[HN Gopher] How to compete with Patreon
___________________________________________________________________
How to compete with Patreon
Author : rwmj
Score : 229 points
Date : 2023-10-08 05:34 UTC (17 hours ago)
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| thriftwy wrote:
| [flagged]
| dyeje wrote:
| 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.
| kro wrote:
| Discord has already started integrating their own payment for
| content/channels recently.
|
| https://discord.com/serversubscriptions
| squigz wrote:
| And they desperately need to roll it out to more countries...
| _sad Canadian noises_
| diggan wrote:
| Funny, none of the Patreons I'm subscribing to or been
| interested in, has been paywalls for Discord communities.
| corbezzoli wrote:
| Same, I only hear about Patreon on YouTube.
| concordDance wrote:
| Fiction authors are who I give my patron money to.
| fortran77 wrote:
| All the Patreons I subscribe to are YouTubers (Big Clive,
| Technology Connections, etc.)
| stinkytaco wrote:
| 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.
| scantron4 wrote:
| 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.
| hknmtt wrote:
| 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.
| egypturnash wrote:
| "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.
| krisoft wrote:
| > 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.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| 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...
| raincole wrote:
| 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.
| jaggederest wrote:
| > "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.
| hknmtt wrote:
| in that case, maybe i did not properly understood how the
| author describes that model.
| Fargren wrote:
| 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.
| hknmtt wrote:
| 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.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > 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.
| lolinder wrote:
| > 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.
| hknmtt wrote:
| 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.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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.
| timthelion wrote:
| 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.
| nivethan wrote:
| 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.
| hknmtt wrote:
| 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.
| zztop44 wrote:
| 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.
| nikic wrote:
| > 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".
| hknmtt wrote:
| > 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.
| dkarras wrote:
| 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.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| You make a lot of outlandish claims. I'm confused - are you
| claiming that Patreon is an organized crime syndicate?
| teraflop wrote:
| 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?
| hknmtt wrote:
| "publishers" is the keyword here. You have answered your
| own question.
| teraflop wrote:
| 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.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Patreon is effectively the publisher here? Again, they
| are already doing it which makes your assertion of
| illegality questionable. What jurisdiction are you,
| Germany?
| padjo wrote:
| 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
| hknmtt wrote:
| 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.
| defrost wrote:
| 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.
| zztop44 wrote:
| Just absolutely loving that TISM is popping up here.
| They're the first thing I thought of in this thread too.
| eichin wrote:
| 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.
| hknmtt wrote:
| 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.
| ok_dad wrote:
| 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.
| tester457 wrote:
| 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?
| wryanzimmerman wrote:
| 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.
| dmak wrote:
| Isn't Patreon the merchant of record?
| eichin wrote:
| 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.
| hknmtt wrote:
| > 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.
| Raed667 wrote:
| Highly relevant video: The Rise (and Fall) of Patreon - Tom
| Nicholas
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mXyN3-gQwJw
| kapp_in_life wrote:
| 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.)
| fluxem wrote:
| 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)
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| 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?
| x0x0 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| braza wrote:
| > 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.
| viraptor wrote:
| 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.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > 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:
| Payment of 12.99 EUR (VAT of X% included) to $vendor for
| $service, choose one: [ ] - regular payment, 0.50 EUR
| fixed fee [ ] - safe(tm) payment*, 2.00 EUR fixed fee
| * safe(tm) payments can later be disputed and reversed, if
| necessary
|
| Or something like that. I mean, regulation aside (this is a
| thought experiment), I can already choose whether I want to
| pay extra for tracking for international deliveries and
| when buying goods, sometimes extended warranty/insurance is
| offered as an option. Why wouldn't I get the choice whether
| I want my payments to carry less overhead OR have the
| protections you'd expect with the "middle man", as a choice
| within the same payment platform?
| maccard wrote:
| 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.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| 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.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| 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".
| KronisLV wrote:
| 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.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Under what circumstances can people be banned from PIX?
| [deleted]
| marcosdumay wrote:
| 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.
| braza wrote:
| 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.
| Marazan wrote:
| 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.
| raincole wrote:
| The author starts the article with "take Patreon's lunch
| money". What lunch? The one VCs fed them? Is Patreon even
| profitable?
| Applejinx wrote:
| 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.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| 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.
| dangus wrote:
| 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!
| carlossouza wrote:
| Exactly. Race to the bottom
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| FYI Patreon does not offer the 5% deal to new creators
| anymore. Now it's 8%.
| dangus wrote:
| Right, and that is still low.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Sure.
| bakugo wrote:
| 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.
| foobiekr wrote:
| A lot of tech companies are unprofitable due to headcount.
| hknmtt wrote:
| "cracking" microtransactions is trivially simple
| shakesbeard wrote:
| 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.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| 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.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Did you miss Flattr 2.0 - a browser extension looking at your
| engagement ?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15557954
| karl42 wrote:
| 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.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| 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 ?)
| karl42 wrote:
| 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.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| 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...
| kzrdude wrote:
| I used the original flattr and apparently missed the reboot
| too. Flattr 1 was dead for too long to carry me over
| anyway.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| There's a 3rd-ish version that stopped promoting the
| extension and is closer to Patreon but with a set overall
| rate.
| cbzbc wrote:
| 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.
| jlokier wrote:
| Just a little HN editing tip: if you put a backslash before
| the star like this: '[\\*]', it won't disappear and turn the
| following paragraphs to italics.[*]
|
| [*] Footnote.
| cbzbc wrote:
| Cheers for that.
