Patreon's New Fee Structure (Patreon)

Well, I'll cut to the chase, patreon's new fee structure is a trash fire.

I do not blame any of you who've already dropped your pledges. Thank you for staying with me as long as you did. And to those of you sticking with me through Patreon's.... growing pains, thank you for continuing to support me despite them. To those of you who have to go, if I could ask one favour, please in your exit survey leave a comment about how these fees affect you/why they're unacceptable. I'll be sending every comment I get to Patreon.

Though there's little I can do about it, I will be using Patreon's feedback form to send them daily updates on how this has affected creators and patrons alike and what I think about the change. Here is the letter I sent them. If you've got a minute to send them feedback too, let them have it.

"Dear Patreon Staff,

I want to share my opinion on the new fee structure you announced which transfers patreon's fees from the creators to their patrons.

As a creator, I do not agree at all with putting the onus of those fees on the backs of my patrons. The $0.35 flat fee on top of the percentage is increasing all my patron's small pledges by over a third. Your framing of this new feature as a boon to creators neglects to mention that those fees are actually increasing by a not insignificant margin, with creators actually only receiving 75% of what my small pledge patrons would now be paying under the new structure, less the 5% you’re taking from me. Framing this as a 95% take-home is underhanded and removes some of my faith in Patreon as a company worthy of those fees. I have already received messages from patrons saying they love my work and want to support, but are deleting all their pledges because the fees are too heavy.

Understand that I don't believe Patreon isn't deserving of some payment for the service they provide, but I was happy to pay that charge myself as the main benefactor of that service. I am extremely unhappy with this change and the fact there was no survey to ask creators their opinion or warning that it was in the pipeline is discouraging. It also does nothing to help with the transparency of my take-home income: paypal and banks take fees of their own and I live in a country with a currency of much higher value than the US dollar, so my income was never transparent whether I left it public or private. This has just further obscured things so that now my patrons get zero transparency in what they are actually paying.

I hope you will reconsider this change and that, in the future, you will survey your creators about their opinion on changes of this magnitude beforehand. If I’d been asked whether a slight increase in my fees would be preferable to taking extra from the pockets of my patrons, I would have firmly answered, ‘yes.’ My patrons pledged $1, they should only have to pay $1.

Thank you for your time, I hope you will consider what I’ve had to say."

I'll delete this later because I don't like to bother you guys with negative stuff, we'll return to our regular schedule art and comics right away :) As always, thank you so so much for your support and help throughout the years.

~Demi