Hey everyone. I Am Closing My Patreon Account (WALL OF TXT WARNING) (Patreon)

It’s true. I will be closing my Patreon account.

It’s not because anything is wrong, things are awesome! I’ve actually just hired on my sister full time to help me edit and moderate my livestreams! But this announcement is more to do with my business changing a lot over the last few years…

I first want to say a big THANK YOU to Patreon for existing, it’s been an incredible super power to have your support where I don’t need sponsors and can choose what I want to do each week. Patreon let me set up a page exactly how I wanted which was the “$1 All You Can Eat”. I was able to offer a whole extra episode every week as cheap as I could and hope enough people wanted to check it out.

This worked great for me as I don’t take money very well, I have to be offering a service in return. Even if folks didn’t take it, it at least had to be available to take. The last 6+ months I haven’t done the After Show and it’s been really bothering me, especially my difficulty with keeping up with messages. On Patreon you need to send the creator a DM and ask for a refund and I feel irresponsible leaving people in a position of accidentally adding a 0 to their pledge and have no way to fix it. Especially in this cost of living crisis.

If I’m not offering folks a product for their money, I’m not comfortable with taking it.

If I’m not actively in there supporting my Patreon then I don’t deserve it.

I’ve been grinding really hard this year getting all my other channels running where they are paying their bills in anticipation for this announcement. With the channels and the Floatplane streams my little production company is sitting great and will be all good without this income 👍. Not having a parachute for a bit is unnerving but we have a savings just in case.

I reached out to Patreon for some advice on closing an account this size but sadly didn’t hear back so I’ll just have to do it the best I can think to. I’d like to offer refunds to anyone who needs one. You just need to flick me a DM and I’ll add you to the list to fix up! I apologise that I can’t type any replies, I’m going to have to manually refund 20,000+ people 😅. Refunds are a multi page affair and it’s going to take me all week round the clock to keep up, sorry that all I can do is peek and move to the next!

I’ll be offering refunds until Jan 7th when the page will close, payments are already paused so folks can’t jump in or be charged at the start of the month. I’m going to be doing my absolute darndnes to get to everyone and I’m so sorry if I miss your message!! THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING ME ALL THIS TIME. You’ve all put me up here!

Floatplane will be my new home for extra content, a complaint I got from a lot of peeps way back was needing to pay for two services to get all my content (Twitch/Patreon) but now it’s one payment and you get EVERYTHING. I even have a vlog called “Wades World” and Frank has her own channel too. You finally get to see her eat food! Patreon doesn’t let you merge brands or accounts to be under one banner which has been really messy in the past, (You can have lots of separate accounts but need separate paypal accounts too) Floatplane’s structure works really well for my company even if it means starting all over again.

There's no DM's on Floatplane but the comment sections are where I'll be! Also means the community can help with any questions folks have and the separate channels help keep discussions where they work best. On Patreon all my channels would be dumped in one big messy feed but on Floatplane its super organised and easy to find videos!

Floatplane even offers downloads, no dodgy site or toolbars needed. Just hit download and even pick your resolution! I know heaps of folks are like me and like fun videos to put onto things that shouldn’t have videos played on them or have periods of no internet connection and want a stash of content.

This has bitten me on the butt as naturally people immediately steal the videos and re upload on their own channels… they took all my After Shows off Floatplane even tho I offer them for free on my YT channel already ☹️. For “archiving” apparently so it seems I have to publicly ask that I don’t want my Floatplane content re uploaded please, I offer as much as I can for free and make sure to keep sponsors out of videos! I only ask as I don’t want to take the download button away and punish the awesome peeps who help me out. This is all very rich from a person of the “Limewire” generation but a sneaky download for a friend is a little different than rebroadcasting to the world 🌏.

I hope you give Floatplane a go! But only do so if I’m selling what you’re looking for, people’s generosity on Patreon has been staggering but the cost of everything now days can’t be ignored. Floatplane can’t be $1 sadly as it’s a super small platform and hosting video is EXPENSIVE, but at $2.80 it’s literally as cheap as I could make it down to the cent 🙏. The point of Floatplane is stability, it’s all hosted on their own hardware diverse from the other video platforms. The fees pay for everyones stay and should the worse happen on YT I can at least continue hosting videos!

Another change and I hope you don’t mind, I’d like to no longer have an upload schedule. I’ve been dooting 7am(ish) Fridays for quite a while but many times I’ve wanted to release a video early or maybe have an extra day or two. Some videos come together in hours, others are weeks of research and non working nuggets (it’s always non working nuggets that kill videos…).

I’m privileged to be a part of peoples weekly routines with my upload schedule and I’m sorry to be taking it away, I’ve found the deadline to work against my motivations some weeks especially if my week goes pear shaped, it’s caused some very late nights this year. The Steam Deck video was rendered at 1:30AM the day of upload 👀

Sorry for not being on social media either, I’ve found it really toxic the last few years and getting away has been really beneficial. Sorry for not being in Discord either! I’ve upset a lot of folks linking to a fan made Discord I’m not in. Maybe if the mods don’t mind adding that it’s a fan made community as I don’t want to upset more peeps!

Wow what a wall of txt, but to summarise:

I’m closing my Patreon due to not running it responsibly,

Floatplane is my one stop shop for extra content (streams, Frank, secrets),

No more video schedules, hopefully more content,

I don’t social media anymores,

Frank smells and it’s an issue.

You’re all the best, just clicking on a video of mine means the world to me. Thanks to those who’ve kept supporting me even when it made no sense to, beloved Patreons you’re off duty 🫡.

Have a happy new year!

Frank says nothing.

https://www.floatplane.com/channel/TheTrashNetwork/home