Patreon has announced a new service fee policy.
Supposedly, it is supposed to help Creators keep more money - however, this is at the expense of our Patrons. Right now, Creators pay a 5% fee + whatever fee is charged by our payment processors (in my case, PayPal); on December 18th, that will be changed so that Patrons will be paying 2.9% + 35 cents per pledge. TechCrunch has an article about this, with someone pointing out that "Pledging $100 to 1 creator will now cost $103.25 which is reasonable. Pledging $1 each to 100 creators will now cost $138 which is not reasonable."
This is not good news.
Here is Patreon's blog post about the what's happening and why: https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/?_ga=2.131857487.1915026464.1512801843-1669255679.1501451341
Here is their FAQ: https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005631963
I don't know anybody who is for this. I sure as hell am not. Of the Patreons that I currently follow and/or donate to, here are others who are against this as well:
Seanan McGuire (and another post from them)
Jackie Wohlenhaus (and another post from them)
Amanda Palmer
Laurie Penny
Jeph Jacques
In my honest opinion, this is fucked up.
If you can no longer support me on Patreon, I totally understand. I am going to look into other services to replace Patreon if they do not come to their senses. You all need to do what is best for your situations. It sucks that we are now at this juncture, and I hope that it gets resolved quickly.
I am looking into recurring payment options via PayPal.
I don't know if that is possible or not, but I hear rumor that it is. If you are interested in still supporting me, but not through Patreon, feel free to use PayPal or SquareCash.
Take care, all. Let's hope that this gets resolved soon.