How to compete with Patreon(siderea.dreamwidth.org)
siderea.dreamwidth.org
How to compete with Patreon
https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1824441.html
233 comments
Is this historically accurate? Most of my renaissance art history class memories involve artists kinda getting controlled by their patrons a lot of the time. Plus, the patron usually got to own/sell/commission works from them. Sure, some of it was at the time, it looked good for you to have artists in your keep, but it wasn't some sort of no-strings-attached benevolence, and the situation they put out no work for extended periods and still stayed on with their patron feels more like survivorship bias. How many middling royals were going through patronizing artists who didn't become a big deal and then dropping them?
Almost all succesful creators on Patreon give you benefits for subscribing (early access to content, behind the scenes, etc.), so I don't see how you could possibly convince the IRS that it's a gift.
I don't, not the slightest amount, and I still don't try to convince the IRS that my sole source of income is 'a gift'. (not counting the pathetically small YouTube revenue)
It doesn't ACT like 'a gift', it acts like a paycheck. If a guy gets paid by a car dealership because he's the owner's kid without having to do anything, the IRS doesn't care whether he has to work for real but it very much cares whether he pays his taxes on his income.
It doesn't ACT like 'a gift', it acts like a paycheck. If a guy gets paid by a car dealership because he's the owner's kid without having to do anything, the IRS doesn't care whether he has to work for real but it very much cares whether he pays his taxes on his income.
But we have a specific word, patronage, to describe a payment that is specifically NOT for work, and of course a platform named for that my might reasonable consider payments on it patronage not payment for work.
At EU there is a tax issue so you pay money + 23% VAT.
It isn't consider a gift as you a gaining something (access to page) so you need to pay tax on that.
This is one thing that bothers me with patronite and other platforms. I wish I could simply send a gift (without acces to anything) and not to pay another tax on already taxed money.
It isn't consider a gift as you a gaining something (access to page) so you need to pay tax on that.
This is one thing that bothers me with patronite and other platforms. I wish I could simply send a gift (without acces to anything) and not to pay another tax on already taxed money.
The flipside of that is that Patreon handles the ugly details of making sure the right amount of VAT / sales tax is paid on transactions - and from a creator's point of view this is a big part of their value proposition.
If creators had to administer that stuff on an individual basis they'd have no time left for creating.
If creators had to administer that stuff on an individual basis they'd have no time left for creating.
VAT rate is EU state based (varies 16-25%), the VAT has to applied to the one's 'donating' the money state of residence, as long as there is more than 10k euro/year revenue.
Many EU states tax tips as well (all the way -> VAT/corporate/income/social tax)
Many EU states tax tips as well (all the way -> VAT/corporate/income/social tax)
almost all, for example: I support my mastodon instance admin with like 3 Euro's a month for keeping the place running and well moderated.
I also pay a writer (he goes by Wildbow) a couple of bucks a month, for posting weekly chapters of his webserial.
Both have no relation to rewards, it's just because I love the stuff they create for free and want to support them.
I also pay a writer (he goes by Wildbow) a couple of bucks a month, for posting weekly chapters of his webserial.
Both have no relation to rewards, it's just because I love the stuff they create for free and want to support them.
When Patreon is structured as “For $5/month you get X, for $10/month you get Y, for $15/month you get Z” can you really argue it’s a gift? It’s very transactional.
Yes but those rewards are rarely fungible. As I understand it's more about recognizing the patron (e.g. your name in the credits) and giving them special status in the community (e.g. early access) rather than getting something of real monetary value.
> There doesn't have to be any quid pro quo at all.
I mean yes and no. I feel like I'm getting a fairer deal from some Artists than others that I support. So I admit I sometimes only subscribe for 1-3 months, and then unsubscribe, when Output is low, or variance in content themes is too high. The price then isn't really justified.
Also, for some artists, Patreon serves as an ad-hoc subscription platform. If I'm essentially being promised 3-4 units of "Art" per month, you bet I'm going to unsubscribe if the Artist doesn't post at all, unannounced. It's also not fair to call these "gifts" - I get exclusive access to most of the content on Patreon and with one exception, all Artists advertise it as a service. I'd be different if I could consume their content on another platform for free, but often times I can't.
Tbf though, I still don't have a reliable income, so maybe I'd change my habits once I got that taken care of.
I mean yes and no. I feel like I'm getting a fairer deal from some Artists than others that I support. So I admit I sometimes only subscribe for 1-3 months, and then unsubscribe, when Output is low, or variance in content themes is too high. The price then isn't really justified.
Also, for some artists, Patreon serves as an ad-hoc subscription platform. If I'm essentially being promised 3-4 units of "Art" per month, you bet I'm going to unsubscribe if the Artist doesn't post at all, unannounced. It's also not fair to call these "gifts" - I get exclusive access to most of the content on Patreon and with one exception, all Artists advertise it as a service. I'd be different if I could consume their content on another platform for free, but often times I can't.
Tbf though, I still don't have a reliable income, so maybe I'd change my habits once I got that taken care of.
In nearly every case, it’s obviously not a gift. Every single time I’ve ever subscribed to someone on Patreon is because I’m purchasing a subscription for extra content.
Exactly. The reason Patreon has been able to get away with a basic platform is because they served a basic need: giving your faves money.
They also had good timing since they allowed you to send your faves money before the creator platforms developed in-house solutions.
They also had good timing since they allowed you to send your faves money before the creator platforms developed in-house solutions.
If it's a gift, does that mean it goes towards your yearly gift tax limit?
You can always give it a shot. Doubt they're going to audit your gifts unless they're in the multiple thousands and even so you have a logical case.
Also note if you exceed the yearly gift tax limit you just file 709 and apply the excess to your lifetime estate limit, currently $12,000,000-ish.
(Federal) gift tax isn't really a thing except for the exceedingly wealthy. Idk about all states
(Federal) gift tax isn't really a thing except for the exceedingly wealthy. Idk about all states
Your comment and this post are 100% there for a pateron killer.
Platform that charges "per work" AND automatically does the paperwork for taxes that makes it a gift, not income.
Platform that charges "per work" AND automatically does the paperwork for taxes that makes it a gift, not income.
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OP missed the elephant in the room. Patreon is the only platform that allows you to launder softcore (nothing explicit from in front of a camera) NSFW content with legitimate payments. There is an incredible amount of erotic artwork, drawings etc. that are sold through Patreon instead of having to resort to niche adult video site payment processors.
That's an interesting fact, but it doesn't seem to be an essential a part of competing with Patreon like having a basic understanding of artists' lives and business models is. The author's goal wasn't to document all the ways in which someone might try to take part of Patreon's business, they're simply documenting a few of the essential elements of a creator funding platform that Patreon competitors have heretofore failed to understand.
Allowing or disallowing specific categories of content is a lower-level business decision than understanding your customers' basic needs.
Allowing or disallowing specific categories of content is a lower-level business decision than understanding your customers' basic needs.
> Allowing or disallowing specific categories of content is a lower-level business decision than understanding your customers' basic needs.
It's not when your sites majority income comes from a specific theme of posts. Patreon knows this, because they thought of it as a low level decision in the wake of credit card companies NSFW adversity. They then had top pursue other avenues of clearing NSFW content, because their business have tanked. [0]
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/22/patreon-to-roll-out-tools-...
It's not when your sites majority income comes from a specific theme of posts. Patreon knows this, because they thought of it as a low level decision in the wake of credit card companies NSFW adversity. They then had top pursue other avenues of clearing NSFW content, because their business have tanked. [0]
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/22/patreon-to-roll-out-tools-...
Subscribestar has successfully pivoted from "Patreon but you can post right-wing propaganda" to "Patreon but with less restrictions on horny stuff". Patreon is slowly but surely becoming more hostile to horny stuff; right now I'm in the middle of going around with their support over horny creators having to provide some additional identity verification through a third-party site that isn't working on my computer or my phone.
SubscribeStar still features the golden one, an open neo-nazi, as one of their hand picked "success stories" on their frontpage, so I don't believe they really pivoted, if anything they expanded.
The more things change, the more they remain the same. Neo-nazis and pornographers, to this day, are still at the forefront of payment shenanigans.
Genuine question, do you use the term pornographer merely descriptively or derogatorily?
The issue is that "less restrictions on horny stuff" means "more restrictions from payment processors" nowadays. Doubly so if you're a Russian platform like Subscribestar is.
hahahhaa Subscribestar is Russian? Well that's gonna be fun for all the furry artists posting super-gay stuff on there once it gets big enough for the Russian government to notice.
Don't make the mistake of thinking the Russian government actually cares about homosexuality. It's for internal consumption only, for the purposes of establishing a convenient domestic 'other'. If they have to choose between a revenue source and enforcing the morality policies of the state in a way that doesn't interfere with the internal propaganda machine it's clear which option wins.
I don't get the impression Russia's censorship laws are applied outside Russia. You can find tons of gay stuff on Yandex's image and video search without being coy about the search terms.
Whether or not it's tolerable enough for the Russian government probably depends on whether or not SubscribeStar is keeping up with giving the appropriate people in the Russian government a cut of their money.
Wonder if they will care if it's mostly a foreign audience.
Russia's MO - and the only thing they're good at - is information warfare. They don't care about the furry porn as long as it lets them propagandize the far-right in other countries.
The Russian government will probably subsidise them to further weaken the West.
Then they’ll be disappointed. Accepting gay stuff does not weaken any country or region.
That's not Russia's MO. Their goal is to continue funneling money to far-right westerners and having a funding platform lets them do that. Furries using it provides plausible deniability in the same way that anti-censorship activists using Tor provides deniability for CIA agents.
Getting $country to pander to $minority_population is a pretty universal tactic for subjugating a population.
…but tricking millions of men into lusting after big booba vixens instead of other humans (of either gender) may.
Yes, but they operate from american llc.
There's a non zero amount of hardcore artists that kind off manage to avoid patreon's restrictions, I've not looked too deep into it, but at least one does it by making all the explicits public, the patreon rewards are mainly WIP's before they're too graphic or coaching and crediting without showing anything
I think it's cute that he thinks someone could build and maintain well all the things he wants for less than 5% in commission and also not pass along processing fees, on what he admits is a micropayment processor.
That said, I don't understand the motivation for Patreon's decision to stop bundling payments, unless they're being forced to by issuing banks or payment processors for some reason.
EDIT: Thinking about it more, I suspect it has to do with fraud detection and prevention. A site like Patreon is at high risk to be a place to siphon money from stolen cards: Create some fake artists and have a bunch of fake patrons pledge to them using stolen cards. This kind of scam is likely much harder to detect and prevent with bundling, when multiple fake artists can be mixed in with some real ones in a single charge.
I think many people don't realize that when an online payment is charged back for fraud, the merchant (Patreon, in this case) is liable for the charges, not the issuing bank. (Well, there are some instances where liability can be shifted to the issuer, but they're not that common.) High chargeback rates can also result in higher fees for the merchant. And of course the effort to detect, prevent, and remediate the fraud has to be paid for out of Patreon's commissions, in addition to everything else.
That said, I don't understand the motivation for Patreon's decision to stop bundling payments, unless they're being forced to by issuing banks or payment processors for some reason.
