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Can someone explain Patreon to me?

Sloop John B

Sloop John B

And any old music will do…
So I was listening to a Darko audio podcast, and I quite like John Darko’s take on hi-fi and music and streaming and his opinions. He mentions Patreon at the end of all his videos and I thought sure I might give him a few quid to support the work he does. When I log on to Patreon, it was much more like kickstarter in that there were various levels of support that you got slightly more content for but they were limited and it turns out the is only a €20 per month or €50 per month level available whereas the €5 per month which is sold out it’s probably where I would place my level at. So I’m wondering why would you limit the amount of money you can get on Patreon rather than having a situation where as many people as possible could pay the €5 per month payment?


.sjb
 
It's a monetised platform that provides tools for content creators to run a subscription service for their content and taps into a network of users already using the platform for existing channels/sites/creators etc.
 
Tony L said:
FWIW I’ll likely be looking at Patreon myself next year. I don’t like the idea of paying their fees, but given falling ad revenue due to widespread ad blocker use it may help keep pfm viable long-term.
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I was guilty of this for a long time and it never occurred to me that I was denying you revenue.

I wonder if there's some way of reminding people that PFM relies on ad revenue to keep it going? A sticky thread? A banner?
 
Sloop John B said:
it turns out the is only a €20 per month or €50 per month level available whereas the €5 per month which is sold out it’s probably where I would place my level at. So I’m wondering why would you limit the amount of money you can get on Patreon rather than having a situation where as many people as possible could pay the €5 per month payment?
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Where tiers are limited it's usually either because they come with physical goods (t-shirts, mugs, etc.) where you want to control the amount of things you have to order and send out. Or in the case of higher tiers some way of creating a scarcity or limited edition or FOMO effect like "Founder" or "President's Club" or something.

A lot of the difficulty with Patreon is structuring the tiers and pricing and thinking of benefits that are worth paying for but are free or very low cost to provide and don't screw up whatever content or service you are providing. Hence there is a lot of creativity in how people set these things up as mostly it comes down to finding a fair way to monetise the good will you have built up.
 
paulfromcamden said:
You don't think creating content is a job people should be paid for?
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Not necessarily no. There's content and there's content. At the end of the day it's for the consumer to judge it's value, not the creator. As with anything really, the market ultimately determines worth.

I take the view that if a person decides to give up a job to start making youtube videos, then that's a risk/decision they've decided to make. I feel no obligation or compunction to support them financially just because they did so. I honestly can't think of a single "internet content creator" on any platform that if they disappeared tomorrow it would impact my life in any significant way. Of course I find some of the information etc interesting, I may even engage with it by leaving a comment. But then I find conversations with people in real life interesting and engaging. I don't give those people money.
 
gez said:
Not necessarily no. There's content and there's content. At the end of the day it's for the consumer to judge it's value, not the creator. As with anything really, the market ultimately determines worth.
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Sure. And isn't that what's happening with people subscribing to Patreon to receive content they enjoy?
 
paulfromcamden said:
Sure. And isn't that what's happening with people subscribing to Patreon to receive content they enjoy?
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Presumably.

Apart from music and film/tv streaming services and my TV licence I don't pay for any content. It's not that I believe online content should be free, just that there's none that I feel is of enough value (to me) to warrant my paying for it. If others wish to contribute, all power to them.

I take the general view that if someone does something with an expectation to get paid they should either a) not provide it free at all or b) just accept that it's worth is determined by if and how much anyone does actually pay. If that doesn't make them enough money, they need to find something else to do to make a living.

That said, most such content I watch is on youtube, and they get paid for me just watching anyway. (yes I'm aware they also get more money from subscribers etc and that not all videos are monetised).
 
gez said:
Apart from music and film/tv streaming services and my TV licence I don't pay for any content. It's not that I believe online content should be free, just that there's none that I feel is of enough value (to me) to warrant my paying for it. If others wish to contribute, all power to them.
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If you don’t feel something is worth paying for you should certainly not waste the creator’s bandwidth as that costs them money. This is my objection to ad-blockers and related piracy devices. To my mind it is identical to Napster or whatever, just piracy. I’ve no objection to anyone not liking my site, but they shouldn’t freeload and expect me to pay for their bandwidth. Anyone running an ad blocker and not regularly hitting the ‘donate’ link needs to **** right off IMHO.

This is how I approach other sites; I pay the monthly subscription fee for ad-free YouTube, I don’t run any ad-blocking on my web browser. I understand the internet isn’t free as I know first-hand just how much money, time, effort and stress running a good website involves! It is a full-time job. Just don’t block the site’s income stream. That is theft.
 
I run an ad blocker which I set up years ago when my computer was regularly crashed every time I tried to visit the Independent website. It drove me to blocking its ads, and I believe it is or was something of a byword for excessive ad use on media sites. I do, however, whitelist sites where I use them and get value, like pfm (though for some reason, despite my whitelisting the domain, I don't see ads on pfm on my desktop, just on my phone/iPad). Also, I do worry that some ads are vectors for malware.

So my take is that ad blockers have their uses, but people who use them are honour bound to whitelist sites they consume regularly.
 
I have been on websisted that asked me to turn off my ad blocker as that blocked their main source of income. I use no ad blockers now as ad-blockers are good at flagging idiotic sites that run excessive or just plain useless ads. I make sure to leave asap.
 
Sloop John B said:
So I was listening to a Darko audio podcast, and I quite like John Darko’s take on hi-fi and music and streaming and his opinions. He mentions Patreon at the end of all his videos and I thought sure I might give him a few quid to support the work he does. When I log on to Patreon, it was much more like kickstarter in that there were various levels of support that you got slightly more content for but they were limited and it turns out the is only a €20 per month or €50 per month level available whereas the €5 per month which is sold out it’s probably where I would place my level at. So I’m wondering why would you limit the amount of money you can get on Patreon rather than having a situation where as many people as possible could pay the €5 per month payment?


.sjb
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The question here seems to be whether Patreon restricts the number of low cost levels a person can have; or if not, has the person intentionally (or inadvertently) set a cap on the number of low cost subscriptions they offer, and may be losing possible revenue as a result.
 
Rosewind said:
I have been on websisted that asked me to turn off my ad blocker as that blocked their main source of income. I use no ad blockers now as ad-blockers are good at flagging idiotic sites that run excessive or just plain useless ads. I make sure to leave asap.
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Yes, I've been on those, and I never stay as I'm never going to disable an ad blocker to please a website I haven't visited before.

Interestingly, I started using Edge a while ago, and the ad blocker doesn't show as one of the add-ons I have enabled. I set it up when I was still using Firefox. Still don't see ads for pfm, though.
 
matthewr said:
A lot of the difficulty with Patreon is structuring the tiers and pricing and thinking of benefits that are worth paying for but are free or very low cost to provide and don't screw up whatever content or service you are providing. Hence there is a lot of creativity in how people set these things up as mostly it comes down to finding a fair way to monetise the good will you have built up.
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I have seen a system where subscribers get the content earlier. I remember that one of the hifi mags used to give subscribers access to the for sale listings earlier than shop bought copies. Costs nothing to them, valuable to the subscriber.
 
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