Patreon (Beware of "Pledge Dodgers")

[Rochrok]

Just a heads up (cause I just found this out the hard way). Patreon allows people access to your feed before payment is processed. So if you are giving out rewards. Don't post it on your feed!

Last month I got my first two pledges, but it turns out, only one was legit. The other was just a "pledge dodger" a person who pledges, gains access to your rewards, then dips before the first-month payment is processed. I'm just now learning (from googling up some info and coming across other people with the same problem) that this is a common problem for the platform and Patreon seems slow to do anything about it. The only advice given was to never post rewards on the feed and instead wait until after the first month (When payments are processed) to send rewards. How annoying. I feel this only punishes legit pledgers because they won't get their rewards until after the month is over.

Anyway, I ended up removing all of my scheduled posts, promising my legit supporter that I will email the rest of her rewards soon. sigh.

Looking at Ko-fi right now.

[daeofthepast]

Is there no way to block a person on patreon?? :0

[joannekwan]

Yeah I don't know why after more than a year Patreon hasn't made the collect payment upfront option available to everyone yet. That is the single-best way to deter pledge-and-leavers.

But if that option isn't available to you. Best way to go about it would be to hold off on rewards until payments are processed and in your paypal/bank and send rewards individually to people who have paid, through DM's or e-mail. Even so, I have the pay upfront option on, I still don't do any Patreon posting until that money shows up in my paypal.

@daeofthepast You can block people.

[Rochrok]

I believe so, from the Patron manager. Only problem is, all traces of that person (even though they were a patron of mine throughout April) is gone. I don't see them as a former patron, follower, or anything. Only the supporter who actually paid. Which leads me to believe that if you cancel your pledge before payment goes through you are not counted as a pledge at all. I searched her name on patron and came across an account but I don't know for sure if it's the same person.

I still blocked her just in case

@joannekwan, is that the "pay per creation" option?

[joannekwan]

No it's a feature where basically once a person pledges, their card is immediately charged and the funds go to your Patreon account balance.

What is charge up front? How do I get it?

[daeofthepast]

Ooh, that looks good. Is it still in beta?? :0

[joannekwan]

Yeah for whatever reason.

I know lots of people are pissed that it's not available to all creators yet.

[Rochrok]

I wish they roll it out for everyone. That would help a great deal.

[Zugaikotsu]

Yes, this sucks. I'm just starting, but it already happened. Unfortunately I'll just share small res censored teasers and send the full files after pledge. u.u

[spadesart]

i wasn't aware pay upfront wasnt given to everyone yet :0 thats really the only way to deal with that kinda thing. is it still in beta? you might be able to email them to request that function.

[shazzbaa]

Re: Charge Upfront
They talked about this a bit in their explanation of that whole "patrons pay the fees instead of the creators" fiasco that happened in December -- it's weirdly complicated because there are a lot of factors, but part of the reason they were rolling that out was in anticipation of rolling out "charge upfront" to every account by default in a way that didn't create a bunch of extra fees or add extra confusion to patrons.

Here's a relevant snippet:

That’s why we’re hustling to release charge up front to every creator, to really make sure you get paid for your creations up front.

Some creators already have charge up front enabled and, even at its current state, it’s far from perfect. Example: let’s say you become a patron of a creator who has charge up front enabled on November 29. You’ll be charged the full amount immediately, and then you’re kind of double-charged that same amount again on December 1. That’s bad. Patrons are surprised by it (and sometimes angry about it), and some creators feel the need to refund their patrons because of it. That’s obviously not a great, long-term solution!

When the announcement for the fee change didn't go over well, they withdrew it, but some of the issues raised in this explanation might be part of why they still haven't got charge upfront out of beta yet.

[Rochrok]

I don't know why they can't count each person's time of payment as the beginning of their month. Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, and practically every single monthly site implemented this. Or if they are insistent on sticking to the charge everyone at the start of the month model, then lock out the ability to pledge mid month or something to prevent the double charge.

[shazzbaa]

Oh! If you check the full article linked in that post, that's exactly what they're talking about trying to do! It introduced some weirdness with the way fees were structured, which is why they started looking into changing the way fees work.

[LordSeriphus]

@Rochrok

I think it'd be a pain to make the program take money like that without someone managing it themselves. (Which would create more jobs for the site owners.) They might be having trouble, because the patron's account would have to be charged once on different days in a month for every single thing they've pledged to, rather than at the beginning of the month. That would mean making a program to track both new and old pledges, as well, which makes the process even more challenging to pull from beta.

[mariusthered]

another thing about the payment up front feature is you need a mobile phone to get it set up, i know most of you have these already, but the fact you cant just do it online means they want to sell on your cell number to advertisers and that is one of the reasons i got put off patreon and left. the other reason was the amount of content ive seen floating around the net that has been stolen from patreon is staggering. personally i think their must be better ways from making money from your art.

[AnakngTinapay]

the amount of content ive seen floating around the net that has been stolen from patreon

Yeah, if you're popular, your stuff will be most likely spread out around. Someone will have to "sacrifice" paying/pledging then distributes them around the net.

[Rochrok]

Well, that doesn't sound so good. lol! At this point I'm starting to push my Ko-fi page.

I don't think there is a way to stop pirates, I think that for as long as we offer our work online it's gonna end up in the hands of people who didn't pay for it.

[daniellekoste]

I've had this happen to me once. It sucks because I already only have very few patreons right now since i'm still growing my fanbase and patreon for novels and writers don't appeal as easily as art or comic patreon. I made sure to publicly shame the person (not by name, but made a post to my pages about maybe not pledge dodging me because it wasn't fair to not only me, but to the patreons that actually paid me for the content) but besides that it was just a sting i had to deal with.

The fact is, if someone wants your content for free they are going to get it one way or another. You just have to have faith that the rest of your fans and followers can make up for the lost profit with their loyalty and support.