EDIT: Thinking about it more, I suspect it has to do with fraud detection and prevention. A site like Patreon is at high risk to be a place to siphon money from stolen cards: Create some fake artists and have a bunch of fake patrons pledge to them using stolen cards. This kind of scam is likely much harder to detect and prevent with bundling, when multiple fake artists can be mixed in with some real ones in a single charge.
I think many people don't realize that when an online payment is charged back for fraud, the merchant (Patreon, in this case) is liable for the charges, not the issuing bank. (Well, there are some instances where liability can be shifted to the issuer, but they're not that common.) High chargeback rates can also result in higher fees for the merchant. And of course the effort to detect, prevent, and remediate the fraud has to be paid for out of Patreon's commissions, in addition to everything else.
Liberapay is a popular FLOSS alternative that runs solely on people donating to them through their own platform. They make ~$790 a week currently
https://liberapay.com/Liberapay/
Ko-Fi is a proprietary example with 0% donation fees. They make money through a "Gold" offering and through a 5% fee on non-donation income. And they're successful enough to be hiring right now:
https://more.ko-fi.com/careers
https://liberapay.com/Liberapay/
Ko-Fi is a proprietary example with 0% donation fees. They make money through a "Gold" offering and through a 5% fee on non-donation income. And they're successful enough to be hiring right now:
https://more.ko-fi.com/careers
> I don't understand the motivation for Patreon's decision to stop bundling payments
The way I understand it, the motivation is that they're losing money on bundled microtransactions until customers cross some monthly threshold (let's say that's the $14.29 mentioned in the article). So let's say a customer has a $1 monthly subscription to Creator A, and another $1 subscription to Creator B, adding up to a bundled $2 monthly charge to their credit card. That's apparently below the price point where the provider is able to offset the processing fees. Whereas if they have two separate $1 charges, that reduces the loss somehow (I'm not a payment processing expert and I didn't read the fine print that the author posted, so I don't understand exactly why that's the case.)
I wonder if the "solution" would be for Patreon to have a minimum subscription model, where each customer is guaranteed to pay, each month, an amount that's above the threshold required for Patreon to avoid a loss on processing fees. You sign up as a patron, and you're automatically dinged $15/mo as long as your account is active. You can choose to route those $15 to whatever creators you want, and you'll see a single line item on your bill. And then obviously you can exceed that threshold if you want to support more creators.
The way I understand it, the motivation is that they're losing money on bundled microtransactions until customers cross some monthly threshold (let's say that's the $14.29 mentioned in the article). So let's say a customer has a $1 monthly subscription to Creator A, and another $1 subscription to Creator B, adding up to a bundled $2 monthly charge to their credit card. That's apparently below the price point where the provider is able to offset the processing fees. Whereas if they have two separate $1 charges, that reduces the loss somehow (I'm not a payment processing expert and I didn't read the fine print that the author posted, so I don't understand exactly why that's the case.)
I wonder if the "solution" would be for Patreon to have a minimum subscription model, where each customer is guaranteed to pay, each month, an amount that's above the threshold required for Patreon to avoid a loss on processing fees. You sign up as a patron, and you're automatically dinged $15/mo as long as your account is active. You can choose to route those $15 to whatever creators you want, and you'll see a single line item on your bill. And then obviously you can exceed that threshold if you want to support more creators.
> Whereas if they have two separate $1 charges, that reduces the loss somehow
This is what is being questioned. I've spent several years working in merchant processing, and I've never heard of a billing structured offered by a processor in which it would be advantageous to split charges up. No one understands why Patreon would be losing money by bundling. It could be something with anti-fraud or anti-carding, but I'd have to chew on that a bit more.
This is what is being questioned. I've spent several years working in merchant processing, and I've never heard of a billing structured offered by a processor in which it would be advantageous to split charges up. No one understands why Patreon would be losing money by bundling. It could be something with anti-fraud or anti-carding, but I'd have to chew on that a bit more.
So it sounds like "in-game currency" at this point (from the minimum $15 charge)
I think the real answer may be that patreon is, actually, a bad business; and that nobody has cracked microtransactions.
Separately, while Patreon's charging changes seem boneheaded, I'd guess at least a 50% chance that they weren't driven by stupidity but rather by a CFO having a come to jesus conversation with the e-team. Driven by the fact that microtransactions run on a credit card are tough.
Their giant raises make more sense if they were eating a ton of fees in an attempt to hold out for scale where enough people (eg I spend $20-ish/mo on patreon) charge enough money that the 5% covers the processing fees.
Separately, while Patreon's charging changes seem boneheaded, I'd guess at least a 50% chance that they weren't driven by stupidity but rather by a CFO having a come to jesus conversation with the e-team. Driven by the fact that microtransactions run on a credit card are tough.
Their giant raises make more sense if they were eating a ton of fees in an attempt to hold out for scale where enough people (eg I spend $20-ish/mo on patreon) charge enough money that the 5% covers the processing fees.
The real answer is that the original core proposition of Patreon was a fairly [b]boring[/b] business. It's a payment processor alongside a smaller hosting business. For most consumers of their platform it's not something they need or intend to interact with that often.
Unfortunately Patreon saw itself as primarily a tech-company able drive interactions via its own platform and capture more value from creators[]. The pandemic - and the ensuing explosion in the number of creators and consumers - fed this illusion further.
Both factors led to an influx of VC money, and now they are stuck trying to make returns against a mostly fictitious valuation.
[] This should have always been a warning sign, the average creator isn't rich, they aren't making bank on things like t-shirts.
Unfortunately Patreon saw itself as primarily a tech-company able drive interactions via its own platform and capture more value from creators[]. The pandemic - and the ensuing explosion in the number of creators and consumers - fed this illusion further.
Both factors led to an influx of VC money, and now they are stuck trying to make returns against a mostly fictitious valuation.
[] This should have always been a warning sign, the average creator isn't rich, they aren't making bank on things like t-shirts.
> nobody has cracked microtransactions
It's hard to agree on this one.
Personal anecdote: In 2010's I worked in a micropayments broker linked with all telecom companies.
The whole thing was: that NSFW creators used a shared SMS shared code (i.e. a SMS number that receives messages for several creators and the code (for instance HNCODE25) was used to move money to a balance account) and for each of the payments that people used to do with them the telecom company got 15% slice, and the rest the telecom moved the money to the broker.
Another point: In Brazil due to the PIX [1] almost all of those payment platforms (Paypal included) are becoming irrelevant because you can generate random tokens that can be hard to trace, and all the payments occur instantaneously giving enough time for withdrawn before any attempt of censorship and or any policy change. [2]
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pix_(payment_system) [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19867120 ...
About the article itself, it's surprising to me (and I assume some sort of intentional ignorance here) that even in the current state of technology we do not have a "dumb pipe" payment system as before and we're still relying upon those middle man actors or not-so ergonomic alternatives as P2P crypto.
It's hard to agree on this one.
Personal anecdote: In 2010's I worked in a micropayments broker linked with all telecom companies.
The whole thing was: that NSFW creators used a shared SMS shared code (i.e. a SMS number that receives messages for several creators and the code (for instance HNCODE25) was used to move money to a balance account) and for each of the payments that people used to do with them the telecom company got 15% slice, and the rest the telecom moved the money to the broker.
Another point: In Brazil due to the PIX [1] almost all of those payment platforms (Paypal included) are becoming irrelevant because you can generate random tokens that can be hard to trace, and all the payments occur instantaneously giving enough time for withdrawn before any attempt of censorship and or any policy change. [2]
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pix_(payment_system) [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19867120 ...
About the article itself, it's surprising to me (and I assume some sort of intentional ignorance here) that even in the current state of technology we do not have a "dumb pipe" payment system as before and we're still relying upon those middle man actors or not-so ergonomic alternatives as P2P crypto.
People like the service that the middle man provides. They may not like the middle man, the fees, etc. but tell someone that "your transactions are not reversible, if you lost your money that sucks I guess, even if we messed up" and they will be happy to pay that transaction fee with another provider instead. Even with the small amounts, you either have to approve each transaction (which leads to another category of scams), or trust someone with access to your account.
If you care about spending just $2/mth and not more... that may not be a risk you wanna take.
If you care about spending just $2/mth and not more... that may not be a risk you wanna take.
> People like the service that the middle man provides. They may not like the middle man, the fees, etc. but tell someone that "your transactions are not reversible, if you lost your money that sucks I guess, even if we messed up" and they will be happy to pay that transaction fee with another provider instead.
This might not be entirely realistic, but the idea of passing that choice on to the end user seems interesting:
This might not be entirely realistic, but the idea of passing that choice on to the end user seems interesting:
Payment of 12.99 EUR (VAT of X% included) to $vendor for $service, choose one:
[ ] - regular payment, 0.50 EUR fixed fee
[ ] - safe™ payment*, 2.00 EUR fixed fee
* safe™ payments can later be disputed and reversed, if necessary
You can't give the choice of whether a payment can be disputed to the purchaser. The reason you can't do that is that you have no way to verify that the purchaser is who they claim to be. If you accept payment from a stolen card, it will be reversed, even if the thief checked a box saying "it is impossible to reverse this payment".
I guess some are making that choice for themselves, in the form of using crypto (which then comes with a long list of issues).
Then again, I guess it's also possible to go in the opposite direction and look into additional means of verifying who is making a purchase - over here, we have chips in government issued ID cards which can be used for signing documents, whereas most banks already use a 2FA system with codes (mobile app, not SMS; but also not TOTP, rather issued certs based on a contract with SmartID) for approving access to bank accounts and then another code for confirming orders. It wouldn't be entirely unrealistic to imagine that technology progressing and merging in the decades to come: you can already use the ID cards for signing into everything from government portals, to utility service providers.
Then again, I guess it's also possible to go in the opposite direction and look into additional means of verifying who is making a purchase - over here, we have chips in government issued ID cards which can be used for signing documents, whereas most banks already use a 2FA system with codes (mobile app, not SMS; but also not TOTP, rather issued certs based on a contract with SmartID) for approving access to bank accounts and then another code for confirming orders. It wouldn't be entirely unrealistic to imagine that technology progressing and merging in the decades to come: you can already use the ID cards for signing into everything from government portals, to utility service providers.
PayPal does this with Friends and Family.
Go onto the various scam reddits and see how many people suddenly wish they hadnt listened to the seller and used friends and family instead.
Go onto the various scam reddits and see how many people suddenly wish they hadnt listened to the seller and used friends and family instead.
There's no cure for stupid. No matter how many warning labels or hoops you put in front of the potentially dangerous option, someone will hurt themselves with it. That doesn't mean the option shouldn't exist, though.
Under what circumstances can people be banned from PIX?
We do not have the jurisprudence for that, so in principle if a single federal judge establish that you will be banned via your bank blocking your account. If this happens, for sure the Supreme Court will chime in and establish an common understanding and the lower/higher chambers will legislate around it.
Despite of what happen in Brazil politically this is a very serious process that if a judge misjudge that it could open a huge precedent for a lawsuit against the state.
Despite of what happen in Brazil politically this is a very serious process that if a judge misjudge that it could open a huge precedent for a lawsuit against the state.
In practice you can't. Nobody required banks to implement this, they certainly didn't go out of their way to build it.
You can still have your bank account blocked by a judge.
You can still have your bank account blocked by a judge.
