Why I left Patreon

The story of the increasing irritation and frustration lasted a few weeks.

When I opened the account, it took me quite a while to figure out and fill up everything. That website is horribly designed, the links and groups of items don't have any kind of sound logic, and it's a pain to try and find things. And this comes from someone who has done web developing since the late 1990s

Anyway, I managed to fill up everything (or so I thought) and then I contacted them to ask - because I couldn't find anywhere anything about that - where do I upload my tutorials so they can be accessed only by patrons.

The response? "Oh, not on Patreon, you host them wherever you want, we only provide a place for you to grow and develop and find people to support you"

Already in my mind the question started arising "then if you only provide a space for me to make a profile, why would I accept you to be a middle man who takes a commission from people who want to support me without providing me any service of value?" but then I let it be because I had too much on my plate, and it didn't seem so bad.

I will just skim over the dumbest idea that they have about the way patronage would work - the patrons are only charged on the first of the month, and you are strongly discouraged to give any reward to patrons until they successfully pay their pledge. So, if someone pledges an amount, let's say, on the 2nd of the month, they have to wait until the next month before they are able to benefit from any reward. If it were me, I'd just say "ok I'll take my money somewhere else". But, that's beside the point.

So the 1st of the month comes. On the 4th, I go get my earnings. Patreon's commission? 14%. I try to initiate a payout, I get the message that "no payment preferences have been set". I look. And look. I click again on "paypal", I go in the next tab to enter my paypal id, go back on the previous page, click "save preferences", again, "no payment preferences have been set". I lost about half an hour trying to figure out what was going on. Finally I gave up and put in a ticket for help.

They replied. Today. The 9th. Sending me a screenshot that I had missed a field.

This was the screenshot:

I went again and looked at the page. I saw this

I had to click about 5 times Ctrl+ to maximize the page and see that, indeed, there WAS a field under that "learn more" thing. Because, as you see in the photo above, you can't see a darn thing there.

I sent them this screenshot and told them to change the @#$ colors on the page.

Then I entered my paypal email, clicked "save preferences"... and I got this message

And this was when I exploded.

So:

1. Absolutely no service of any kind. You don't get advertisement, you don't get a space to upload your patron rewards, you don't get anything. Just a kind of simplified facebook page, on which you can only post links to things you have uploaded on other websites (yes, it's the same for photos, not just for videos). You do get (if you do not opt out) all kinds of spammy emails with all kinds of advice about "how to be successful" (of the kind that the internet is full, for free), a.k.a. "we'll pretend that we give you advice but you'll have to do all the legwork".

2. The reason why I left Etsy was because they keep your money for a while, before transferring them to your bank. And at least Etsy offers you a lot of space to put your stuff, photos, tutorials, downloads, etc. And they don't take 14%!!! So...... why would I pay Patreon? Why would patrons pay Patreon?

To be very honest, I think at this moment it got to the point of it being a fad, a fashion thing, a "I'm cool, I got a Patreon account".

I am not willing to pay to be on Patreon when I get nothing in return. I don't care about fads and fashions. It's just a scam.

Ah, and they wanted me to write emails and requests to "suspend my account" because "they can't close it for accounting purposes". I went ahead and deleted everything that was on my profile, wrote that I don't accept patrons anymore and I'm out of there, and wrote to them that if they think I'll waste another 5 minutes on their stupid red tape they're out of their mind, and they can keep my account for keepsakes.

Then I went to paypal, created subscription buttons, and made a new page to this blog, you can see it on the top tabs, it says "monthly subscription". You can be my sponsor without greedy good-for-nothing middle man. If I do all the work, why would I pay someone else? Why would you?

Patreon.

Pffft