Scott Bieser
patreon
Changes a-coming
🕑 Added 2020-02-18 03:12:58 +0000 UTCI'm working on some changes to my Patreon page, as indicated in today's comic.
The changes will come in bits and pieces over the next two weeks, leading up to a Special Offering to be announced March 2.
Two changes I've already made:
1) I have "unpublished" the $1 tier, meaning that Patrons who have already donated at that level may continue to do so, but new Patrons will need to start at the $2.50 level. I made this change partly because service charges eat up a large portion of each $1 donation, but a much smaller percentage of the $2,50. Secondly, Patreon is recommending that the lowest tier be set at $3. Something about perceived value and buy-in. I'll keep the $2.50 tier at $2.50 and we'll see how it goes.
2) I have set up a private Discord server for Patrons (and Subscribe Star subscribers) at the $5 level and above. This will be a space for supporters of QUANTUM VIBE to socialize, and talk about whatever. I'm still doing some tweaks but the server is basically open for business. If you're at the $5+ level, have a Discord account, but didn't get added to the server let me know via Patreon messaging and I'll see what I can do.
The old Forum will be going away soon. We have already set up a DISQUS widget on the main site, and that plus the Discord server will (we hope) be a place where the QV community can thrive.
Another reward for Patrons I'm planning is a live-draw stream on Twitch, a platform which a lot of other cartoonists seem to prefer to YouTube for various reasons. I'll announce here, on the Facebook QV page, and the mailing list when I'm ready to start doing these live-streams, most likely the 2nd week in March. Mainly it will be inking over my pencils, or coloring my inks. I have to hide the dialog text to avoid spoilers, but I need to see the text at the penciling stage. One live-draw per week if I can manage it. Schedule to be announced.
I'll explain what the Special Offering will be, soon.
Comments
Magnus Wittstrom
Ok, I only get one charge per month from Patreon. So I hope that 30 cent is not taken from every creator when you support several. I try to support every creators I like, but it also means I can only give a small amount to each.
Scott Bieser
The service fees are charged on creators' end. The credit-card companies get 30 cents of every charge plus 2.5 percent of the charge. Then Patreon gets another 5 percent. So that when someone donates $1, I get roughly 62 cents. When someone donates $2.50 I get $2.01. When someone donates $5 I get $4,32. SubscribeStar has a similar deal except their fee is slightly higher. Patreon is encouraging creators to "unpublish" the $1 tier, not get rid of it altogether, which means that current $1 donors can stay at that level. This is something of an experiment and if my total income seems to be dropping as a result of this I can "re-publish" the $1 tier and carry on as before.
Kaz Redclaw
I don't have any plans to do that, but I do often try to collect lists of paypal addresses in case I want to ditch Patreon because they did another stupid thing. There's already 4 creators that I donate to this way, 3 of them have their own website for that sort of thing. I don't actually use the patreon benefits on your feed much anyway and treat it as just a pure donation, but there are a few that I do use.
Magnus Wittstrom
I support several creators with $1 and I'm not being charged any service fees. Maybe it's different for different countries (I'm not in the US), or if you only have a single $1 donation? I understand why Patreon wants the lowers tier to be higher but If all creators I support on Patreon the had a $3 minimum I would have to drop half of them to keep my monthly bill the same.
Scott Bieser
You could do that (scottbieser@bigheadpress.com) but there is no messaging system and no benefits at the higher-dollar levels. With Patreon I can make the pencils/pen art available to everyone at $2.50 above with a few clicks. I wouldn't have time to do that for 150+ individual donors, and tracking donors at $5-20 for other rewards would be a nightmare for me.
Kaz Redclaw
If that's true, then Patreon's basically worthless and we might as well be donating on a paypal subscription.
Scott Bieser
Unfortunately the 30-cent fee applies separately to each donation. At least that's what we're told. At any rate, you can still sign up and just donate $1 (or any other amount) without being in a tier, and forgoing the benefits. Not that the benefits of the $1 tier ever meant anything anyway.
Simone Spinozzi
*pats the $10 chad tier*
Kaz Redclaw
I just tried it on Howard Tayler's patreon, and it seems they've restored the ability to do non-integer dollar amounts below $4. I also picked a random $1 creator and gave them an extra 18 cents per month, so it's not just if they had a tier for that amount. Fun.
Kaz Redclaw
You might have someone actually try the 2.50 tier, at one point Patreon changed their system so that anything less than $4 had to be done on whole dollar boundaries. Last time I tried it was around a year ago, so I don't know if they rescinded that. I think the service fees eating into $1 should only happen with people who have very few things they're donating to, that ~30 cent service fee should be spread across everyone they support, unless Patreon is screwing their creators. If a lot more creators start going to $3 or higher tiers, I'll probably have to cut a lot of them. Going from $1-3 on 120 creators to $3-6 on 120 creators is impossible. I've already dropped one because they went from having a $1 tier to their lowest being a $6 tier, with no grandfathering, and I had pretty much gotten over enjoying that comic anyway.