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I loved Flattr ~10 years ago. You said "I have $40/month" and then these funds were allocated based on which things you flattr'd during the month (there were little buttons on the websites/blogs). Of course you could also say "include this content creator every month".
It was so simple and elegant. As a consumer I had cost control, too. Plus there were no micro-transactions, only one charge to me.
It was so simple and elegant. As a consumer I had cost control, too. Plus there were no micro-transactions, only one charge to me.
I think any Patreon competitor really needs to have a way for people to get access to bonus content when they pay. Even if the content isn't really worth the money, people are more likely to overpay for something they like than make a donation.
Did you miss Flattr 2.0 - a browser extension looking at your engagement ?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15557954
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15557954
I do not want to support anything that optimizes for "engagement". It penalized all the really useful offerings that I use for a minute to solve my problem and then don't touch again in a long time and instead encourages addictiveness.
There is no addictiveness here, because the person whose behavior is measured and the one being rewarded for it are two different people.
EDIT : I think what you missed is how this is an issue mostly with advertising-funded websites, especially platforms. More views = more money for the website. (It even goes for Hacker News, somewhat !) But for Flattr 2.0, more/longer browsing doesn't (directly) equal more money (even for the creators, in aggregate) ! Even Patreon has an issue like this - GP is talking about the bundling issue, but Patreon still has an artificial moat that exacerbates this : not only it's annoying to reduce the funding for many other creators at once when you add a new one, you can't even reduce your funding for a specific artist to less than $1/month - regardless of how much you might be paying per month to Patreon in total !
Or are you against free markets ?? They tend to promote what people want and manufacturing wants too, you know ?
Flattr 2.0 of course still has some issues : why a very short music video should be rewarded much less than a long form blog post ? (OtoH the music video is much more likely to be much more popular across a wider variety of people, so I guess that issue is self-fixing ? EDIT: not so much for a poem ?)
EDIT : I think what you missed is how this is an issue mostly with advertising-funded websites, especially platforms. More views = more money for the website. (It even goes for Hacker News, somewhat !) But for Flattr 2.0, more/longer browsing doesn't (directly) equal more money (even for the creators, in aggregate) ! Even Patreon has an issue like this - GP is talking about the bundling issue, but Patreon still has an artificial moat that exacerbates this : not only it's annoying to reduce the funding for many other creators at once when you add a new one, you can't even reduce your funding for a specific artist to less than $1/month - regardless of how much you might be paying per month to Patreon in total !
Or are you against free markets ?? They tend to promote what people want and manufacturing wants too, you know ?
Flattr 2.0 of course still has some issues : why a very short music video should be rewarded much less than a long form blog post ? (OtoH the music video is much more likely to be much more popular across a wider variety of people, so I guess that issue is self-fixing ? EDIT: not so much for a poem ?)
The creators are encouraged to create engaging/addicting/long content if that is what causes higher payments. Therefore, I much preferred the original Flattr where I defined which creator was beneficial to me.
I don't think that Flattr2 is more true to a free markets vision than Flattr1. Neither do I believe that a free market is necessarily better than a regulated market. Markets are a highly useful tool, not a goal themselves.
I don't think that Flattr2 is more true to a free markets vision than Flattr1. Neither do I believe that a free market is necessarily better than a regulated market. Markets are a highly useful tool, not a goal themselves.
Hmm, good point, but since the extension is open source you could always have decided to disable that part, or even more importantly - reprogram it yourself to whatever definition and weights of engagement that you would like ?
https://github.com/search?q=flattr&type=repositories
(It's also out of control of the creators trying to artificially increase engagement by doing tricks with the Flattr 1.0 buttons on their websites.)
Apologies for linking to GitHub, but that's where the official repository is, so...
https://github.com/search?q=flattr&type=repositories
(It's also out of control of the creators trying to artificially increase engagement by doing tricks with the Flattr 1.0 buttons on their websites.)
Apologies for linking to GitHub, but that's where the official repository is, so...
I used the original flattr and apparently missed the reboot too. Flattr 1 was dead for too long to carry me over anyway.
There's a 3rd-ish version that stopped promoting the extension and is closer to Patreon but with a set overall rate.
Patreon took venture money despite being bootstrapped.
That is behind everyone of their dumb decisions.
They had a great model harvesting nickels and then they sold a vision of Taylor Swift being on Patreon to VCs.
That is behind everyone of their dumb decisions.
They had a great model harvesting nickels and then they sold a vision of Taylor Swift being on Patreon to VCs.
The author starts the article with "take Patreon's lunch money". What lunch? The one VCs fed them? Is Patreon even profitable?
See, this is what immediately turned me off the article.
I don't WANT a payment system that is about beating up other payment systems in the schoolyard and making them cry.
I want a payment system that takes money on my behalf and then pays me with it.
I'll put up with a lot of inefficiency if it's boring and predictable. You're gonna have a heck of a time prying me away from Patreon in favor of your new lunch-money taking payment system with crypto and hookers. If you're leading with 'take their lunch money', I don't trust you.
I don't trust Jack Conte THAT much, but it's sure a lot more than you.
I don't WANT a payment system that is about beating up other payment systems in the schoolyard and making them cry.
I want a payment system that takes money on my behalf and then pays me with it.
I'll put up with a lot of inefficiency if it's boring and predictable. You're gonna have a heck of a time prying me away from Patreon in favor of your new lunch-money taking payment system with crypto and hookers. If you're leading with 'take their lunch money', I don't trust you.
I don't trust Jack Conte THAT much, but it's sure a lot more than you.
To your point, it's foolish to pick a fight with a grizzly bear (i.e., Patroen). It's smarter to ask: where is there a market not being fulfilled? Then if that goes well enough eventually *maybe* you look to square off with the grizz. But to run into the sprawling plenty of room forest intentionally looking for a gizzly? That's foolish.
Why wouldn't it be profitable? All they really do is take money from people, give them to other people, and take a cut of it.
I was under the impression that Patreon is struggling because their profits aren't enough to balance out the 9 digits of VC money they greedily took in, not because there's no profits.
I was under the impression that Patreon is struggling because their profits aren't enough to balance out the 9 digits of VC money they greedily took in, not because there's no profits.
A lot of tech companies are unprofitable due to headcount.
Exactly.
The author also dumped on Patreon’s incredibly low processing fee. Who is going to compete with 5% plus payment processing? And they dumped how this processing fee is unsustainable and that the community was mad about changing it.
What business is going to disrupt margins like that? That’s like saying “I’m going to sell stuff cheaper than Costco.” Good luck with that!
The author also dumped on Patreon’s incredibly low processing fee. Who is going to compete with 5% plus payment processing? And they dumped how this processing fee is unsustainable and that the community was mad about changing it.
What business is going to disrupt margins like that? That’s like saying “I’m going to sell stuff cheaper than Costco.” Good luck with that!
FYI Patreon does not offer the 5% deal to new creators anymore. Now it's 8%.
Exactly. Race to the bottom
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"cracking" microtransactions is trivially simple
I don't know how common it is, but Patreon's biggest selling point to me is that I already have an account there. If there was a ton of competition, with creators I help support going to ten different platforms, I don't think I would follow them—certainly not all of them. I want as few companies as possible to have my billing information, and (all else equal) I'd prefer if that company had been around for a while. That's Patreon.
And the centralization works for creators, too. I have several times discovered a creator on Patreon whose work I already appreciated, but who had not done a good job of communicating that they even had a Patreon, so I never knew about it. I only found them by accident, and pledged money to them, just because I was already on Patreon.
5% + 5% is a lot (10% if my math is right), but I'm not sure where artists get a better deal these days, at least on the internet.
Further, the Patreon interface sucks for users, and I'm sure it sucks even more for creators who have to engage with it more frequently. But, not so bad that I, personally, am looking to find another alternative.
And the centralization works for creators, too. I have several times discovered a creator on Patreon whose work I already appreciated, but who had not done a good job of communicating that they even had a Patreon, so I never knew about it. I only found them by accident, and pledged money to them, just because I was already on Patreon.
5% + 5% is a lot (10% if my math is right), but I'm not sure where artists get a better deal these days, at least on the internet.
Further, the Patreon interface sucks for users, and I'm sure it sucks even more for creators who have to engage with it more frequently. But, not so bad that I, personally, am looking to find another alternative.
Anyone who has tried to build a pay-by-work model for digital creators knows that it’s simply an awful business model. There just isn’t that much demand for creator work. And there are no “whales” among these customers to compensate. No one’s buying 10 copies of a math explainer video.
We're working in software, overhead is extraordinarily low. It might be a bad model for a VC-funded startup, but there's almost certainly enough demand to support a tiny bootstrapped team.
True, but I think parent still has a point.
It would work if your tiny team could attract an incredibly huge number of creators who somewhat create a minimum volume of transactions every months.
Otherwise you'd on the hook paying monthly fees for your platform's hosting costs, and you can't properly negociate processing fees as you have no idea of how much volume you'll be processing montb to month (it's not even based on some supply/demand cycle, you're stuck with when creators feel like creating)
I've seen it from the otherside following a Youtube creator on a pay per video plan, and there would be months going by with no videos happening but messaging back and forth to keep the community alive.
It would work if your tiny team could attract an incredibly huge number of creators who somewhat create a minimum volume of transactions every months.
Otherwise you'd on the hook paying monthly fees for your platform's hosting costs, and you can't properly negociate processing fees as you have no idea of how much volume you'll be processing montb to month (it's not even based on some supply/demand cycle, you're stuck with when creators feel like creating)
I've seen it from the otherside following a Youtube creator on a pay per video plan, and there would be months going by with no videos happening but messaging back and forth to keep the community alive.
5% margins are terrible if you're trying to bootstrap. 5% margins with tons of payments are worse. If you have one CS interaction with a patreon paying $1-$3 a month, you likely just ate a decade's profit.
Businesses like these don't work without huge scale.
Businesses like these don't work without huge scale.
Yeah, but your customer acquisition cost becomes your overhead. And it can easily take up 30-50% of your unit economics. Anyone who's tried building SaaS for creators knows that it's a very tough crowd to sell to.
Yes and no. It's similar - exact? - to the music industry or Hollywood. *Lots* of frogs to kiss and an occasional unicorn.
The platforms would be wise to have reoccurring revenue from the dreamers, and also backend points on the unicorns.
In general, in 2023+ the biggest problem seems to be signal to noise ratio. There so much content being scattered about, it's increasing more difficult to find quality. More and more (personal) resources are lost to getting past the noise. There's less time and energy left for the quality.
The platforms would be wise to have reoccurring revenue from the dreamers, and also backend points on the unicorns.
In general, in 2023+ the biggest problem seems to be signal to noise ratio. There so much content being scattered about, it's increasing more difficult to find quality. More and more (personal) resources are lost to getting past the noise. There's less time and energy left for the quality.
If you can find a niche it can work. My friend built his own website to sell his erotic art.
How do smaller creators manage payments in the adult space? I thought it was impossible.
PayPal. All the risque stuff is behind the paywall. Home page of the website gives no indication of what's within.
When I was running $1m+ through PayPal a year for my TV torrent site they always wanted a working username and password for the site because competitors would email them claiming we were actually selling CSAM behind our login. They wanted to know exactly what was going on behind the wall. They also did not care in the least it was a torrent site (!).
Given all the horror stories of locked PayPal accounts your friend would be well served too transfer money out of that account as frequently as possible.