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| 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.
| egypturnash wrote:
| 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.
| kodra wrote:
| 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.
| egypturnash wrote:
| 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.
| hknmtt wrote:
| Yes, but they operate from american llc.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| 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.
| tetraca wrote:
| 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.
| Kye wrote:
| 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.
| kelsey9876543 wrote:
| yandex left russia
| SSLy wrote:
| yandex operates from moscow
| jowea wrote:
| Wonder if they will care if it's mostly a foreign
| audience.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| 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.
| twic wrote:
| The Russian government will probably subsidise them to
| further weaken the West.
| zztop44 wrote:
| Then they'll be disappointed. Accepting gay stuff does
| _not_ weaken any country or region.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| 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.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| ...but tricking millions of men into lusting after big
| booba vixens instead of other humans (of either gender)
| may.
| asddubs wrote:
| 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.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| 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.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Genuine question, do you use the term pornographer merely
| descriptively or derogatorily?
| lolinder wrote:
| 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.
| escritor-ai wrote:
| [flagged]
| mannyv wrote:
| There's a lot of talk about tipping, consumers, etc.
|
| 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.
| noirbot wrote:
| 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?
| majani wrote:
| 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.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| 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.
| efdee wrote:
| I'm not sure how representative my personal data point is,
| but I don't really pay attention to the perks. I pick a tier
| based on how much money I want to send their way.
| Loughla wrote:
| I'm not sure the IRS cares about your intent. I feel like
| the structure is important.
| yayitswei wrote:
| 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.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| 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.
| sentimentscan wrote:
| 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.
| xxs wrote:
| 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)
| robinsonb5 wrote:
| 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.
| Applejinx wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| culi wrote:
| If it's a gift, does that mean it goes towards your yearly gift
| tax limit?
| pbjtime wrote:
| 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.
| dmoy wrote:
| 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
| canadianfella wrote:
| [dead]
| kmeisthax wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| hbarka wrote:
| I wonder when Varoufakis' introduction of the word
| technofeudalist got into the techie vernacular.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Personally I read about the book and immediately thought,
| "yes, this is one of the words we've been needing", and then
| started telling friends about it.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| For me it was a few weeks ago when Cory Doctorow posted a
| review of Varoufakis' book.
| notabennett wrote:
| 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.
| tunesmith wrote:
| 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...
| wslh wrote:
| 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).
| treyd wrote:
| 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.
| manchmalscott wrote:
| Doesn't crypto have a gas fee or something that would cost more
| than most micropayments to begin with?
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Depends on the currency, IIRC with Monero the fee is like a
| tenth or a hundredth of a cent.
| wslh wrote:
| 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".
| culi wrote:
| Depends on the currency. For Bitcoin, that's what the
| lightning network is *trying* to fix
| swaptr wrote:
| not on the lightning network
| idiotsecant wrote:
| 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.
| mandmandam wrote:
| 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.
| jp57 wrote:
| 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.
| notpachet wrote:
| > 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.
| si1entstill wrote:
| > 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.
| Trung0246 wrote:
| So it sounds like "in-game currency" at this point (from the
| minimum $15 charge)
| culi wrote:
| 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
| mattdesl wrote:
| 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
| jowea wrote:
| > - 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?
| mattdesl wrote:
| > 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.
| pjc50 wrote:
| 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!)
| mattdesl wrote:
| 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.
| CRM_CHILD_IDENT wrote:
| 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.
| mattdesl wrote:
| 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?
| CRM_CHILD_IDENT wrote:
| Yes, it is the same, you are right. That's the point - no
| inch more "power to the poeple" via cryptocoins.
| mattdesl wrote:
| Except these are not at all the same, and most users
| cannot fork or participate in PayPal/VISA protocols.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| 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?
| mattdesl wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| CRM_CHILD_IDENT wrote:
| 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!
| mattdesl wrote:
| 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.
| smeej wrote:
| 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.
| mattdesl wrote:
| 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.
| timbit42 wrote:
| You seem to mean Bitcoin when you say crypto. Other
| cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum can do autobill.
| braza wrote:
| 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).
| kodra wrote:
| Patreon creators actively voted against crypto.
| xcdzvyn wrote:
| 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.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| 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".
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| 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 ?
| dotnet00 wrote:
| 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.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| 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.
| mattdesl wrote:
| 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
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| 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...)
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| 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?
| mattdesl wrote:
| 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%.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| 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
| mattdesl wrote:
| Nobody is claiming that crypto UX is currently superior
| to Patreon or Stripe.
| fortran77 wrote:
| 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.
| squirrel wrote:
| Micropayments, fraud, alternative transaction models -- this
| would be a perfect topic for @patio11 . Would love to see a bits
| about money newsletter on this.
| charcircuit wrote:
| 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.
| FoeNyx wrote:
| 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.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| 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 EUR-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).
| hoofhearted wrote:
| 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...
| hoofhearted wrote:
| 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 : )
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| 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.
| bennettbackward wrote:
| What did they get away with? Is there some drama around that
| cover?
| maleldil wrote:
| What's wrong with the cover? What's your issue with Amanda
| Palmer?
| mschuetz wrote:
| It's a great cover...what do you mean with "get away with"?
| exizt88 wrote:
| 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.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| If you can find a niche it can work. My friend built his own
| website to sell his erotic art.
| mkmk wrote:
| How do smaller creators manage payments in the adult space? I
| thought it was impossible.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| PayPal. All the risque stuff is behind the paywall. Home
| page of the website gives no indication of what's within.
| qingcharles wrote:
| 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 (!).
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| 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.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| 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.
| x0x0 wrote:
| 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.
| exizt88 wrote:
| 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.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| 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.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| 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.
| Razengan wrote:
| 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.
| karaterobot wrote:
| 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.
| zem wrote:
| 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.
| teekert wrote:
| 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.
| olah_1 wrote:
| 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.
| teekert wrote:
| 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
| olah_1 wrote:
| > 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
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| 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.
| olah_1 wrote:
| 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.
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