a non profit that lives of donations on its own platform.
- Deimorz 8y agoIt lives off being someone's side project, it's nowhere near being funded by donations: > Liberapay currently receives €154.65 per week, they need your help to reach their funding goal (€700.00 per week). That's only about $9000 USD / year, without accounting for any of the payment processing fees.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rubbingalcohol 8y agoIt's an open source project funded by direct donations...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ozzyman700 8y agoYou should look into open source software, it is a pretty cool field to discover!