Highly relevant video: The Rise (and Fall) of Patreon - Tom Nicholas
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mXyN3-gQwJw
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mXyN3-gQwJw
Only got halfway through this video. While it's interesting I find it exhausting how much he singly focuses on the VC financing. This is a classic case of mismanagement by senior management & overly optimistic decisions by the C level staff. Nobody forced them to take on that funding, and clearly it helped them in early stages to grow their company and outcompete the companies with less funding(subbable, etc.) which he handwaves away.
Honestly this is the reason I generally ignore these types of video essays, the people who make them generally have the most lazy criticisms that always end up pointing to the same boogeymen(VC, capitalism, US, etc.)
Honestly this is the reason I generally ignore these types of video essays, the people who make them generally have the most lazy criticisms that always end up pointing to the same boogeymen(VC, capitalism, US, etc.)
on the contrary, it's completely unsurprising that the literal only critique to be found of the video on HN (a site made by and for VC) to write off the entire video because of one of the errors.
maybe reflect inwards a bit more
maybe reflect inwards a bit more
I would more-readily give money to support artists if they were very transparent about their finances and how much they wanted to earn.
Say my (made up) target is $50,000 a year, and if my patrons reached this goal, any further donations would cause everyone's to decrease so the ceiling was maintained OR the overflow would go, transparently, to other artists I supprted, like runoff voting. I don't like the feeling of throwing money to already-popular people if they're already earning enough. I know my local food shelf needs to help, and many other causes that align with my values.
Say my (made up) target is $50,000 a year, and if my patrons reached this goal, any further donations would cause everyone's to decrease so the ceiling was maintained OR the overflow would go, transparently, to other artists I supprted, like runoff voting. I don't like the feeling of throwing money to already-popular people if they're already earning enough. I know my local food shelf needs to help, and many other causes that align with my values.
There are patreon competitors. Just none of them have a pay by work feature. Consumers likely prefer a predictable expense so there isn't that much of a demand to do it that way.
There are, Tipeee is one as the author edited in.
> Part of what made Patreon explosively successful, in the first place, was that Patreon had apparently cracked the code on one of the hardest problems on the internet: micropayments.
> By the time Patreon had come along people had been discussing the problem of micropayments on the internet for at least two decades.
I guess the author missed the years where Flattr buttons were popping up on every website, blog, and even comment ?
Flattr 1.0 seems to have been killed by a combination of the 2013 Twitter APIpocalypse, being €-first, and not being based in the Silicon Valley :
https://blog.hsnyc.co/post/flattr-works/
https://thenextweb.com/news/flattr-twitter-payments-ban
Then Flattr 2.0 tried again :
https://www.engadget.com/2017-10-24-adblock-plus-relaunches-...
And I doubt that Flattr was even the first to do the "bundling" trick, heck this is probably also what made the Minitel so successful ?
But as you can see it works in the opposite way : the patrons set a specific sum of money to be distributed each month, which then gets redistributed depending on their engagement with some or other creator (which you can decide to manually boost).
> Part of what made Patreon explosively successful, in the first place, was that Patreon had apparently cracked the code on one of the hardest problems on the internet: micropayments.
> By the time Patreon had come along people had been discussing the problem of micropayments on the internet for at least two decades.
I guess the author missed the years where Flattr buttons were popping up on every website, blog, and even comment ?
Flattr 1.0 seems to have been killed by a combination of the 2013 Twitter APIpocalypse, being €-first, and not being based in the Silicon Valley :
https://blog.hsnyc.co/post/flattr-works/
https://thenextweb.com/news/flattr-twitter-payments-ban
Then Flattr 2.0 tried again :
https://www.engadget.com/2017-10-24-adblock-plus-relaunches-...
And I doubt that Flattr was even the first to do the "bundling" trick, heck this is probably also what made the Minitel so successful ?
But as you can see it works in the opposite way : the patrons set a specific sum of money to be distributed each month, which then gets redistributed depending on their engagement with some or other creator (which you can decide to manually boost).
> I guess the author missed the years where Flattr buttons were popping up on every website, blog, and even comment ?
I mean I sure did. When Flattr was announced I loved the idea, and promised that I'd sign up the second I saw a flattr button on a blog post I liked.
I never once saw a Flattr button outside of brokep's own blog.
I mean I sure did. When Flattr was announced I loved the idea, and promised that I'd sign up the second I saw a flattr button on a blog post I liked.
I never once saw a Flattr button outside of brokep's own blog.
The post mentions Tipeee but it "charges 8%" and has "invasive personal documentation requirements". Seems Tipeee is based in Paris, so the cumbersomeness may be related to EU regulations.
There are BTC lighting payments and the podcasting 2.0 movement to compete with Patreon. Mostly for podcasts and music atm but that will change.
The biggest proof to me that nobody uses Monero is that something as simple as proving payments is like pulling teeth.
Yes, you can go into advanced settings and copy a payment proof. But then how do you get it to a retailer? What does the retailer do with it. It's not part of the normal consumer flow use case, and that tells me that people still think of it like a toy and not a serious tool.
Yes, you can go into advanced settings and copy a payment proof. But then how do you get it to a retailer? What does the retailer do with it. It's not part of the normal consumer flow use case, and that tells me that people still think of it like a toy and not a serious tool.
Generally people use Monero just to hide the connection between two wallets on BTC/ETH. Either for money laundering or just privacy. I don't see why you'd need it here, where you are purchasing something legal but unpopular with payment processors.
Why would anyone want to avoid the panopticon if what they are doing is legal? Leaving a trail of metadata on everything you do is just not always desirable.
In terms of privacy, I don’t see using Monero as different from using Cash.
In terms of privacy, I don’t see using Monero as different from using Cash.
I think the caveat here for people doing something legal is the questionable future status of crypto. Countries have completely outlawed holding them before, I’d rather just not have it tied to my name if there’s any risk of it becoming illegal, if there were a feasible option.
Sure, I just mean that you don't need to directly do the payment in XMR. You can use monero to hide the provenance of your BTC/ETH/something faster without having to go through the pain of proving an XMR transfer.
Not sure what Monero has to do with it :)
But to your point of not being able to use btc normally, in everyday life. Sure, but it's chicken and egg. If artists start to make some serious satoshis, they will naturally look for a nice place to exchange, it will come.
Meanwhile, I can now listen to a music podcast, stream satoshis back, the satoshis are split between podcaster (DJ) and artist. If I boost (send some extra satoshis) during the playing of a song, it goes to that creator.
This is a nice example of such a podcast: https://podverse.fm/podcast/toxrW9Ju1
But to your point of not being able to use btc normally, in everyday life. Sure, but it's chicken and egg. If artists start to make some serious satoshis, they will naturally look for a nice place to exchange, it will come.
Meanwhile, I can now listen to a music podcast, stream satoshis back, the satoshis are split between podcaster (DJ) and artist. If I boost (send some extra satoshis) during the playing of a song, it goes to that creator.
This is a nice example of such a podcast: https://podverse.fm/podcast/toxrW9Ju1
> Not sure what Monero has to do with it :)
The comment just got me thinking of crypto currency in general as an alternative. If someone had something to say about Monero, they could see my comment and engage
The comment just got me thinking of crypto currency in general as an alternative. If someone had something to say about Monero, they could see my comment and engage
I am really interested in the space. A friend has launched https://www.imgrateful.io/ and I think crypto (beyond all criticism that we can do) is an interesting option for tipping and receiving donations without the annoying friction of Paypal(s).
I think tipping is the wrong framing. Patreon works on a recurring basis so it fosters a stronger relationsip between creator and consumer, and provides a more stable revenue stream for creators.
Whatever comes after Patreon should be creator-owned like Nebula is to increase the level of accountability it has to its users on both sides.
Whatever comes after Patreon should be creator-owned like Nebula is to increase the level of accountability it has to its users on both sides.
Doesn’t crypto have a gas fee or something that would cost more than most micropayments to begin with?
There are technologies that does not suffer from the fee issue. Here I don't want to start a crypto war. We can even forget about the crypto charged word and think about stable coins, points and/or tokens that could be changed. I used the example of crypto just to emphasize that the current financial methods are very expensive and compliance crazy to process basic donations to developers and/or other creative endeavours. The typical "the righteous pays for the sinner".
Depends on the currency. For Bitcoin, that's what the lightning network is *trying* to fix
Depends on the currency, IIRC with Monero the fee is like a tenth or a hundredth of a cent.
not on the lightning network
Let's not start down this road unless we want a detailed discussion of why the lightning network is hopium and fantasy that has fundamental basic routing flaws obvious to anyone who's built anything at scale.
Can we start down the road of block-lattice tech, which has been running fast, safe and free for like seven years now?
It's tiresome hearing about crypto's fees, eco, and mining problems while there's a proven technology that's actually spam resistant and nearly consumer-grade actively working, right now.
It's tiresome hearing about crypto's fees, eco, and mining problems while there's a proven technology that's actually spam resistant and nearly consumer-grade actively working, right now.
Patreon (and all its competitors) at its core is a payments company. You don't compete with them by building a better front end product. You compete with them by building a more efficient payments engine with a higher margin, not tied to any third parties beyond a bank directly.
I'm not convinced by the arguments.
Do the majority of creators want anonymity? I don't think so. They can set up a company and hide behind it if they do. Being an anonymous platform invites tax evasion and money laundering. Do you really want to deal with that?
Why would I open up an API so that competitors can swoop in? What benefit that would provide to me? No one will use API over UI.
The author clearly wants a donation platform that caters to a very niche group of users. I would guess there are less than 100 people in the world who want it (and do not need it)
Do the majority of creators want anonymity? I don't think so. They can set up a company and hide behind it if they do. Being an anonymous platform invites tax evasion and money laundering. Do you really want to deal with that?
Why would I open up an API so that competitors can swoop in? What benefit that would provide to me? No one will use API over UI.
The author clearly wants a donation platform that caters to a very niche group of users. I would guess there are less than 100 people in the world who want it (and do not need it)
> Do the majority of creators want anonymity? I don't think so. They can set up a company and hide behind it if they do. Being an anonymous platform invites tax evasion and money laundering. Do you really want to deal with that?
You're completely misunderstanding their argument about pseudonymity. Patreon isn't magically exempt from KYC, they do have the real life identity of the creator. There's no legal reason why the patrons need to know everything that the company knows.
From the article:
> What that actually means is the platform has to allow creators (the people who charge money) to be pseudonymous (to use their stage name or pen names) in all of their interactions with their patrons (the people paying the money), and the platform, which is legally required to know the legal identity of the creator and have on file their relevant tax ID numbers (e.g. SSN in the US), needs to keep that legal identity confidential.
You're completely misunderstanding their argument about pseudonymity. Patreon isn't magically exempt from KYC, they do have the real life identity of the creator. There's no legal reason why the patrons need to know everything that the company knows.
From the article:
> What that actually means is the platform has to allow creators (the people who charge money) to be pseudonymous (to use their stage name or pen names) in all of their interactions with their patrons (the people paying the money), and the platform, which is legally required to know the legal identity of the creator and have on file their relevant tax ID numbers (e.g. SSN in the US), needs to keep that legal identity confidential.
How would the API described help competitors? If I, as a creator, want to set up "Patrons of level X have access to this section of my website", and I build against the Patreon API to achieve that, surely that embeds me more in the Patreon ecosystem, not less?
