A few months ago, we decided to stop promoting our Patreon page, and switched to Paypal as our main way of accepting monthly donations. Now we’ve decided to switch back. Here are the reasons why:
Payments in Euros
The main reason why we switched from Patreon to Paypal in the first place was because Patreon only accepts payments in Dollars, and we figured this was putting people off from donating to us. It also means we have to convert those dollars to euros, losing us a bit of money during the exchange.
But from September, Patreon will introduce the option for page owners like us to choose the currency our patrons are charged in. This means that as soon as the option is introduced, we’ll switch to Euros immediately.
Another reason is because Paypal take about 8% of every payment, whereas Patreon only keeps something like 3%.
Several patrons have told us it’s also a lot quicker to sign up to Patreon.
Subscriber benefits
As you may have noticed, we’ve been introducing quite a few new benefits for subscribers/patrons lately, such as vouchers from Maltese companies, as well as discounts on our own merchandise.
Currently, whenever we introduce a new benefit and want to tell Paypal subscribers about it, we have to go through our Excel sheet, see who’s eligible (since not all subscribers are entitled to benefits), make sure they haven’t unsubscribed, and send them an email. To make matters worse, these emails seem to be going to people’s junk folders.
Patreon makes it easy for us because it keeps all these lists automatically sorted and updated. So whenever we want to send a new discount code, or make any kind of announcement, we only have to click one button.
Exclusive content
This summer, we aim to start making more varied content, such as videos and podcasts. We’d like to allow the awesome people who donate to us to access this content before everyone else, or maybe even make content that’s only for subscribers.
Unfortunately, there’s no mechanism to do that on Paypal, whereas we can easily upload videos etc. separately to Patreon.
So, in short, Patreon is better for both you and us.
What about one-off payments and tips?
For now, one-off payments and tips will still be via Paypal (or us giving you our Revolut details privately).
So what happens now?
As mentioned, payments in Euros won’t be available till September. However, we plan on switching back now because of that exclusive content we mentioned.
If you already donate on Patreon, then you don’t have to do anything (except maybe increase your pledge so you can get access to all those discounts and future exclusive content *wink wink*).
Similarly, if you donate on Paypal, but only €2.99 a month, you also don’t have to do anything, as you were never eligible for any discounts anyway (but feel free to switch over if you want). All we ask is that you don’t completely cancel, since we rely on your support.
If you currently donate €4.99 or more on Paypal, we recommend cancelling your Paypal subscription and switching to Patreon (just don’t forget to do the second part). If you don’t, you’ll still have access to the discounts we currently have, but you won’t get any notifications about new ones, or that exclusive content we promised.
We know this is a bit of a pain in the ass, but hopefully we won’t be switching around anymore.
We hope that’s all clear enough. Feel free to message the page or Karl Stennienibarra on Facebook if you have any questions.
If for some reason you’re here and you don’t currently donate to either Paypal or Patreon, well, now’s a good time to start by clicking here.
Serious regards,
Karl S.
