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17 Comments

Is Patreon expensive?

Hey everyone, this may sound like a ridiculous question, but is there anyone think Patreon is expensive? The way I see is Patreon is a paywall to categorised feed of exclusive content. This can be built with any tool and by anyone that has basic understanding of backend and frontend. And they are taking averagely 10 of net revenue of all creators.

Again, please go easy on me, I wholeheartedly support the idea of creators getting paid. I just don't really get the ins and outs of Patreon.

Thank you.

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    Platforms like Patreon make it easy for creators to verify their ideas and get started, but as soon as you start making money it's hard to ignore the fact that you're losing 10% of your revenue in fees. It goes much beyond that with Patreon though, because you can't actually migrate your business from Patreon to other platforms. You have to start over. TLDR: On Patreon you don't own your business data.

    More info here: https://opensubscriptionplatforms.com/

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      Interesting resource. Thank you. 10% may not seem a lot but accumulatively, it can be massive :))

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        For sure, especially as you start to scale.

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    If you are looking for alternatives, I will be releasing one very shortly.

    Currently I have a pay-per-content paywall. Will be introducing a donation/tipping widget very soon. Will allow people to donate/tip a few cents (any amount really). Instead of having monthly subscription donations or donating dollars at a time, it is basically tip/donate for a piece of content you liked, which is good for getting money from casual users. Can add with like 3-4 lines of code. Not exclusionary either. Can still use patreon/ko-fi with it.

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      does it sound like Gumroad?

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    it worked, for a while: https://blog.patreon.com/monetization-strategies-bitcoin-pub

    they featured us. :)

    ... so, the pricing was good, but, not great. i have since left to build an alternative.

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      You might should try https://ko-fi.com, It's worked fine for me and seems better than https://patreon.com.

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        mmm. i'm building my own solution. :)

        but, thanks!

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          what is it that Patreon is missing and you want to build on your own? (other than the percentage of net revenue that they are taking). It would be great to hear from someone who is switching.

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            folks like real-time chat. so, that's one of the problems we're solving.

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              Interesting, the most popular option is to integrate with chat platforms like Discord and Slack, but I guess it is not sufficient for you.

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                when you mean "integrate"... can you explain that? what does that mean to you? thanks!

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                    lol. we did that. integrated it "deep" into a discourse forum, etc.

                    ... still. good stuff, but, not good enough.

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                      yep, I guess so :))

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          Your welcome. If you need any help feel free to comment below, or contact me at https://sewellstephens.com/contact-me. I'm a web/software designer.

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