Patreon is ending per-creation billing. I thought this was a migration problem. It’s turning into a business-model problem.
Patreon is ending per-creation billing. I thought this was a migration problem. It’s turning into a business-model problem.
I thought this was going to be mostly a platform migration problem.
The more real cases I look at, though, the more it seems like a business-model problem instead.
I’ve been looking at creators who still use Patreon’s old per-creation billing.
At first the obvious question seemed to be:
“What should they replace Patreon with?”
But that question started feeling wrong pretty quickly.
A weekly podcaster, a mapmaker publishing several times a month and someone who releases one substantial piece of work every two or three months can all be using the same billing model.
But the same “solution” makes no sense for all three.
What seems to matter much more is things like:
how often they really publish,
what happens in quiet months,
what supporters actually pay after caps,
and whether supporters think they’re funding the creator or buying each individual release.
I’m testing this on a small number of real creator cases now, and I’m still trying to understand where the line actually is between:
keeping the recurring model,
changing the offer,
moving the release-based part somewhere else,
or splitting the two.
What I’m curious about is whether anyone here has dealt with something similar outside Patreon.
Have you ever had a platform change force you to rethink the business model itself rather than just migrate tools?
Did you adapt the model, move somewhere else, or split the business across two systems?
Your "what happens in quiet months" variable is the one I'd sort creators by first. It decides everything else.
We ran into a smaller version of this with our own pricing. Not a platform change, but a model that looked fine on paper and broke for quieter accounts. A fixed trial made sense for busy accounts and felt empty for small ones, so we moved to a free tier instead.
For the creators you're testing: do the ones who publish rarely lean toward splitting, or do they want to keep it all in one place?
Not long enough for me to call it a real signal yet.
The discussion has produced some useful replies, and a couple of creators have shown real interest, but I still don’t have a completed case where someone gives me the information, gets the result and then actually does something with it.
So at the moment I’d call it interest, not proof that the idea works.
I’d rather be too strict about that than convince myself too early.
How did you decide when you had enough signal to keep going?
Honestly, I'm in the same spot as you. We get about one signup a day without ads, which I read as interest. But none of those users has reached the point where the product does its job yet, so I can't call it proof.
The bar I set for myself: interest keeps me going for a few more weeks, but the real signal is one user getting a result and doing something with it without me pushing. For us that's a welcome DM that gets a reply. Then the first person who pays for it.
So I'm spending this week on that gap instead of on more signups. I'm emailing every user to ask what stopped them. Your "completed case" framing is the same idea. Would you count a case as completed if the creator acts on your analysis but hasn't changed their pricing yet?
I’d count that as a real action signal, but not as a completed outcome yet.
If a creator looks at the analysis and decides to change something without me pushing, that would already be much stronger evidence than a reply or a form submission.
But I’d still want to come back later and see what actually happened after the change before calling the case complete.
So for me it’s probably:
interest → action → outcome.
Right now I’m still trying to get from the first one to the second.
In your case, what would you count as enough evidence to move from “this is interesting” to “this is actually working”?
Using your three steps, mine look like this:
Interest: signups. We have that, about one a day.
Action: a user connects Instagram, writes their message and launches without me holding their hand. Only a handful have done that so far.
Outcome: a welcome DM goes out, the follower replies, and the user keeps it running for two weeks. Zero so far.
So my bar for "this is working" is 10 users who reach the outcome on their own, and at least one of them upgrading to paid. Until then it's interesting, not working.
The target for this week is smaller: get 5 people to their first sent DM, even if I have to walk them through it. I'll write up what I find either way, happy to tag you in it since this thread shaped how I'm thinking about it.
That distinction makes sense to me.
Five people getting to the first sent DM is a useful short-term target, but the harder test is whether people can reach the actual outcome on their own and whether one of them eventually pays. That keeps signups from doing too much of the talking.
It also sharpens my own test. A reply or a completed check is still only a step along the way. The stronger signal is whether a creator actually changes something because of the analysis, and whether that decision still makes sense once they act on it.
And thanks for thinking of tagging me when you write it up — I really appreciate that. I’d genuinely like to see what you find, especially where people get stuck between signup and the first sent DM.
Deal, you'll get the first tag when it's up.
We hit this with search rather than billing. Google's core updates have repeatedly forced SEO practitioners to rethink whether they're optimizing a channel or building on a platform — and the distinction matters because a channel change is a tactics problem while a platform change is a strategy problem. When ChatGPT started sending 25% of sign-ups to a Japanese marketplace (a post from Hisashi on here today), that's not an SEO tweak — it's the same category of shift you're describing.
For us specifically: we built an SEO audit tool, then AI chatbots started answering the questions people used to Google. We didn't migrate — we added AEO scanning alongside the SEO audit. Your split option. The cost is maintaining two value propositions in one product. The benefit is the new channel doesn't cannibalize the old one because the audiences are different at this stage.
That tactical vs strategic distinction is probably the part that stuck with me most.
In the creator cases I’m looking at, changing pricing or billing while staying on the same platform feels very different from actually moving somewhere else. Once you move, you’re changing more than one thing at the same time — supporter behaviour, payment habits, the way the creator operates, and the risk of losing people during the transition.
Your SEO/AEO example also feels very close to another option I keep seeing: not replacing the existing model completely, but adding a second route alongside it.
What I’d be really interested in is how you decided that was the right move. What told you “we should add this alongside what already works” rather than either staying with the old model alone or making a more fundamental change?
Across the creator cases you're testing, what behavior most clearly separates a billing migration problem from a deeper mismatch in how supporters value the creator's output?
The clearest signal I’m seeing so far is what happens in the months when nothing substantial gets released.
If supporters are still comfortable paying because they value the archive, access, community or simply supporting the creator, then the problem starts looking more like billing and pricing.
If they really expect to pay only when something new comes out — especially when monthly caps are common — then moving to monthly changes the agreement itself.
I’m still testing where that line really is though.
Are you asking because you’re looking at a creator dealing with this now? If so, I’d be curious what the supporters are mainly paying for in that case.
I’m looking at that broader distinction around pricing changes vs. changes in what supporters actually value. Could be easier to compare notes by email sometime, if you’re open to it.
Yes, I’m open to comparing notes. I’m still early enough in this that I’d rather compare actual cases than turn the pattern into a theory too quickly.
So far the clearest distinction I’m seeing is this: if the change only affects when or how much supporters are charged, it’s mostly a billing problem.
If it changes what supporters believe they’re paying for — or starts changing what the creator produces just to make the subscription feel justified — then it becomes a business-model problem.
That second case is the one I’m finding more interesting, because I’m already seeing signs of it in some of the creator situations I’m looking at.
What kinds of cases are you seeing on your side?
Email works on my side — feel free to send over whichever address you use there.
I’m open to comparing notes, but I’d rather not post my personal email publicly here.
I’m happy to keep the conversation here for now.
I was actually curious about the question I asked before: what kinds of cases are you seeing on your side?
That would help me understand where our work actually overlaps.