The kind @ttraband asked me about why I chose to discontinue use of Patreon.
It’s not that their fee structure was exorbitant. It’s not. They seem to have developed a pretty successful cottage industry around an aspect of modern life that is needed and not immoral.
I did not care for the sense of burden of owing a continual stream of content to the patrons, in exchange for their support. This sense was sometimes more noticed, but almost always nagging.
I think it’s perhaps also why Ryan has his Patreon set up for only a $1 / month being a qualified tier. “Just a little something” given would equate to “just a little something” owed. Less burden owed / guilt about not coming through.
Most of the content I design, gets given away free (Printables).
I have personally benefitted immensely from content shared with me free of charge, and I feel a sense honor and duty in continuing to pay that forward.
Continually trying to think and scheme about how to “divide” my meager stream of created content between “free” via Printables and “paid” via Patreon, was a mental gymnastics exercise that I grew to despise. For others who manage this, I don’t fault them at all. Nevertheless, for me, it reeked of “gimmicks” and “commercialism” and crass marketing, and it’s just not who I decided (in the end) I want to be.
Compared to, say, the burden of continuing to come up with video content for YouTube; no one who watches my YouTube content pays me for it directly, so I don’t feel bad if I cannot “consistently” crank out new stuff.
Whenever I finally get my YouTube channel monetized, which apparently is not far off, time wise — I’m now well beyond 90,000 views overall, over 820 subscribers of the 1,000 required (82%), and over 3,180 hours of watch time (within the last 365 days) of the 4,000 required (79.5%) — presumably any money that comes in will be from YouTube/Google forwarding a portion of advertising dollars. I would not feel a direct sense of obligation to viewers to desperately crank out content, because they are not directly hiring me.
Somewhere along this path of realization and consideration, I read about a new, upcoming YouTube star in the field of woodworking, who (among other of his fellow YouTube stars) had correctly realized that the best path to YouTube success was to not come across as “gimmicky” or “commercialized” or crass in a marketing sense. The guy made it to monetization practically over night, and then shot past that to amazing subscriber numbers and monetization success. I liked his approach of always being grounded, non-commercial, not-gimmicky, and, in a word, not “sold out.” Actually that’s two words.
I figured the best time for me to escape from the Patreon “prison” of guilt and sense of burden, was sooner rather than later.
My Etsy store is a commercial enterprise, so to speak, but there I’m not in some vague, nebulous territory of owing everyone all the time. I get specific orders, which are like commissions, and they are carefully limited engagements in which I build / make something for a serious return for payment given, each in its own well defined agreement, with clear terms. I don’t feel so pressured by that.
Bottom line, I did not want to wake up one day and have 800 or 1,000 bosses, feeling like I always owed them “something” more.