Micropayments, fraud, alternative transaction models — this would be a perfect topic for @patio11 . Would love to see a bits about money newsletter on this.
Would anyone be interested in a self hosted version of what Patreon offers for creators?
I have been working on a free Wordpress alternative that is built with React, and removes the guard rails and burdens for creators that WP creates.
https://github.com/elegantframework/elegant-cli
I have had requests to include Twitch like features such as tipping, subscriptions, and power ups.
I started planning out these features to get them into the development pipeline and I realized that some of these features are the value that Patreon creates.
Would developers/creators be interested in having subscription tiers, tips, power ups, rewards, etc, on their own website alongside their content?
I am currently working with a local creator who recently switched over to us; and we are piloting ways to level up his content on his domain by linking his Patreon account.
But as the author of the article mentioned, this creator goes by a stage name when he’s connecting with fans.
https://mankini.tv/
https://mankini.tv/interviews/mankini-interviews-buzz-osborn...
I have been working on a free Wordpress alternative that is built with React, and removes the guard rails and burdens for creators that WP creates.
https://github.com/elegantframework/elegant-cli
I have had requests to include Twitch like features such as tipping, subscriptions, and power ups.
I started planning out these features to get them into the development pipeline and I realized that some of these features are the value that Patreon creates.
Would developers/creators be interested in having subscription tiers, tips, power ups, rewards, etc, on their own website alongside their content?
I am currently working with a local creator who recently switched over to us; and we are piloting ways to level up his content on his domain by linking his Patreon account.
But as the author of the article mentioned, this creator goes by a stage name when he’s connecting with fans.
https://mankini.tv/
https://mankini.tv/interviews/mankini-interviews-buzz-osborn...
I got downvotted lol.. I'll take that as a "Yes, build it" from the haters.
I'll set up a payment gateway with Stripe and whitelabel their subscription service to offer content creators a Patreon like experience on their own website, and post a SHOW HN for feedback.
Stay tuned : )
I'll set up a payment gateway with Stripe and whitelabel their subscription service to offer content creators a Patreon like experience on their own website, and post a SHOW HN for feedback.
Stay tuned : )
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the section on "non quid pro quo" patronage perfectly sums up what i want out of the site, to the extent that i never even log in to look at "patrons-only" stuff. i pay to support artists who are sharing things with the world, so that they can continue to do so.
By the way, regarding software, why isn't "donationware" more of a thing?
i.e. release the base product at a low price (or for free) and just give an option for users who really like it to donate you whatever they want, however many times they want.
i.e. release the base product at a low price (or for free) and just give an option for users who really like it to donate you whatever they want, however many times they want.
I wonder if you could make headway by requiring a minimum $15/month from patrons, to make it profitable after processing fees (assuming the $14.29 hypothesis is correct). Aside from the folks you want to directly patronize, the rest would go into a long-tail slush fund. I guess that would chase away the vast majority of the people that really do only want to donate $3/month or whatever though...
This feels more like a discussion on how to compete with Stripe and Paypal.
Discord could eat Patreon’s lunch overnight if they wanted to. Every Patreon I’ve been interested in was just a paywall for a Discord community.
Discord has already started integrating their own payment for content/channels recently.
https://discord.com/serversubscriptions
https://discord.com/serversubscriptions
And they desperately need to roll it out to more countries... sad Canadian noises
Funny, none of the Patreons I'm subscribing to or been interested in, has been paywalls for Discord communities.
Half of them provide discord access and 75% a custom rss feed for a subscriber only podcast in my list. And frankly, I only take advantage of a couple of those. Mostly I just do it to throw a few dollars to stuff I like and don't use the perks. I can't be the only one.
This for me. I don't use patreon perks for the people I support on an ongoing basis. I have subscribed for perks (templates for some productivity tool) and then unsubscribed a couple of months later, but that wasn't an ongoing creator I watch all the time. I guess getting my SMBC comics by email is convenient but I already have an RSS feed reader and early access isn't important.
Same, I only hear about Patreon on YouTube.
Fiction authors are who I give my patron money to.
All the Patreons I subscribe to are YouTubers (Big Clive, Technology Connections, etc.)
"Attention dumbasses"
If you want to be taken seriously don't write like a 12 year old rebelragetard.
I also stopped reading there. Scrolled down, an endless wall of text that served no purpose than for the writer to vent their frustration.
I also stopped reading there. Scrolled down, an endless wall of text that served no purpose than for the writer to vent their frustration.
There's one root cause for most, if not all of the things mentioned about Patreon in this post: Jack Conte took VC money.
Neophilia is a progressive and incurable disease of venture capital. VCs aren't looking to build sustainable, profitable businesses. They are looking to buy entire market segments for later enshittification. Your job as a founder of a company asking for VC money is to construct a parallel state around your target market so that you can charge taxes on everyone in that market and that the VCs can sell the entire market to someone else for a huge profit (the "exit").
Jack Conte is very firmly an artist, and not a walking pile of technofeudalist money, so I can't help but look at this as a deal-with-the-devil scenario. Or at the very least, someone desperately trying and failing to keep the money on track. The VCs bought a payment bundler and want to turn it into a merch vendor, website host, etc.
Neophilia is a progressive and incurable disease of venture capital. VCs aren't looking to build sustainable, profitable businesses. They are looking to buy entire market segments for later enshittification. Your job as a founder of a company asking for VC money is to construct a parallel state around your target market so that you can charge taxes on everyone in that market and that the VCs can sell the entire market to someone else for a huge profit (the "exit").
Jack Conte is very firmly an artist, and not a walking pile of technofeudalist money, so I can't help but look at this as a deal-with-the-devil scenario. Or at the very least, someone desperately trying and failing to keep the money on track. The VCs bought a payment bundler and want to turn it into a merch vendor, website host, etc.
Yes, and: Patreon is, at its core, a professional services provider for large YouTube artists. That's the segment it's best at supporting and the segment that needs it the most. But its valuation is based on the idea that it's going to capture some percentage of the entire creator economy.
I do think there are some specific details about Patreon's history and leadership that make it unusually bad at running an engineering organization, even for a VC-backed startup. It has some deceptively hard engineering problems and has struggled to attract, retain, and use technical leadership equal to those problems.
I do think there are some specific details about Patreon's history and leadership that make it unusually bad at running an engineering organization, even for a VC-backed startup. It has some deceptively hard engineering problems and has struggled to attract, retain, and use technical leadership equal to those problems.
I wonder when Varoufakis’ introduction of the word technofeudalist got into the techie vernacular.
[deleted]
[deleted]
Crypto could provide a competitive edge to certain features in Patreon (and Bandcamp).
- Instead of 4-7% payment processing fees, it can be effectively zero[1]
- Instead of 8-12% fees (or 15% in case of Bandcamp), crypto industry standards tend to be in the 0-5% range. It’s not always clear to me as a creator and patron why such a significant amount of value needs to be captured for a digital asset sale.
- Users of the platform could be given more control such as forking the OSS protocol if the core devs go off the rails or try to extract more than what users feel it’s worth. This is especially interesting given the recent polarizing changes to Patreon and Bandcamp’s business structures.
- Settlement times can be measured in minutes or hours rather than days, weeks, or months.
- Anonymity and local-first data privacy could be achieved, at least theoretically. Practically, very few L2s have yet to reach complete privacy using zero knowledge proofs and related cryptography.
- Mitigating centralizing factors such as Patreon’s control over what is a morally acceptable revenue stream. Content like NSFW art might be currently acceptable, but this could change on a dime if the company decides to change its values.
Subscription and recurring payments are notoriously difficult in crypto, but “by-work” as the author puts it, i.e. “microtransactions per each published digital object” is already happening in crypto and with much lower rates than Patreon et al[2].
[1] https://l2fees.info/
[2] https://teia.art/about
- Instead of 4-7% payment processing fees, it can be effectively zero[1]
- Instead of 8-12% fees (or 15% in case of Bandcamp), crypto industry standards tend to be in the 0-5% range. It’s not always clear to me as a creator and patron why such a significant amount of value needs to be captured for a digital asset sale.
- Users of the platform could be given more control such as forking the OSS protocol if the core devs go off the rails or try to extract more than what users feel it’s worth. This is especially interesting given the recent polarizing changes to Patreon and Bandcamp’s business structures.
- Settlement times can be measured in minutes or hours rather than days, weeks, or months.
- Anonymity and local-first data privacy could be achieved, at least theoretically. Practically, very few L2s have yet to reach complete privacy using zero knowledge proofs and related cryptography.
- Mitigating centralizing factors such as Patreon’s control over what is a morally acceptable revenue stream. Content like NSFW art might be currently acceptable, but this could change on a dime if the company decides to change its values.
Subscription and recurring payments are notoriously difficult in crypto, but “by-work” as the author puts it, i.e. “microtransactions per each published digital object” is already happening in crypto and with much lower rates than Patreon et al[2].
[1] https://l2fees.info/
[2] https://teia.art/about
The real feature of centralized services is anti-fraud. Conversely, the real service of crypto is easy to commit, hard to trace, irreversible fraud.
(also, you've missed all the points in the original article which crypto does not provide!)
(also, you've missed all the points in the original article which crypto does not provide!)
I did address both the OP's 1) pseudonym (anonymity) and 2) by-works, the other two points (patronage and audience relationship + API) are both viable and already very much present in crypto art communities.
The real feature of crypto is decentralization, which does not need to mean fraud—in the same way that end-to-end encryption does not only facilitate criminal behaviour.
The real feature of crypto is decentralization, which does not need to mean fraud—in the same way that end-to-end encryption does not only facilitate criminal behaviour.
BTW the platform teia.art you linked is a good example of the anti-decentralization that any kind of "cryptocoin platform" performs. Just another middleman that tries to get between seller/ buyer with zero benefit for both sides, but profit for the middleman.
Of course still lying into the face of potential users about "decentralzing things" while trapping them into the platform - what a joke!
Of course still lying into the face of potential users about "decentralzing things" while trapping them into the platform - what a joke!
Teia is an open source and interoperable platform, basically the opposite of what you are describing. You are welcome to browse the code yourself and make a coherent argument against it.
Cryptocoins - I guess you mean that by misusing the term "crypto" - are not "decentralized" just because there is one p2p feature implemented.
On the opposite, you have ultra-centralized governance and zero democracy.
You should erase the idea from your head that cryptocoins bring anything valuable to the payment world.
On the opposite, you have ultra-centralized governance and zero democracy.
You should erase the idea from your head that cryptocoins bring anything valuable to the payment world.
How is Ethereum (an open source network) ultra centralized and without democracy compared to PayPal or VISA which currently account for a large portion of Patreon payments?
Yes, it is the same, you are right. That´s the point - no inch more "power to the poeple" via cryptocoins.
Except these are not at all the same, and most users cannot fork or participate in PayPal/VISA protocols.
What difference does it make if they can fork or participate? The important decisions are made by Vitalik and a small group of insiders. Do users get any input on anything actually important like the Ethereum fork that bailed out the DAO investors?
Protocol and client development spans hundreds of contributors and independent researchers. The discussions and development is public; just look at the EIPs, or even submit one yourself.
