Kickstarter, Patreon, and other crowdfunding methods

I was thinking about sites like this earlier, largely due to a discussion over in Webcomics about El Goonish Shive.

I'm sure everyone has heard of Kickstarter, which is designed to fund large projects such as movies, books, RPGs, and similar large-scale things, via submitting small-scale donations from fans who want to see a particular work be made. Many projects have hit goals, set new ones, and then surpassed those goals, sometimes in as little as a day. Patreon is designed along slightly different lines, instead designed to encourage continuous content, such as webcomics, serial novels, or a steady flow of new songs or artwork, using a monthly subscription model that is then given to the creator.

Naturally this is compared to the traditional method of producing books, movies, music, and art, where a central source of funding comes from a single person or company, or at most a fairly small group of funders, who give much larger amounts. Those fundraisers view it as an investment, as their monetary largesse allows them access or control over the content produced. Even with Kickstarter goals, the creators are not surrendering their rights to a work, the way scriptwriters or directors can lose their rights to publishing companies who now hold the copyrights^note  The specific case that usually springs to my mind is, of course, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, over which Joss Whedon holds zero control; the executive producers of the movie and tv show can choose, at any time, to reboot or continue them and ignore everything that Joss, the actors, and the scriptwriters have to say about the issue.

What are people's thoughts and experiences with these kinds of fundraising? Are there other crowdsourcing methods^note beyond begging on twitter for cash or posting a paypal button on your profile that should also be considered? Are these sites more ethical than depending on corporate funding? Do they produce higher/lower quality of content?

I've got to admit that my experiences with Kickstarter have been... strange. Of the almost dozen of projects I've backed, I've only received the rewards for two of them (Spinnerette Vol 3 and the Schlock Mercenary Challenge Coins).

That being said its not a case of it failure on the part of the co-ordinators and more that they have become victims of their own success. Pretty much all of them have been funded and have hit at least one or two stretch goals and that's where the problems have started. Either through the sheer volume of support and trying to include their stretch goals has pushed back the delivery times on pretty much everything.

Though a couple have also been... let's shall we say optimistic on their dates. But generally I feel that the risk for successful projects is overstretching themselves as the totals run up. I remember the point where Howard Taylor simply said "No More" because having to design more coins was just going to take too much time and increase fabrication times too much and I think that's something that they have to be aware of.

In a more abstract sense, what I've found interesting is that companies, not just individual or small groups are starting to jump on to Kickstarter for more marginal projects, if only as a way for gauging interest.

edited 5th Aug '14 11:47:38 PM by KnightofLsama

Some of the produced content from crowdfunded projects will be good, or great, or bad, or horrible, and everything might be on time, or not, or it never even gets released.

Seriously. The source of funding is irrelevant. Crowdsourcing will not cause all aspects of a project to be perfect or terrible. It's not bad, it's not good, it's just there, and all these discussions about it being nothing but horrible scams or the savior of creativity that sticks it to The Man is pointless bullshit.

edited 7th Aug '14 11:20:05 AM by Ekuran

That's part of why I was hoping people would post about what their experiences have been. Most of what I've heard of both Kickstarter and Patreon have been overall favorable, with the number of scammers fairly low and rewards generally appropriate and on time.

I have a couple of observations about crowdfunding - though broadly I think Ekuran has the right of it.

• One reason people crowdfund is because they couldn't get "real" investors to put up money for their project, or they are unwilling to let others share the profits. This is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it's perfect for pet projects or more "out there"/long term ones. Some investors won't touch a business or charitable idea because they want short-term gains or they wrongly think it's insane. On the other, investors also won't touch some ideas because they're totally infeasible. Exhibit A: Solar Roadways.

• The rewards available to the campaign starter are massive compared to the ones available to the backers - unlike with actual investors who will demand remuneration or a share of the profits. This article makes some good points, I think:

edited 8th Aug '14 7:29:18 AM by Achaemenid

I think that's mostly a self-correcting issue. The more obscure and informal a project is, the more similar it is to a donation, where you just throw money in the general direction of a starving artist and vaguely hope that they use it well. In that situation, you ar not supposed to care about who gets the bigger benefits, you are supposed to be glad that you could help as much as you could.

On the other hand, the more commercial the thing gets, and more heavily it tries to be a exploitative of backers, is also where projects get too big to be outright scams or pie in the sky plans, so they really are nothing more than a form of pre-orders.

Not entirely the same, but operating along the same lines (lots of small donations to hit a large (or largish) goal amount) is DonorsChoose, a crowdfunding organization dedicated (and limited) to funding school supplies. It's been in operation now for somewhere upwards of 10 years.

The projects are submitted by the teachers, vetted by the organization, and then posted for up to four months for interested people to donate to — as much or as little as they want.

Projects range from "I have no budget to buy markers and crayons and construction paper for my 30 first-graders. It will cost $161.00 to buy enough for all of them for the entire school year" to "The microphones the school has are broken and undependable. $976 will buy six microphones for the choir and chorus." to "The film production classes need a good computer and the software to learn how to do digital production. It will cost $1608.00".

