Regarding Patreon’s fee change
First off, I wanted to thank everyone who has been generous enough to donate to @chswx, helping to defray my costs and expand the datasets I have available to further improve the quality of the product I can put out to you. The outpouring of support has been fantastic, and I cannot thank everyone enough for their help. It has been huge — more than you know!
To this point, I have preferred Patreon’s platform for fundraising. It has everything fully baked in and gives me some interesting tools with which I can work to build pretty cool premium experiences. That, and I just prefer giving people the option to send small donations to express their support for what I’m doing rather than me trying to defray my costs through advertising or something else similarly heinous.
Unfortunately, a change announced to creators yesterday and to patrons today has left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. In short, Patreon has increased their transaction fees. In the process of doing so, the company also partially shifted the burden to those of you who pledge. This change is going to be especially noticeable for those of you who make many small donations across the platform, because the new fees are being assessed per pledge.
In my view, that isn’t right.
If the costs of using a platform rise, then that’s a cost I should have at least the option to absorb as part of doing business. From there, I could make the decision on how to adjust reward tiers or recruit more small donors. Unfortunately, my hands are tied in this regard as Patreon is not giving us the option to take on these costs.
Understandably, there are some of you who are likely rethinking your use of Patreon going forward. I’ve hesitated to go beyond Patreon for fundraising purposes as it gives me a really easy way to go about accounting for the funds that come in. I’ve gotten feedback that some of you still want to support @chswx but don’t want to pay Patreon to do it, and that is fair (and much appreciated!). So, I’ve added a PayPal email address, tipjar@chswx.com, with which you can donate to the cause. These are one-time donations, too, which I know many of you are more comfortable with overall. If you like the subscription model that Patreon provides, I’ll be maintaining that page as well, with some goodies flowing through to patrons from time to time.
Again, from the bottom of my heart — thank you to all of those of you who have supported @chswx this year, making it the best year yet as we gear up to celebrate one decade of me running this account in April 2018.
Jared