Users (non-devs) have agency through the software they choose to run. If mainnet was seriously affected by some attack, users could choose to migrate to a healthier network run by honest nodes. This agency happens with every hard fork: the DAO, but also the PoS merge.
Users (non-devs) have agency through the software they choose to run. If mainnet was seriously affected by some attack, users could choose to migrate to a healthier network run by honest nodes. This agency happens with every hard fork: the DAO, but also the PoS merge.
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I think this is a great idea, but at least for Crypto the issue is the ergonomics because it needs to be (1) convenient for the creator, (2) convenient for the payer, (3) offer liquidity/withdrawn venues for both parties. All of this discarding the extra friction to make it operational (QR codes with the codes would help here, but I am not sure).
if you stay in crypto fees are small
the port to fiat is the problem
someone somewhere will need to change USDC / USDT (eek) to fiat
either all visitors of the platform or the platform forms those relationships
this is the weakness of crypto enthusiasts’ arguments. they live in the world where crypto won and you can buy goods within their ecosystem.
this is simply not true… yet?
i’m actually a fan of crypto, but these naive or bond header arguments are not useful to convince anyone. it’s like saying you can lose weight eating mcdonald’s, you can but will most?
the port to fiat is the problem
someone somewhere will need to change USDC / USDT (eek) to fiat
either all visitors of the platform or the platform forms those relationships
this is the weakness of crypto enthusiasts’ arguments. they live in the world where crypto won and you can buy goods within their ecosystem.
this is simply not true… yet?
i’m actually a fan of crypto, but these naive or bond header arguments are not useful to convince anyone. it’s like saying you can lose weight eating mcdonald’s, you can but will most?
CEX fees tend to be very low, much lower than payment processor fees that most Patreon users are paying right now. Coinbase and Kraken have no USDC withdrawal fees with ACH in the US, and nominal bank fees in many other countries. There is no fee exchanging USDC to USD on Coinbase, and Kraken’s trading fees are something like 0.26%.
so many of my frens (note the spelling) have had their coinbase accounts frozen or investigated when used as a pass through
i’ve personally never had a problem with them or circle but my transaction volume is low. the normie can’t and won’t figure out the metamask to coinbase to fait part.
it’s painful for those deep in crypto let alone the average patron supporter
stop painting a rosy picture of shitty crypto ux
i’ve personally never had a problem with them or circle but my transaction volume is low. the normie can’t and won’t figure out the metamask to coinbase to fait part.
it’s painful for those deep in crypto let alone the average patron supporter
stop painting a rosy picture of shitty crypto ux
Nobody is claiming that crypto UX is currently superior to Patreon or Stripe.
Patreon creators actively voted against crypto.
Of course, and there was great uproar when Discord implemented linking Ethereum wallet addresses to your account - not because it's harmful, or even because it's a bad idea, but because of this pervasive concept in some internet communities that cryptocurrency is bad simply because it is.
This is silly. There is a several hour long YouTube video outlining many of the reasons why crypto is bad. There are articles and books and analyses galore. Plenty of ink has been spilled regarding why crypto is bad. What I haven't seen is any clear headed analysis of why crypto is good that doesn't fall back on "but fiat is bad because government" or on gold bug notions of "it has value because it's scarce".
I use Patreon. I wouldn't use crypto to pay a content creator. (In fact, I've never used crypto other than to try to get the software for Bitcoin running once in the early days of it.)
A person who is completely non-technical would be even less likely to use Crypto than me.
A person who is completely non-technical would be even less likely to use Crypto than me.
Last I checked, NSFW art wasn't currently acceptable, payment processors would refuse to deal with you... so how do the likes of Patreon and OnlyFans managed to get a pass ?
NSFW art is not illegal; VISA won't block you if you fund an artist who is drawing or photographing nudes, and Patreon's current policy is that this form of content is acceptable.[1]
[1] https://www.patreon.com/en-GB/policy/community-guidelines
[1] https://www.patreon.com/en-GB/policy/community-guidelines
AFAIK the crux of the matter is exactly in how VISA and the like are judge, jury and executioner on these matters : if they don't think what you are doing is acceptable, being legal won't change anything about that.
And as far as I remember, Patreon also had similar issues with terminating accounts of people that they (not judges !) have decided to have violated (IIRC) hate speech laws ? (This wouldn't be an issue if antitrust was working properly and Patreon hadn't become so big that alternatives aren't even on people's radars (GP's ignorance about Tipeee being an example), but here we are...)
And as far as I remember, Patreon also had similar issues with terminating accounts of people that they (not judges !) have decided to have violated (IIRC) hate speech laws ? (This wouldn't be an issue if antitrust was working properly and Patreon hadn't become so big that alternatives aren't even on people's radars (GP's ignorance about Tipeee being an example), but here we are...)
They get a pass by having the right contacts at the payment processors. Unfortunately we still haven't acknowledged that online payment processors are effectively a utility nowadays, so what the processors restrict and how they enforce it is completely arbitrary, and thus the winners and losers they choose are also very arbitrary.
There was a HN post while back that speculated that they might be using "cascading" payments where OnlyFans will load balance across payment processors to keep the charge back rates low.
> - Instead of 4-7% payment processing fees, it can be effectively zero[1]
There are disadvantages to using Layer 2 of a blockchain, and you are ignoring the costs of on-boarding and off-boarding from cryptocurrency.
> - Users of the platform could be given more control such as forking the OSS protocol if the core devs go off the rails or try to extract more than what users feel it’s worth. This is especially interesting given the recent polarizing changes to Patreon and Bandcamp’s business structures.
In this case you're speaking of doing Patreon on the blockchain, not merely using cryptocurrency transactions? How would that work and how wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to do with a public, possibly federated, server running a FOSS Patreon software?
> - Settlement times can be measured in minutes or hours rather than days, weeks, or months.
Are settlement times going down with FedNow? And even CC transactions take seconds, do the content creators care that much about getting the money immediately and isn't that a greater fraud risk?
> - Anonymity and local-first data privacy could be achieved, at least theoretically. Practically, very few L2s have yet to reach complete privacy using zero knowledge proofs and related cryptography.
I admit to not being familiar with the situation but aren't all transactions public on the blockchain? How that can be anonymous unless you're using something like Monero? And I'm not sure what local-first data there is, you meaning having the paywalled content downloaded to your device if you subscribe?
> - Mitigating centralizing factors such as Patreon’s control over what is a morally acceptable revenue stream. Content like NSFW art might be currently acceptable, but this could change on a dime if the company decides to change its values.
What about illegally acceptable revenue streams? How would such a platform stop being banned due to illegal content?
There are disadvantages to using Layer 2 of a blockchain, and you are ignoring the costs of on-boarding and off-boarding from cryptocurrency.
> - Users of the platform could be given more control such as forking the OSS protocol if the core devs go off the rails or try to extract more than what users feel it’s worth. This is especially interesting given the recent polarizing changes to Patreon and Bandcamp’s business structures.
In this case you're speaking of doing Patreon on the blockchain, not merely using cryptocurrency transactions? How would that work and how wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to do with a public, possibly federated, server running a FOSS Patreon software?
> - Settlement times can be measured in minutes or hours rather than days, weeks, or months.
Are settlement times going down with FedNow? And even CC transactions take seconds, do the content creators care that much about getting the money immediately and isn't that a greater fraud risk?
> - Anonymity and local-first data privacy could be achieved, at least theoretically. Practically, very few L2s have yet to reach complete privacy using zero knowledge proofs and related cryptography.
I admit to not being familiar with the situation but aren't all transactions public on the blockchain? How that can be anonymous unless you're using something like Monero? And I'm not sure what local-first data there is, you meaning having the paywalled content downloaded to your device if you subscribe?
> - Mitigating centralizing factors such as Patreon’s control over what is a morally acceptable revenue stream. Content like NSFW art might be currently acceptable, but this could change on a dime if the company decides to change its values.
What about illegally acceptable revenue streams? How would such a platform stop being banned due to illegal content?
> There are disadvantages to using Layer 2 of a blockchain, and you are ignoring the costs of on-boarding and off-boarding from cryptocurrency.
Yes, it's not a panacea, but has the potential to be far lower than the current status quo.
> In this case you're speaking of doing Patreon on the blockchain, not merely using cryptocurrency transactions? How would that work and how wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to do with a public, possibly federated, server running a FOSS Patreon software?
It can be both; using smart contracts to facilitate payments and identity, and some form of federated or decentralized protocol for communication and discovery (e.g. Farcaster).
> Are settlement times going down with FedNow? And even CC transactions take seconds, do the content creators care that much about getting the money immediately and isn't that a greater fraud risk?
Not everybody lives in the USA, and yes creators would likely appreciate lowering payout schedules from days to hours.
> I admit to not being familiar with the situation but aren't all transactions public on the blockchain?
Yes, like Monero but with smart contracts and verifiable computation via ZK-SNARKs. It is possible, but in its infancy: see Aztec and Aleo.
> What about illegally acceptable revenue streams? How would such a platform stop being banned due to illegal content?
The primary hosts can choose not to serve the illegal content; it would redirect the behaviour to alternative platforms. Similar to a popular Mastodon server choosing not to allow NSFW, but other servers might allow NSFW.
Yes, it's not a panacea, but has the potential to be far lower than the current status quo.
> In this case you're speaking of doing Patreon on the blockchain, not merely using cryptocurrency transactions? How would that work and how wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to do with a public, possibly federated, server running a FOSS Patreon software?
It can be both; using smart contracts to facilitate payments and identity, and some form of federated or decentralized protocol for communication and discovery (e.g. Farcaster).
> Are settlement times going down with FedNow? And even CC transactions take seconds, do the content creators care that much about getting the money immediately and isn't that a greater fraud risk?
Not everybody lives in the USA, and yes creators would likely appreciate lowering payout schedules from days to hours.
> I admit to not being familiar with the situation but aren't all transactions public on the blockchain?
Yes, like Monero but with smart contracts and verifiable computation via ZK-SNARKs. It is possible, but in its infancy: see Aztec and Aleo.
> What about illegally acceptable revenue streams? How would such a platform stop being banned due to illegal content?
The primary hosts can choose not to serve the illegal content; it would redirect the behaviour to alternative platforms. Similar to a popular Mastodon server choosing not to allow NSFW, but other servers might allow NSFW.
Even granting that those things do apply, there's another major hurdle for any platform that would try to do this with crypto:
You can't autobill.
Every time you want a payment, you need a signature from the sending wallet. The closest you can get is a smart contract where someone pre-loads a certain amount of money and it trickles out as the months/works roll out, but it will eventually deplete. Then what? Subscription over? Start the nagging emails?
It's not "set and forget" like a credit card where you settle the debt after the creator receives their payment.
You can't autobill.
Every time you want a payment, you need a signature from the sending wallet. The closest you can get is a smart contract where someone pre-loads a certain amount of money and it trickles out as the months/works roll out, but it will eventually deplete. Then what? Subscription over? Start the nagging emails?
It's not "set and forget" like a credit card where you settle the debt after the creator receives their payment.
You seem to mean Bitcoin when you say crypto. Other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum can do autobill.
Only of a pre-funded wallet. It's still different from a credit card. With a credit card, someone else fronts the money and bills me later. Any system that tried to do this on crypto would just be a glorified way of "being a credit card that accepted ETH (or whatever else) for payment."
