Many creators mentioning they lost hundreds of their patrons suddenly and patrons confused as to why their payments are being declined. Patreon is such an old company that hasnt done anything to improve their service for years while the CEO makes youtube videos and seemingly nothing with the company. I hate how much of a monopoly they have in the space, they clearly have no vision for improving their website or app.

    • 3l3s3@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      I hate their entire policy around what you can and cannot say or do, on their platform or somewhere else.

    • MHLoppy@fedia.io
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      1 year ago

      A number of these alternatives exist but the reality is that if a creator advertises Patreon vs advertises Liberapay (or another alternative) you get more people signing up for the Patreon because it has better name recognition / marketing / whatever. In my opinion they got to their dominant position mostly* because “we” let them, and they also stay there because “we” let them.

      *And partly because they were one of the earlier platforms (but by no means the first option for crowd-sourced financial support for creators), and they also started with lower fees than they have these days.

    • PeleSpirit@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’ve also bought “coffee” for someone on ko-fi before. I think that’s a different concept though.

      • gamermanh@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Nope, same thing, different words used

        The idea is it’s more personable, instead of subbing to a Patreon or doing a one-time PayPal or what have you, you “buy them a coffee” or “buy them a pencil” or some other low-cost item that most people both understand helps people AND are cheap/something they might get themselves, so they’re more likely to donate

        Also I’m p sure Ko-Fi has a better revenue split with those who use it than Patreon does

        • LetMeEatCake@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Also I’m p sure Ko-Fi has a better revenue split with those who use it than Patreon does

          This line made me curious so I looked. Best I can find is that Ko-fi charges either 0% or 5% on donations, dependent on the type of donation and the type of account the receiver has with them.

          Patreon used to charge 5%, but now has: 5% for grandfathered pro accounts, 5% for lowest tier accounts, 8% for non-grandfathered accounts on a pro plan, and 12% for a higher premium tier.

          So yup, Ko-fi has a better split.

          • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            There’s also Liberapay, which doesn’t take any cut for themselves. The only charges you get are for the payment processors

    • Dark Arc@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Is it actually better? There are things like open collective and GitHub sponsors too… Choices are great, but the choices aren’t clear

      • rah@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        Is it actually better?

        No idea, I don’t use either. I don’t even know what you mean by “better” in this context.

        • Dark Arc@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I mean, does it pay creators better/does it actually do the job of funding someone better? i.e. what’s the advantage? Is it just kind of a meaningless difference or will creators benefit?

  • Hang@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Huh, I was wondering why 10% of our patrons disappeared overnight. It’s normal for a drop-off at the start of the month but not normally such a large one

  • Goronmon@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I hate how much of a monopoly they have in the space…

    It’s not necessarily Patreon that’s the root problem here. The problem is the foundations of the financial industry (banks, credit card companies, etc) have complete control over the content and products you can exchange for money.

    If Wells Fargo decides that your product or content has offended some random executive, they will call up your payment provider (like Stripe) and tell them to close your account. And the payment provider will do it because they don’t really have a choice.

    • Gikiski@fedia.io
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      1 year ago

      “complete control over the content and products you can exchange for money”

      This suddenly aligns with which creators had failed in my attempts at individual payment where the monthly bulk had failed (maybe due to including the ones which failed). One, an RPG supplement creator, has me scratching my head. I saw recently that the art of some of these has caused CC companies to deny payments. F that.

    • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com
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      1 year ago

      A rejected payment method leading to losing your subscribed list is 100% a Patron problem.

      The issue at hand is not (just) rejected payments, they can be fixed. Its the inability of creators to keep their subscribers after it’s fixed.

      • Goronmon@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Agreed, I wasn’t necessarily speaking about this specific issue, just about the broader issue of Patreon and the lack of good alternatives.

  • imperator3733@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Mine went through just fine - I’m curious what subset of users this affected.

    Regarding the list of who you supported, Patreon has sent me monthly “Your Patreon receipt is here!” emails that list out each supporter and the tier. I don’t believe I explicitly enabled these emails - they just started coming one month, so presumably one would have needed to specifically turn them off to not get the receipts.

    • Gikiski@fedia.io
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      1 year ago

      Patron affected here, though not same as article image experience.

      I tried to individually re-establish each creator to which I had subscribed. Some went through and some keep erroring. Using the FAQ for declined payments, I keep seeing this blue “1” in a box before the page loads completely (like an unread ‘flag’) so I think something has failed during that load which might have helped with everything.

      The FAQ also mentions that they re-try payments “throughout the month” while keeping you a member, though denying access to paid benefits and posts. So, I had decided to wait it out. Though, after seeing this, something more widespread has happened.

      • Gikiski@fedia.io
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        1 year ago

        Meant to add, their help and support doesn’t offer much. I have two tickets with numbers, but no idea how to check status.

  • Kalash@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Never had any issues with it. I even ran into “declined payment” because my credit card expired at the begin of the year. They send me an e-mail, I updated the CC info and everything continued working fine. Didn’t even skip a payment.

  • Gikiski@fedia.io
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    1 year ago

    https://status.patreon.com

    As of August 3rd, 07:10 PDT

    “Identified - An unrelated issue is causing a slightly higher-than-normal number of patron payments to be erroneously flagged as fraudulent by their banks. We’re sorry for the inconvenience this may cause creators and their patrons. We are working diligently with our partners to resolve this.”

  • chilburn06@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Had the same thing happen to me. I got texts about fraud from my bank and an email saying I needed to update my payment. I was wondering what prompted this cause I’ve been using patreon for years and never once had an issue like this.

  • pitninja@lemmy.pit.ninja
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    1 year ago

    I know some creators that are moving to Substack and it really seems like a good way forward for certain content. I can’t blame folks for leaving, I’d be pissed if a platform caused me to miss out on income.

    • gamermanh@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You don’t need it, but its a convenient website to let people save their info and support people financially across multiple professions all from one account

      Many creators use PayPal or similar to let people just one-time pay through said creators site or app, but Patreon/Ko-Fi/etc. Allow a little more without needing to do all the work yourself

      • blazera@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        You gave another corporate middleman as an alternative to needing a corporate middleman.

    • yhvr@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      As a creator, it doesn’t seem like I’ve lost any of my patrons. Someone new even joined last night

      • dualphasesaber@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The dude tweeting used to run a site called Pointless Waste of Time under the pseudonym “David Wong.” Had a bunch of funny articles and the forums were great. Ended up going away when he became the (I think) chief editor at Cracked (before it was all list based) and they merged the forums.

  • redimk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Patreon always has some lind of problem every now and then. To this day I haven’t been able to even create an account there because they won’t let me.

    Are there no other services that creators/donators can use (apart from Liberapay that I see a bit lower in the comments)?