The only rewards for the donors are a thank you letter from the teacher, individual thank you notes from the class, or both; and photos of the items in use. It does seem to be more-or-less self-policing; if a request is deemed too extreme or unnecessarily greedy by the organization, it doesn't get posted at all. If it passes the organization's scrutiny, the would-be donors get to decide whether it sounds like a good use of their money. If they decide it's not really needed, or too greedy of a request, it doesn't get funded.

Each donor gets to decide their own priorities. I tended to projects that provided kids with the basics — notebooks for journaling; markers, crayons, and paper for art classes; fabric for sewing classes; and supplies for theatre classes, because those are the areas I'm the most personally emotionally invested.

edited 13th Aug '14 6:40:50 PM by Madrugada

Rather than create a new thread, I’ll use an existing thread.

Patreon has really shat the bed in the last 24 hours, for both creators and donors.

One Patreon explains why they’re leaving.

A donor posted that his $69 spread over 50 patreons would add $24 in service fees.

Dan Olson of Folding Ideas discusses the changes on his Twitter, two of his threads linked here. In the first thread, he discusses the reasons for it and concludes that it's a catastrophic attempt to deal with comparatively minor problems like double-pledging.In the second, he talks about Patreon using these changes to weed out smaller accounts, and how they vastly underestimated the dedication of small accounts and small pledges.

Many folks are discussing potential alternatives, such as Gumroad, Ko-Fi, Paypal, and the in-beta Drip, though some don't allow recurring pledges yet and others have given bad experiences in regards to creators of adult content.

And many more are reporting big losses in pledges already, particularly among 1 dollar cash-strapped fans.

The cherry on the Sunday of Suck is Jack Conte's decision to leave any response to next week. Coz nothing better than fuck with people's livelihood, and then leave them to panic for a weekend without addressing anything.

God forbid the crisis they caused force anyone to work extra hours at the office.

Fine. Let's go find another site.

The thing is that's easily said, but there's no guarantees for a creator all their patrons will move. Or that they'll move to the new site as fast and not cause huge periods where the creator is making dismal income. And for Creators who have tiers with limited open spots, there's no guarantee those patrons are going to be able to reclaim their spot in the new system. And you might not want to piss off your biggest backers by just moving and fucking them over out of the rewards they used to get.

edited 9th Dec '17 7:08:38 PM by Ghilz

And my friends wonder why I hate the idea of any young filmmaker quitting their day job to only earn from Youtube.

Especially considering the changes Youtube has made.

Yeah, you may think you're independent, but you're really at the mercy of these big companies.

Maybe people should adopt a system where people can donate to creators directly. Cut out the big middle man.

Also, while rooting around Patreon, I noticed they don't display Patreon posts to people who don't donate anymore (not sure if this was always the case). This is very inconvenient, because then you cannot see the status of the Patreon before donating to them.

edited 10th Dec '17 5:21:27 AM by Redmess

You can’t cut out the middle man, even if people post cash directly to you you’ve got the post office playing middle man.

Direct back transfers are subject to charge back fees, same with Pay Pal payments, the only way to be safe from chargebacks is to have the money go to a big company who then forward it on to you.

Here is a video giving a clearer breakdown of what is changing in payments:

The long and short of it is, the average patreon pledging one dollar will pay quite a bit more because of that fixed 35 cent fee, but the creator will not get that 35 cents, and only see a 5 cents increase.

Also, if you spread your donations among many creators, the creators will not see an increase in donation income, but you, the patron, will be paying a lot more, because fees are per pledge, not per total, so that fixed fee really starts to add up.

This system appears to be preying on multi-campaign supporters as well as support chains, impacting the lowest tier payments in particular.

Jim Sterling saves the later part of his episode to talk about Patreon's fuck up. Basically telling them that if they don't fix their changes, he's going to walk (And he's one of the creators Patreon likes to tout as one of their success stories).

edited 11th Dec '17 8:12:57 AM by Ghilz

Patreon is rolling back the Fee changes

(Their blog is flapping right now)

edited 13th Dec '17 10:17:22 AM by Ghilz

.... well I'll be. :)

Faith restored?

Indeed. Now let's see if creators can get those ragequit patrons back!

I wouldn't say Faith restored. The regulations that promped Patreon to do the changes are still around. It's just that now we hope Patreon will involve the creators in those discussions. Patreon themselves admit it'll take them time to get the trust they broke back.

Dan Olson said it best in a tweet: Friend Patreon is dead, all hail Business Patreon.

edited 13th Dec '17 1:52:59 PM by Ghilz

Well, at least we are more aware of it now, so they won't slip it past us that easily next time.

At least, unlike some other websites, they actually listened to the feedback rather than turning a deaf ear and going through with it anyway. I might leave feedback letting them know the sacrifices and compromises I'm willing to make as a Patron.