I'm going to push back a little on this. I've run a Patreon and have a pretty good idea of what they provide for creators, and I've also looked into how I could replicate their services on my own -- and it turns out it's not really that trivial.
- I want something that handles tiered membership levels with paid access control.
- I also want something that keeps track of "goals" for donation drives (e.g., "if I bring in $500 a month, I'll do this thing for everyone").
- If I have rewards at different levels (which I did), it's nice to have something that keeps track of when I need to send those out and who I sent them out to.
- It's nice to have what amounts to a basic CRM, keeping records of who paid me what at what points. If I say "maintain the membership at the $9/month level for at least six months and I'll send you this widget at the end of the year," I want my membership platform to be able to tell me who was at that level for six months even if they're not at that level at the end of the year.
- It's nice to have a built-in mailing list if I need it.
- While Patreon is very up front about not being a discoverability platform, aggregation of creators still matters: it is way easier to support a half-dozen or more creators monthly when you get one monthly charge instead of many monthly charges, and in fact people do occasionally discover new creators by discovering who creators they follow are supporting. If I were running this on my own, I wouldn't get that benefit and I probably couldn't have a "just pay me a little because you're nice" tier: it's no problem to pay $1 or $2 a month to somebody if it's part of that bundle, but it's not worth the hassle if it's standalone. (This was why everyone on Patreon screamed bloody murder when they proposed unbundling charges a few years back.)
- Last but not least, not every creator is going to be comfortable putting together a Patreon-esque platform on their own. The more friendly the solution is, the more likely it is to cost money, and Patreon's pricing structure ends up being more competitive than you might think. WordPress membership management plugins that don't suck are often commercial, some with fees of $100+ per year; Memberful is free for limited use, but $25 per month otherwise; Substack charges 10% of your revenue and, like Patreon, doesn't cover processing fees that way.
Obviously none of these give Patreon a "lock-in" and it might make sense for creators to jump ship anyway; I'm certainly keeping my eye on alternatives. But I'm kind of a control freak. I genuinely don't think "anyone can build their own Patreon over a weekend" is true, and I don't think the amount of money they charge over and above processing fees is super unreasonable.
- I want something that handles tiered membership levels with paid access control.
- I also want something that keeps track of "goals" for donation drives (e.g., "if I bring in $500 a month, I'll do this thing for everyone").
- If I have rewards at different levels (which I did), it's nice to have something that keeps track of when I need to send those out and who I sent them out to.
- It's nice to have what amounts to a basic CRM, keeping records of who paid me what at what points. If I say "maintain the membership at the $9/month level for at least six months and I'll send you this widget at the end of the year," I want my membership platform to be able to tell me who was at that level for six months even if they're not at that level at the end of the year.
- It's nice to have a built-in mailing list if I need it.
- While Patreon is very up front about not being a discoverability platform, aggregation of creators still matters: it is way easier to support a half-dozen or more creators monthly when you get one monthly charge instead of many monthly charges, and in fact people do occasionally discover new creators by discovering who creators they follow are supporting. If I were running this on my own, I wouldn't get that benefit and I probably couldn't have a "just pay me a little because you're nice" tier: it's no problem to pay $1 or $2 a month to somebody if it's part of that bundle, but it's not worth the hassle if it's standalone. (This was why everyone on Patreon screamed bloody murder when they proposed unbundling charges a few years back.)
- Last but not least, not every creator is going to be comfortable putting together a Patreon-esque platform on their own. The more friendly the solution is, the more likely it is to cost money, and Patreon's pricing structure ends up being more competitive than you might think. WordPress membership management plugins that don't suck are often commercial, some with fees of $100+ per year; Memberful is free for limited use, but $25 per month otherwise; Substack charges 10% of your revenue and, like Patreon, doesn't cover processing fees that way.
Obviously none of these give Patreon a "lock-in" and it might make sense for creators to jump ship anyway; I'm certainly keeping my eye on alternatives. But I'm kind of a control freak. I genuinely don't think "anyone can build their own Patreon over a weekend" is true, and I don't think the amount of money they charge over and above processing fees is super unreasonable.