Daily(ish)

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Patreon Hits the Undo Button
Episode 227 • Published Dec 13, 2017

Except they’re not undoing the money and trust lost. At least not right away.

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Hello welcome to Daily(ish)) for December 13th 2017. It’s two degrees out feels like minus 2 Celsius but this is not a weather podcast, but this is brought to you by my Patron supporters still there still Patron still around and kicking Patreon.com/ichris is where you can check out my now two-year-old video on why you should support me on Patron.

I think it’s time to update that one. If only because my son is much older and different than he is in the video and maybe I am too. I don’t know well, I’m definitely older. But yeah patreon.com/ichris is where you can check out how you can support me, and I’m joking if you don’t have no idea why I would be literally laughing about the idea of patrons still being around then thankfully you’ve had you’ve been blissfully unaware of any sort of Internet controversy of the week, maybe you’ve been blissfully unaware of that internet controversy. Anyways about a week ago Patron announced a plan to change their fee structure. So without going into huge detail they were basically going to take the transaction fees service fees whatever you want to call them and move them from being on the craters account effectively mine, to the pledge the patrons, account yours in a sense anybody who supports me, so and there’s specifics and numbers and stuff in there, but basically they were going to change that such that so that the the marketing message anyways was the creators get to take home more money so the creators will be happy now explain that to your patrons, and hopefully they all stick around and are happy to do that as well.

The problem being that and I posted something to my patrons as well. Just saying like I’m not sure it happened on the day when I was really busy, and so I wasn’t sure didn’t have time to fully come take it all in but just saying like hey, this is happening. Read up if you want. Let me know if you have any questions, and we’ll see you sort of as the week wore on it was basically a week ago now that they announced this and and there was going to go into effect December 18th, and and it had other things to do with other changes they were wanting to do basically because they have sort of some folks that are on monthly things where which all of you are if you’re supporting me on Patreon and on or near the end of the month it. Charge you or whatever for your patronage, and and then you get access to all the stuff. That’s you know hidden or whatever or locked to patrons only on my patreon account for the rest of the month, and then they charge you again, and it repeats. But what if somebody joins up the what they’re thinking was like what if somebody and the confusion is somebody joins in December 15th. Let’s say, and they don’t get charged until December 30th, but they already get access to it, all the bonuses or whatever of being a patron and then they quit before money is ever changed hands. That was one issue, so they wanted to be able to like change the payment cycle, so that a patron when you sign up on the 15th of the 12th or the 17th, whatever, all of that should be just tied to whenever you sign up rather than just being a monthly thing.

Which kind of makes sense I get that I don’t deal with stuff for I’m giving away digital downloads and things like that a lot. There’s certainly bit of that with the courses and stuff that I’m doing but really course so far, but the ones I’m creating you know if somebody I’ve effectively given them to people patrons whatever level you’re supporting me yet and especially if you’ve been supporting me for a while there.

Someone new signs up, and then just gets that access code, and then go to San downloads the $20 course or whatever for free and then quits my Patron accounts supports, then you know the kind of Innocence stolen, I guess I don’t know I’m in it for the long term and don’t really anticipate that being a huge issue for the kind of stuff I do but I sympathize with creators who do deal with that kind of stuff so and there’s other stuff. So anyways all that to say. Huge uproar response from the internet basically pointing out, you know some issues with that people who donates which third of my supporters would be sort of in this one to two dollar-a-month support range, then effectively your your support is almost not doubling, but it’s going up quite a bit per month when you were agreeing to $1 month now it’s going up $2 $25 30 per month basically and so. 2.9% of the transaction plus 35 cents fee basically so actually more than that so like a buck 45 Buck. 50. I’m terrible at math especially live podcasting math - the money you’d be donating would going up obviously and so it’s it hurts a lot of the smaller donation or people who may be donated a lot to patreon, but it’s spread amongst a bunch a whole bunch of Patreon campaigns, and so either way a lot of people would stand to lose a lot of patronage if those people all went away. It would kind of suck to have two instead of giving $1 your now giving dollar-for-dollar fire 45 to 50 or whatever in so there’s a huge uproar from both patreon creators as well as people who support patreon like me. I’m lucky in that. I’m not as I said to my message to my current patrons. I’m not in a position where Pateon is supporting my living like it’s not my livelihood it. Helps us with goodstuff fees and things like that for sure.