To be fair, there are many countries outside of North America that exhibit preference for debit cards, and may even have very low credit card ownership rates. I don't pay with a credit card for my Patreon subscriptions, for example.
Agreed, it is limited to active participation. Although this might not be such an issue; a lot of creator payment platforms (Bandcamp, Ko-fi, Kickstarter) depend on active payments, and Patreon’s recent announcements seem to suggest they will lean more heavily on this.
Still never got answers how Jack and Pomplamoose got away with the “Beat It” cover video that propelled him upward.
Still seems shady.
Still will never go near anything endorses or touched by Amanda Palmer.
Still seems shady.
Still will never go near anything endorses or touched by Amanda Palmer.
What's wrong with the cover? What's your issue with Amanda Palmer?
What did they get away with? Is there some drama around that cover?
It's a great cover...what do you mean with "get away with"?
I am actually developing a platform to compete with pateon. And the author is quite naive in his complaints.
You cannot do business and be anonymous. The tax man would eat you alive. At least outside of USA. You also need a license as sole proprietor or be incorporated as a company in order to make repetitive sales and not one-offs. So again, no anonymity whatsoever.
"by works" payment model is illegal. You can receive donations or have subscriptions or pay per view but you cannot "maybe deliver", "deliver maybe one work, maybe ten". Again, illegal as fuck.
"Non quid pro quo patronage" - again, donations solve this. They are legal and easy without any hustle, as long as the payee is aware what is the purpose of that payment.
"api / audience relation system" - well, i am trying to run a business, why in the world would i give api access to third parties without being able to monetize it? each api call costs me resources. nothing is free. not to mention that giving access to api might go against my financial business altogether by moving some financial transactions out of my business into foreign business that is monetizing my api.
Author is very naive in his complaints in general. The red tape you have to go through these days for a simple(it's not a rocket science) website is astronomical. The technological issues(like finding a bank with an actual api that works and does not charge you per payment is close to impossible) too are unending hurdles being thrown at you form left and right and the bigtech-monopolized internet does not want you in it competing with their services or NOT using their services and infrastructure to build yours. You think streaming video is free? Try finding a place to host the video and send it over the network for amount that your income can cover and allow you still to make a profit. Good luck.
Yes, i have solved all these issues. But it is so damn hard, that these complaints don't even scratch the surface of how impossible it is to start something serious in this monopolized era of the internet and red tape. You just have no idea. You don't.
You cannot do business and be anonymous. The tax man would eat you alive. At least outside of USA. You also need a license as sole proprietor or be incorporated as a company in order to make repetitive sales and not one-offs. So again, no anonymity whatsoever.
"by works" payment model is illegal. You can receive donations or have subscriptions or pay per view but you cannot "maybe deliver", "deliver maybe one work, maybe ten". Again, illegal as fuck.
"Non quid pro quo patronage" - again, donations solve this. They are legal and easy without any hustle, as long as the payee is aware what is the purpose of that payment.
"api / audience relation system" - well, i am trying to run a business, why in the world would i give api access to third parties without being able to monetize it? each api call costs me resources. nothing is free. not to mention that giving access to api might go against my financial business altogether by moving some financial transactions out of my business into foreign business that is monetizing my api.
Author is very naive in his complaints in general. The red tape you have to go through these days for a simple(it's not a rocket science) website is astronomical. The technological issues(like finding a bank with an actual api that works and does not charge you per payment is close to impossible) too are unending hurdles being thrown at you form left and right and the bigtech-monopolized internet does not want you in it competing with their services or NOT using their services and infrastructure to build yours. You think streaming video is free? Try finding a place to host the video and send it over the network for amount that your income can cover and allow you still to make a profit. Good luck.
Yes, i have solved all these issues. But it is so damn hard, that these complaints don't even scratch the surface of how impossible it is to start something serious in this monopolized era of the internet and red tape. You just have no idea. You don't.
> You cannot do business and be anonymous. The tax man would eat you alive. At least outside of USA. You also need a license as sole proprietor or be incorporated as a company in order to make repetitive sales and not one-offs. So again, no anonymity whatsoever.
There is no anonymity between the creator and Patreon, or between Patreon and patrons. The anonymity is between the creator and the patrons.
I don't see any reason why this would be illegal, especially as Patreon does this in countless jurisdictions.
> "by works" payment model is illegal. You can receive donations or have subscriptions or pay per view but you cannot "maybe deliver", "deliver maybe one work, maybe ten". Again, illegal as fuck.
This is a model that Patreon already supports (again in countless jurisdictions), so unless their legal counsel is completely incompetent it can hardly be "illegal as fuck".
There is no anonymity between the creator and Patreon, or between Patreon and patrons. The anonymity is between the creator and the patrons.
I don't see any reason why this would be illegal, especially as Patreon does this in countless jurisdictions.
> "by works" payment model is illegal. You can receive donations or have subscriptions or pay per view but you cannot "maybe deliver", "deliver maybe one work, maybe ten". Again, illegal as fuck.
This is a model that Patreon already supports (again in countless jurisdictions), so unless their legal counsel is completely incompetent it can hardly be "illegal as fuck".
> There is no anonymity between the creator and Patreon, or between Patreon and patrons. The anonymity is between the creator and the patrons.
that is exactly the problem. You have two relationships here: author -> patreon and author -> patrons. The first one is irrelevant, the second on is the problematic one. You cannot be anonymous in one case and not in another. That is not how business, law or taxes work - anywhere. Just because patrons do not want to know the legal identity does not mean it is legal to hide it. You could get sued for tax avoidance like that.
that is exactly the problem. You have two relationships here: author -> patreon and author -> patrons. The first one is irrelevant, the second on is the problematic one. You cannot be anonymous in one case and not in another. That is not how business, law or taxes work - anywhere. Just because patrons do not want to know the legal identity does not mean it is legal to hide it. You could get sued for tax avoidance like that.
Do you think it was equally illegal for publishers and bookstores to sell novels written by Richard Bachman, without revealing that that was actually a pseudonym for Stephen King?
"publishers" is the keyword here. You have answered your own question.
If you can point me to a law that says it's legal to hide a content creator's identity from customers when the content is ink and paper, but illegal when it's distributed over the internet, I'd love to see it.
As others have pointed out, Patreon does exactly this in many different jurisdictions. I find it hard to believe that they're just brazenly violating the law and absolutely nobody cares.
As others have pointed out, Patreon does exactly this in many different jurisdictions. I find it hard to believe that they're just brazenly violating the law and absolutely nobody cares.
Patreon is effectively the publisher here? Again, they are already doing it which makes your assertion of illegality questionable. What jurisdiction are you, Germany?
Buddy are you for real? It’s perfectly legal to sell under a fake name (or for instance, as an LLC) as long as you pay your taxes as your real identity!
You need to maybe not try to replace patreon if you’re this clueless.
You need to maybe not try to replace patreon if you’re this clueless.
But can't anyone just look up the owner of the LLC, that info is public?
I believe that if someone with a patreon wants their identity to stay private, making an LLC (depending on the name of it) may backfire?
I believe that if someone with a patreon wants their identity to stay private, making an LLC (depending on the name of it) may backfire?
There are several states where you can form an LLC without making your information public. In New Mexico you don’t even need to tell the state.
I can’t tell if you’re talking about the US though, if you’re referring to other countries it may be much more restrictive, lots of places seem to require ID and registration for basically anything.
I can’t tell if you’re talking about the US though, if you’re referring to other countries it may be much more restrictive, lots of places seem to require ID and registration for basically anything.
Anonymous artists have made money for years in all sorts of jurisdictions, it’s definitely possible to do. e.g. banksy, the residents, the rubber bandits, TISM
Yes, but these are true artists that make one-off sales. It is not a business for them(not legally). Where you have no legal obligation to become a "business". Author on Patreon on the other hand cannot claim to be "opportunistic" seller. They make repeated sales there, therefore it is taxable income and therefore they must become a legal entity of some sort and abide by the legal and tax laws of the consumer tax law in their country of origin.
With two decades of performance and album sales, an 18 year hiatus and a recent reunion you can hardly accuse TISM of "one-off" sales.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TISM
The key here is that neither Humphrey B. Flaubert nor Eugene de la Hot Croix Bun were filing tax returns via their nom de guerre's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TISM
The key here is that neither Humphrey B. Flaubert nor Eugene de la Hot Croix Bun were filing tax returns via their nom de guerre's.
Just absolutely loving that TISM is popping up here. They’re the first thing I thought of in this thread too.
TISM made me the Amway sales rep that I am today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxoODPQ4CTM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijx_tT5lCDY
You make a lot of outlandish claims. I'm confused - are you claiming that Patreon is an organized crime syndicate?
Perhaps it would be clearer to "follow the money" - from my perspective (as a patron) the relationships are "patron → patreon" (I pay a single bill from them, once a month or slightly more, but not once per artist) and then "patreon → artist". (Banks/CC/paypal are more interested in the first one, IRS is more interested in the second one...)
I already don't know any direct "wallet" information about the artist, and that's kind of the point - every direct micropayments approach since at least the mid-1990s has failed, so we have aggregation instead, otherwise we'd be spending more on the transaction than on the artist.
I already don't know any direct "wallet" information about the artist, and that's kind of the point - every direct micropayments approach since at least the mid-1990s has failed, so we have aggregation instead, otherwise we'd be spending more on the transaction than on the artist.
Well, that presupposes that patreon itself is the publisher and you as patron/payee are doing business with them and not with the author. Which is the same model that youtube uses. I have never been author on patreon, so i have no idea about their setup. If this is the case then obviously that is perfectly legal. The problem then becomes censorship because patreon then is the owner of the license for your work that they are selling themselves and giving you your cut. Quite a different business model but one that "protects" the identity of the author because they are essentially sub-contracotrs.
patrons pay patreon, not the author. patreon pays the creator. how can it be illegal? patrons trust patreon to deliver their money to the authors, but that is irrelevant. the patrons pay directly to patreon.
Isn't Patreon the merchant of record?
The IRS and Patreon need to know who you are. Patrons don't. The article is pretty specific about the distinction. (Looks like the US is 30% of patreon's business, more than any other single country, so I'm reasonably comfortable acting like my US-specific response matters.)
Likewise, are you claiming that the "by works" model that patreon supports today is illegal?
As for the "non quid pro quo" case - as a patron I care about this one in particular - patreon does this (or at least only screws it up in minor ways), the article is just recommending that any alternative handle it too. Maybe your donation management approach handles this?
Finally, "api access to third parties without being able to monetize it" - the request isn't so much for third party access, as first party - primarily for artists, maybe optionally for patrons. (This one is a little less important if you have a broad enough range of artist-CRM options, but really, noone has before, api support for developers is a great way to let other people fail fast so you don't have to...) Also, the API in question is something slightly less sophisticated than "a single google sheet per artist", it's not going to be that expensive.
I'm definitely curious about what you come up with, especially if you get traction with artists - but only about half a dozen of the artists I support through patreon are outside the US anyway, so until you work out US support I'm probably not going to notice. Good luck, though.
Likewise, are you claiming that the "by works" model that patreon supports today is illegal?
As for the "non quid pro quo" case - as a patron I care about this one in particular - patreon does this (or at least only screws it up in minor ways), the article is just recommending that any alternative handle it too. Maybe your donation management approach handles this?
