Today received an e-mail stating that starting December 18, Patreon will be applying a new service fee of 2.9% + $0.35 that patrons will pay for each individual pledge.
I and I think most people only pledge $1, but with this new service fee, isn't that taking quite a bit of that $1? I can easily bump mine to $2 to invalidate that $0.35 charge.
@Brass-Man Are you aware of this new change?
Everyone should bump their pay by .50 cents or a dollar - Right now, I can tell you that TMD is going to be losing money every month. When TMD was bought by Andy, the goal wasn't to make money, but to bring the site back to the players. He's done an outstanding job - however, when a person, not a business, owns the site and it's costing them money, it's tough.
I've heard conflicting reports but my understanding is that this is a fee added onto the payment, not taken away from what I get. So basically, anyone contributing $1 will now be charged $1.38.
That means TMD won't immediately be leaking money. It does, however, make patreon at the $1 tier a lot less appealing for the supporter, and there's some potential that we see people drop their pledges.
We're not in crisis mode or anything, the site isn't at risk of shutting down, so nobody has to worry about that. It does mean this is a good opportunity for me to reexamine the business side of the site and see if there are any practical options for me to save money on costs or provide more value to higher-tier supporters
@brass-man said in Patreon:
provide more value to higher-tier supporters
All of the following are excellent ideas that have no possible ill effects:
$5 tier - You may delete one post per month for any reason.
$10 tier - You may give any non-admin user a one day ban for any reason/
$50 tier - You may edit any one non-admin post/
$100 tier - You may edit any one non-admin post without disclosing the change/
It might be better to make an annual Paypal donation.
TBH, I'd rather do this. I'm more likely to toss in $20 once a year than I am to signup for a patreon account and give $1 per month - which is also less money.
Alternatively, can paying for Andy's drinks at events count as a donation to TMD? If so, how should I differentiate between drinks bought for TMD and drinks bought because hanging out with Andy is cool? Can I write off a bottle of Malort? Fuck, I gotta call my tax guy now.
I would also be more likely to donate with paypal. Of course, offering Paypal and patreon options are not mutually exclusive either.
@thecravenone said in Patreon:
Can I write off a bottle of Malort?
Buying me Malort is a bannable offense
Yeah I mean, $1 is nothing. It’s just an arbitrary number that’s simple. The standard could have been $5... you can’t even get a Subway sandwich for $5 anymore.
So how long do you have to be a Patreon supporter before you get the badge? 
Is it for a certain total donation? Just curious!
Well, I've been finding that I have been enjoying TMD, so I think it's time for me to start supporting. Looking around, however, I don't see an obvious link to how to go about supporting TMD. This seems as good a place as any to ask.
@Brass-Man -- Would you rather get a Patreon donation or would PayPal be just as easy to deal with? If PayPal, how (email?) would you prefer it to be sent?
Link? If I do sign up for Patreon (I sort of agree with @thecravenone that PayPal would probably be preferable for me --- like I've been supporting chessgames.com with annual membership payments for the past 15 years or so --- but I'll go with the flow) where would I pledge the money? Is the Patreon called "Brass_Man," "TMD" or something else? (It may be obvious that I have not yet tried to use Patreon.)
In any case, maybe a sticky post somewhere either in the "community" or "TMD metadiscussion" forum might be a good idea. (maybe?)
Thanks,
Paul
Well, I've been finding that I have been enjoying TMD, so I think it's time for me to start supporting. Looking around, however, I don't see an obvious link to how to go about supporting TMD. This seems as good a place as any to ask.
In the header, click the thumbs up button. That will take you to the Patreon.
Fun fact about your username: You cannot create a folder with that name in Windows.
@bandswithothers said in Patreon:
So how long do you have to be a Patreon supporter before you get the badge?
Badge is for any Patreon contribution at any level, but it's a manual process so the answer is "when I get time/when you send me a PM me to remind me I haven't added you yet"
Well, I've been finding that I have been enjoying TMD, so I think it's time for me to start supporting. Looking around, however, I don't see an obvious link to how to go about supporting TMD. This seems as good a place as any to ask.
Like @thecravenone helpfully mentioned, the patreon link is the little thumbs up at the navbar at the top of the page ... they didn't have a symbol for patreon unfortunately! For better or worse I haven't really prioritized the business-y side of running the site so far.
- @Brass-Man -- Would you rather get a Patreon donation or would PayPal be just as easy to deal with? If PayPal, how (email?) would you prefer it to be sent?
At the moment, at TMD's current scale, PayPal is fine. The big advantage of Patreon (for me) is bookkeeping, I don't have to keep track of who's up to date and who isn't. At this point there's not much for me to track beyond supporter badges, so it's no big deal either way. With the new fee add from Patreon, it doesn't make sense for me to push people toward it for low-dollar amounts.
@thecravenone said in Patreon:
In the header, click the thumbs up button. That will take you to the Patreon.
D'oh! Well, I guess it should have been obvious, except to the oblivious.
Fun fact about your username: You cannot create a folder with that name in Windows.
Nor even a file -- not even with an extension, e.g., prn.txt. "prn", "con" and a few others have been reserved since some early DOS version. It's actually far less "fun" than it ought to be and has occasionally been a pain in the rear.
@Brass-Man said:
At the moment, at TMD's current scale, PayPal is fine. The big advantage of Patreon (for me) is bookkeeping, I don't have to keep track of who's up to date and who isn't. At this point there's not much for me to track beyond supporter badges, so it's no big deal either way. With the new fee add from Patreon, it doesn't make sense for me to push people toward it for low-dollar amounts.
To support TMD at a rate of $1 per month or $12 per year, a $0.38/month charge means $16.56 to the contributor. At that kind of rate, I'll echo @thecravenone and say I'd rather just send you $20. It's not much more and more of it goes to you/TMD rather than heavily to Patreon. According to the PayPal site, their fee is much like Patreon's, (2.9% + $0.30) but if I wanted to give TMD $20 (net), I would want to send $20.88 to cover the fees. That's a whole lot more efficient use of my money to support TMD. And at that, it's not clear that @Brass-Man would have to pay the PayPal fees, which are for "goods and services" with no charge for sending to "friends and family." There is also a reduced fee for non-profit and charitable receivers, but that's probably a lot more work than it's worth for TMD. All in all, the reduced fee-overhead of sending one contribution of, e.g., $20 per year nets TMD quite a lot over 12 Patreon "transactions" of $1 over the same time ($16.56).
As far as whether I'm "up to date" is concerned, for a purely voluntary contribution to support the community, I don't care about "badges". Just let me/us know where to send you a PayPal donation and I'll do it.
Thanks,
Paul
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