We just had our registration for good stuff that FM the domain name is like 90 bucks a year because it’s a dot fm and so that helps to pay for that keep us in in business so to speak that way as well as our podcast hosting and our web hosting all that kind of stuff, but so it’s not my livelihood, but it is you know helps pay the bills.

So in response to that Patreon now just today on Wednesday December 13 six days later have roll back and said we’re not doing any of those changes in response to all the upper and the people complaining and Patriot campaigns losing. You know lots of donations support nothing actually has been lost yet, if those people come back. They would still would go you know their transactions would go through at the end of the month, but certainly.

There’s a very good chance that you know so once someone’s gone. It’s it’s much harder to get them back so. Nobody has actually changed hands. No. No dollar amounts changed yet, it’s sort of at the end of the month to the next payment cycle. I guess with patriotic the we’ll see I guess what the net changes in terms of how many people left patriotic patriotic people who like me creators as well as patriotic supporters through most of it.

I’ve actually been. Fairly I’m all for early jumping grabbing the Pitchfork or whatever and jumping on the internet rage bandwagon. Generally especially against corporations and big business and stuff like that. I’ve been kind of quiet in and if anything optimistic that Patron would do the right thing that they would roll this back like they have they’re still going to try and figure out a new way forward for sure, but they’re going to do it with.

Well they wrote a very big sort of apology letter acknowledging where they screwed up, and why and how and that they want to hear from the patron computa T and community and also work towards figuring out A Better Way Forward. But I was optimistic that they would do the right thing here in listening to the creators and users of their platform the people who make them the money that they have besides just the investors who have invested in the company and I was optimistic primarily because I I’ve watched them since they started knowing Jack Conte this CEO and where he started from as a just a Creator who was making music videos on YouTube and getting paid less than a penny per view or whatever.

It was and trying to figure out. Better way for creators to be able to do the thing they love and get paid for it, so they can keep doing the thing they love instead of having to worry about managing a platform in managing payment fees and structures and it stuff and all that kind of thing so they can just create the thing.

And put it out there in the world and whether it’s a pay for you know a transaction thing or just a patron supported model, which is where the name came from that’s kind of that was that’s not the heart of what Patriot is started with now they taken a venture capitalist investment, and I kind of stuff and so there’s it gets muddy, and who knows who’s really pulling the strings and stuff like that, but the in as I read the apology letter.

It’s definitely restored most of my faith in Patron that was lost over this, but I completely understand. Where folks are maybe now locking or catchers feel like they can’t trust them anymore feel like they need to move to something else the problem. Is that every unless you’d build it right from from ground like I’ve tweeted today in a bit of a tweets torment.

Unless you’re building it from scratch from the ground up you own every single piece of the stack from the other payment gateways to the websites the membership system or whatever you want to call it all the way through you’re still going to be at the mercy of somebody else’s business decisions so PayPal could just side to up their fees which then you either take on yourself, or you pass on to your supporters, which that’s gives you that right whereas what Patron was going to do was just force you to do that so that’s why they’ve rolled it back.

Apologize for that idea, but any rate your whether its member full as a popular WordPress plugin for managing memberships and things like that that some sites use they could just decide to stop making the plug-in sup supporting it because they want to do other stuff sell to a bigger company all I kind of stuff you’re here always at the mercy of somebody else’s business decisions unless you own every single piece of the stock and so.

That’s where the sum of the internet outrage. I guess towards patriotic felt a little bit over-the-top on unwarranted, but just like not taking back the big stepping back taking in the big picture of how life. It’s only been four years since Patriots started and where we were at before Patriot, and how hard it was to set up a sort of funding campaign of some sort of whether there was Kickstarter around at that time which was sort of like for a one-off project thing but patriotic came in with his ongoing support model that really sort of changed the game and.

