The Problem with Patreon in 2021
Today I am writing to you to alert you to cumulative problems that have been developing on the platform Patreon over the past three years. I have been a client of the Patreon platform since 2017. Over the years, I tolerated many of those issues because I needed to make money as an artist to survive, and back then, the company seemed to have benign intentions. But the problems have become more frequent and chronic, just as the Patreon platform has also transformed into a corporate entity that is moving away from being a grass roots organization. Patreon has raised $90 million from investors, and it is valued at $1.2 billion. They have raised $255 million as of September 2020. Back in 2019, CEO Jack Conte told CNBC that the company’s business model would have difficulties maintaining a profitable business model unless it made changes. In 2019, Tech Crunch analyzed this challenge, and also forecast that an IPO could be part of Patreon’s future. Fast forward to 2021: the company is said to be planning to go public later this year, and the forecast of what will happen to independent artists and content creators like me is grim.
The future of the company promises to be very corporate. And historically, corporate greed and the arts have never mixed all that well, unless exploitation was factored into the relationship.
Here are a few of my personal issues with Patreon as it relates to my content and personal platform:
They claim to be a content-creation platform, but they are in a bit of an identity crisis. Sure, they provide tools for posting and sharing content, but what they are truly best at is being a payment processor. They are not very transparent about this.
When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in 2020, Patreon gave content creators no significant resources to optimize their efforts to survive the crisis or the economic recession that has followed. I made my own decision to re-brand, optimize my offerings and pricing models, but I did it all by myself. Patreon gave us nothing that we could use as guidelines or even tutorials to survive.
Patreon has rolled out billing changes that affected my Patreon subscribers negatively. These changes include sudden new changes in fees and billing cycles. The burden was placed on us, the content creators, to relay that info to them, and thus Patreon absolved themselves of the responsibility for that change, even though they are the payment processor in these transactions. Sure, they gave creators templated content for us to distribute to Patrons, but I am appalled that they also wouldn’t message the subscribers directly to back up the messaging from individual content creators.
Patreon staff discriminated against me inside their Discord, marking my own show-and-tell content as NSFW, while describing straight creators’ show-and-tells of a similar visual style as absolutely appropriate for the corresponding channel. In other words, they told me to take my queer content to the back of the bus when it comes to peer-to-peer interactions on their Discord.
That brings us to changes that are happening today that I want to bring to your attention. This week, Patreon announced internally to creators a new billing cycle that will move away from billing you, my Patrons, on the first day of the month, and instead move to a new cadence where you are charged based on the day you join. You can read this Reddit AMA with Patreon CEO Jack Conte here, but please take a read through the comments from content creators. They show a palpable sense of concern that is only met with corporate platitudes from Conte as a result. Patreon has not confirmed if and when this change will roll out, but the community of Patreon content creators has spoken out about how this will negatively impact many creators, and more importantly, how this could also impact the most important folks in the equation: the Patreon subscribers.
Jack Conte will be hosting a town hall meeting tomorrow, February 4 to discuss these new changes, and I will attend. But at this point, I am only attending because I want to stay informed.
On my end, I am taking accountability for myself and my readers and fans, and making a big decision: I am leaving the Patreon platform this month.
My biggest concerns about Patreon are their lack of transparency, disingenuous messaging to their clients (us content creators), and the dark forecast of what will come when they align themselves with corporate interests if they go public. When they have to answer to shareholders and Wall Street investors in the near future, there will only be one priority for the Patreon platform: profit. That will put small creators like myself in the crosshairs of their expansion. What’s more, creators who make NSFW and erotic content will surely be marginalized further than they already are by Patreon’s management team. Erotic content makes up a huge part of Patreon’s content-creator base, and I honestly don’t see how they will answer to questions about censorship and freedom of speech, when they are tracking toward an IPO. I do not have any confidence that their platform will act on our behalf.
And for that reason, I am getting out now, before I run into more challenges with the mediocrity that I experience day by day on their platform.
Luckily, I plan to keep making content and making a living as an artist through the e-commerce of my own web sites howtokillasuperhero.net and LEDQueens.com. I only ever signed up for Patreon as a way to augment my income as an artist when I started making YouTube content in 2017 to market my books, and it’s time now to migrate my efforts to my own platform, where I don’t have a middleman who is more aligned with Wall Street than with novelists, filmmakers and other content creators.
So please come with me in my journey, by frequenting my two web sites: howtokillasuperhero.net and LEDQueens.com, where I am the owner and designer of LED Queens Fitness Apparel. Sign up for our email newsletters, and help spread the word that I am making unforgettable art.
I hope that in writing this post you are able to look deeper at the factors surrounding the evolution of the Patreon platform, and make your own sound decisions based on the evidence you collect. Corporations are not inherently malignant, but unfortunately, many corporations slide into corrupt and exploitative practices motivated by greed. Critical thinking is of the utmost importance right now, and this is my time to put into effect my exit strategy from Patreon so I can continue reaching my audience through my own personal business channel. I wish you the best of luck, encourage you to read widely, and to make strong choices.
Cesar Torres