Finally, "api access to third parties without being able to monetize it" - the request isn't so much for third party access, as first party - primarily for artists, maybe optionally for patrons. (This one is a little less important if you have a broad enough range of artist-CRM options, but really, noone has before, api support for developers is a great way to let other people fail fast so you don't have to...) Also, the API in question is something slightly less sophisticated than "a single google sheet per artist", it's not going to be that expensive.
I'm definitely curious about what you come up with, especially if you get traction with artists - but only about half a dozen of the artists I support through patreon are outside the US anyway, so until you work out US support I'm probably not going to notice. Good luck, though.
> The IRS and Patreon need to know who you are. Patrons don't.
As i commended elsewhere, if Patreon acts as the publisher, then yes. The authors are merely sub-contractors and their relationship with patrons is quite different.
> Likewise, are you claiming that the "by works" model that patreon supports today is illegal?
As I commented elsewhere, I might not have understood what the author has been describing and misinterpreted it.
The API question, based on your take, then needs to be expanded on. Too many variables here. Sound more to me like this is not an API question at all, but rather lack of functionality/forms/pages/lists on the front-end side?
> I'm definitely curious about what you come up with, especially if you get traction with artists - but only about half a dozen of the artists I support through patreon are outside the US anyway, so until you work out US support I'm probably not going to notice. Good luck, though.
It will have no geo-restriction so who ever comes will be welcome. Frankly, I am not looking to get millions of users. I will be satisfied if it pays for itself and people's salaries and author get alternative means of communicating with their fans, or the world, in this modern era of censorship and political correctness. My setup if very different from the one bigtech uses, so I hope that will be what will attract people there. I have been working on this for a year with about 5 month break. It will be out next year.
As i commended elsewhere, if Patreon acts as the publisher, then yes. The authors are merely sub-contractors and their relationship with patrons is quite different.
> Likewise, are you claiming that the "by works" model that patreon supports today is illegal?
As I commented elsewhere, I might not have understood what the author has been describing and misinterpreted it.
The API question, based on your take, then needs to be expanded on. Too many variables here. Sound more to me like this is not an API question at all, but rather lack of functionality/forms/pages/lists on the front-end side?
> I'm definitely curious about what you come up with, especially if you get traction with artists - but only about half a dozen of the artists I support through patreon are outside the US anyway, so until you work out US support I'm probably not going to notice. Good luck, though.
It will have no geo-restriction so who ever comes will be welcome. Frankly, I am not looking to get millions of users. I will be satisfied if it pays for itself and people's salaries and author get alternative means of communicating with their fans, or the world, in this modern era of censorship and political correctness. My setup if very different from the one bigtech uses, so I hope that will be what will attract people there. I have been working on this for a year with about 5 month break. It will be out next year.
"by works is illegal"
I've been using Patreon this way since it launched in 2013, and I am pretty sure they have grown to the point where it is impossible for the only reason they get away with it is that they are too small for anyone to say "hey this is illegal, you have x months to stop doing this before we come down on you".
"why would I give API access without being able to monetize it"
It is worth noting that Patreon was created by a musician with the intent of being a service for artists/musicians/etc, and still occasionally acts like this instead of a purely profit-driven corporate entity whose primary duty is making its shareholders rich. The CEO is still that musician, though I think his musical output has fallen off a lot as "running a system of money pipes" took over his life. Patreon makes a lot of choices that look weird from a purely monetary viewpoint because of this.
I've been using Patreon this way since it launched in 2013, and I am pretty sure they have grown to the point where it is impossible for the only reason they get away with it is that they are too small for anyone to say "hey this is illegal, you have x months to stop doing this before we come down on you".
"why would I give API access without being able to monetize it"
It is worth noting that Patreon was created by a musician with the intent of being a service for artists/musicians/etc, and still occasionally acts like this instead of a purely profit-driven corporate entity whose primary duty is making its shareholders rich. The CEO is still that musician, though I think his musical output has fallen off a lot as "running a system of money pipes" took over his life. Patreon makes a lot of choices that look weird from a purely monetary viewpoint because of this.
> I think his musical output has fallen off a lot as "running a system of money pipes" took over his life
Does not appear to be the case? Jack is pumping out music at an insane rate.
If you mean quality wise, that is a lot harder to judge objectively. Subjectively I like his new stuff, and his new band the Scary Pockets is doing well popularity wise.
Does not appear to be the case? Jack is pumping out music at an insane rate.
If you mean quality wise, that is a lot harder to judge objectively. Subjectively I like his new stuff, and his new band the Scary Pockets is doing well popularity wise.
Oh he is? I just got as far as looking at his Bandcamp page, which hasn't been updated in years. I'm not into his music, just a happy client of the company he started to try and make more money than Youtube was willing to trickle down to him.
> "by works" payment model is illegal. You can receive donations or have subscriptions or pay per view but you cannot "maybe deliver", "deliver maybe one work, maybe ten". Again, illegal as fuck.
How can Patreon allow it then? It's a real, existing thing. If you don't deliver, you don't get paid.
How can Patreon allow it then? It's a real, existing thing. If you don't deliver, you don't get paid.
By work is common. For example sales people are paid on comission. If they do 10 deals they get 10x the money. Similarly, lawyers can and do work on comission in fields like collection and tort. Farm workers are paid by piece when it comes to harvesting or planting. In tech, pen testers are often paid by exploit.
in that case, maybe i did not properly understood how the author describes that model.
I don't know how to write this without sounding snarky, which is not my intention but: maybe if you are intending to build a Patreon competitor, you should look into how this model works.
It's probably not a big source of their profit, and certainly a competitor can live without it. But as both a consumer and creator it's the only model I'm interested in. It really aligns everyone's incentives.
It's probably not a big source of their profit, and certainly a competitor can live without it. But as both a consumer and creator it's the only model I'm interested in. It really aligns everyone's incentives.
I am not trying to copy Patreon. I am merely implementing the general idea of selling your digital content online. That's all. If people like Patreon and their monetization channels, I am not here to try and steal them away. Not my intention whatsoever. I am doing a lot of things very differently to Patreon.
> I am actually developing a platform to compete with pateon. And the author is quite naive in his complaints.
> I am not trying to copy Patreon. I am merely implementing the general idea of selling your digital content online. That's all.
You should stop posting, honestly. Either you tried to gather interest for your project by posting in a Patreon thread, or you've realized how little you actually know and you are backtracking.
Best to cut your losses, revisit what you are working on, make sure you have a clear path and you've verified it's what customers want, and build something you can show before talking about it.
> I am not trying to copy Patreon. I am merely implementing the general idea of selling your digital content online. That's all.
You should stop posting, honestly. Either you tried to gather interest for your project by posting in a Patreon thread, or you've realized how little you actually know and you are backtracking.
Best to cut your losses, revisit what you are working on, make sure you have a clear path and you've verified it's what customers want, and build something you can show before talking about it.
> I am actually developing a platform to compete with pateon.
This was you in the original post. If you consider Patreon a competitor, then you need to understand their business model far better than you apparently do. You don't need to copy them, but you do need to understand them. You cannot compete with an established company that you have given zero effort to understand.
This was you in the original post. If you consider Patreon a competitor, then you need to understand their business model far better than you apparently do. You don't need to copy them, but you do need to understand them. You cannot compete with an established company that you have given zero effort to understand.
No, you don't. That would be simply copying them and going head to head against them. I am doing neither. Just because I am taking the general idea of selling digital content does not mean I have to know what exactly patreon does or or how it does it or that I have to do the same thing. It is like complaining that Yahoo mail isn't exactly the same as gmail. Or Office365 is not the same as google docs. The general idea is the same, but the implementation is nothing alike. If you cannot grasp that concept, I have nothing else to say to you.
I'm explicitly not saying that you should copy them, I'm saying you should understand them. What makes them tick? Why did people choose them? What do they do well? What do they do poorly?
The fact that you're having such a hard time understanding the difference between researching your competition and copying them is further proof that you aren't ready to be running a startup—you have a lot to learn about business before you're going to get anywhere. If you're dead set on continuing, it would be a good idea to learn a bit of humility and consider that maybe, just maybe, the dozen-or-so people on a startup forum telling you that you're wrong might know something you don't.
The fact that you're having such a hard time understanding the difference between researching your competition and copying them is further proof that you aren't ready to be running a startup—you have a lot to learn about business before you're going to get anywhere. If you're dead set on continuing, it would be a good idea to learn a bit of humility and consider that maybe, just maybe, the dozen-or-so people on a startup forum telling you that you're wrong might know something you don't.
One note, I don’t think the author is saying that the person should be anonymous but rather the way they talk to their audience should be. In the backend they will be known but for the audience they have a specific name that doesn’t have to be their full government name.
I get that but you cannot be selling anonymously as long as it is a way for you to make a living, fully or partially, and it is not a one time thing(like selling some used items on ebay or similar website). I cannot speak for all countries but I would say most have a law that requires you to get a sole proprietor license or incorporate as company when you are getting income from repeated transactions. Customers have various protections so they must know the identity of the seller. Not that they want to, mostly they don't, but by law they must be able to get that information, possible even receive an invoice that lists this information. Not to mention that if you are buying works for business purposes, VAT might get involved and other legal and tax complexities.
If you are making a platform you must make it universally usable. Just because one creator does not like or is missing some thing, you just cannot bend the platform to suit his needs. It just does not work like that.
Personally, I have solved the anonymity issue. It's not hard to do but it requires legal layering, which sounds way more complex than it actually is, but i don't want to get out my solution in here.
If you are making a platform you must make it universally usable. Just because one creator does not like or is missing some thing, you just cannot bend the platform to suit his needs. It just does not work like that.
Personally, I have solved the anonymity issue. It's not hard to do but it requires legal layering, which sounds way more complex than it actually is, but i don't want to get out my solution in here.
I think part of Patreon’s value-add is solving these issues. And it’s not like this is unprecedented. In the music world there are artists who are anonymous but when you buy a record you’re buying it from retailer which is where you go if there are issues and a record label, who presumably knows the legal identity of the artist.
If someone thinks they can have a competitive edge against existing market leader by 1) have an API 2) make UI faster, they probably lived in an echo chamber for too long and really need to spend more time with non-developer people.
Perhaps their other points are valid. Admittedly I don't know enough to tell.
Perhaps their other points are valid. Admittedly I don't know enough to tell.
You are confusing anonymity and pseudonymity. The author never mentioned anonymity, it wouldn't make any sense for a creator trying to develop a fanbase. (Which could be anonymous.)
Hosting video, even yourself, has been a solved problem for years now :
https://framablog.org/2022/12/13/peertube-v5-the-result-of-5...
Hosting video, even yourself, has been a solved problem for years now :
https://framablog.org/2022/12/13/peertube-v5-the-result-of-5...
Being a Patron (which is what Patreon was trying to do) traditionally meant supporting someone, no matter what their output. If your tortured genius put out one work a year, so be it. If they popped out Sunflowers then even better!
There doesn't have to be any quid pro quo at all.
It's what we now call Basic Income financed by someone's surplus.
Don't overthink it. It's not a tip, it's a gift, an expression of support. It may be something more, but in the end you're giving money to someone, period.
As an aside, it's really unclear if Patreon payments should be considered income in the US. It's a gift, but it's up to the giver to handle that. I doubt creators would need a 1099 in that case either.