No Fun With Patreon's New Fee Structure

I waited this out a bit because I honestly expected Patreon to back down and revert their policy, but instead they have doubled down on their decision. 

If you haven't heard, Patreon made a small but significant change to their payment policy. There will now be a 5% fee added to the payments of patrons (you) with the intended effect of putting more payout into the pockets of creators (me).

Frankly, if Patreon had consulted little ol' me on this, I would have begged them not to do such a thing. People who click on "pledge $5" should reasonably expect not to pay more than $5 per post. Meanwhile, creators who get paid for things online should fully expect that fees will be charged and payouts will be adjusted accordingly. 

This puts me in a really awkward position, as I object strongly to the policy change but also rely on Patreon to fund and produce Fun With Shorts. It's no overstatement to say that there would be no Fun With Shorts here in 2017 without Patreon. This is a complicated and bad development.

SO WHAT CAN WE DO? ARRGH!

Several patrons have already deleted or reduced their pledges, and I don't blame them. In general my attitude has always been that the financial decisions of my patrons are private and none of my business, and I'm just grateful for whatever support I end up with. No one owes me an explanation or justification for reducing or deleting a pledge, ever. Amen.

What I can do is be open and honest and try to structure my campaign in a way that gives my patrons the most flexibility in supporting me on this important platform. So in response to the new policy I've created three new "Patreon Buster" pledge tiers at $1.60 (effectively $2, same rewards), $4 (effectively $5, same rewards), and $8 (effectively $10, same rewards). (Pledges can't be smaller than $1, or I would have created a .60 option!)

I don't know if this helps at all or if it just makes it more confusing. I had to start somewhere. I'm open to your thoughts and suggestions, of course. Thanks for sticking around and making this dream happen for me. I feel like Fun With Shorts is going strong from a creative perspective, so I'd hate for this kind of nonsense to slow us down.

Love,

Josh