Meow, recently kick starters announced. They’re planning to make. Planning to make something that is similar to pay Tree on in terms of ongoing support, and there’s other sites like it Indiegogo Etc all those concerns are out there. But a lot of them weren’t there when patrons started and enough that that gives them a free pass to do whatever they want obviously forever and ever but.

It does allow them in my mind anyways for my dollars and where I choose to use a platform like Patriot does allow them a few missteps along the way while they’re trying to figure this all out because in order for them to be around for me to use. They have to be profitable and unfortunately they don’t totally agree with the idea of taking Venture Capital Money in investment because then you’re kind of beholden to the people who have given you a whole bunch of money, but I do understand how enables possibly a whole bunch of opportunity.

Allows them to grow in a way that they needed to but couldn’t afford to at the time, so we’ll see where it all lands. There’s other services like I said before member full theirs. Podia apology, I think is how you say, it’s formerly with Coach through. I have my courses that I’m selling and making the snapshot course and the Instagram courses and stuff that I’m putting through our all through a company called that was called coach now called podia and which is the plural of Podium?

I think and so they have a membership system. That’s kind of was ruled out just before this all happened with Patron that could be a viable way for. Me to set up a sort of system that people would use but struggle with that one because it’s it’s more of like a selling stuff and commerce kind of thing where’s patriotic definitely, built around the idea of like supports and membership in a artist creative.

Type way as opposed to the more Commerce business side, which is what we’re podia sort of lands roughly, but it’s it could be used for that as well, so I’m still evaluating amusing taking this opportunity with what happened with patrons just sort of. Are you ate and at least now there isn’t a panic or rush to do it before December 18th when all these changes were going to go into effect with patrons so all that to say if you’ve got questions comments concerns about Patron specifically about why you’d support me or why you why you are and wish you shouldn’t we are want to not any of that kind of stuff feel free to email me Chris at good stuff FM Twitter.

I’m I Chris on Twitter, and I’m. Experimenting with besides the core stuff that I’m experimenting with a little app called Descript. I think is how it’s pronounced but basically it’s a transcription app for Mac where it takes the audio from a podcast like this one transcribes it using Google free what it’s called Google language Google transcribed whatever an API with Google and then.

That your army would pay for but then they allow you at scale to use the service for certain amount of minutes, and and then make a transcription of the podcast and so I’ve tried that out actually on episode 227 are episode 26 of this podcast previous episode, and if you check the link in the show notes you can watch the video where I sir.

Walkthrough how I just use trick Descript to transcribe the audio for that podcast and and check it out in the show knows you can sign up, and if you do. We’ll both get 100 extra minutes of free transcription time on the service to try it out and what I like about them. Just like many other services on the Internet.

It’s free to try, but then you do have to pay if you want to keep using it because again if they don’t make any money. They’re not going to be around or they’re going to get sold to somebody else and then they’re not around anymore. Back to square one so yeah, I think that’s all I was going to say on that I feel like I rented for a long.

Yeah fourteen minutes alright. Well. This is a longer daily ish. Hope you have a great Wednesday wherever you are in the world. I really want to thank the patron supporters. Who are sticking with me, and I did lose a patriarch, and that’s fine like I and the reason given was because of the fee structures, and maybe they’ll come back.

Maybe they won’t but I completely understand the. The need to not disappear to disagree I guess with what Patron was doing and show that by you know not continuing to use the service. That’s fair and and there’s nothing wrong with that. I understand. Hopefully they come back someday, but I’m also I yeah, I’ve support that decision obviously and not going to disagree if any of that kind of stuff because it is frustrating they handled it poorly and.

Hopefully that will be the last time. It’s something that bad anyways from Bay Tree on right like I was starting to say a minute ago. Have a great day. Hope you have a great Wednesday wherever you are in the world and enjoy the rest of your week. Thank you for listening.

Thank you for your support.