[grey_earthling]

Patreon knows that Patreon doesn't work - they don't fund themselves by donations on Patreon; instead they take a cut of other people's donations.

And the model where some patrons receive a reward encourages transactionalism and disappointed patrons when they don't get the reward they expected.

Liberapay's model seems much more sustainable - donations only, no rewards; Liberapay fund themselves via Liberapay because they actually believe their system works.

[johnnyanmac]

>Liberapay fund themselves via Liberapay because they actually believe their system works.

As in they are also funded by donations, or do the creators themselves pay for entry?

[grey_earthling]

They say they are funded by donations:

> How is Liberapay funded? Are there fees?

> Liberapay does not take a cut of payments, the service is funded by the donations to its own account. However there are payment processing fees.

https://liberapay.com/about/faq

[fleg]

They are funded by donations: https://liberapay.com/Liberapay/

[egypturnash]

Patreon also takes VC funding on a regular basis; if you ask Jack Conte what his plan is for when they come back around looking for profit he will just blow a bunch of sunshine up your ass about how all these investors are just totally great people who believe in supporting the arts.

[cma]

When they raised rates for new creators but grandfathered in existing ones it was pretty much outed as a network effect VC scheme.

[zrn900]

> Patreon knows that Patreon doesn't work - they don't fund themselves by donations on Patreon; instead they take a cut of other people's donations.

Huh? So does Paypal by taking a cut of payments. It does not work by people donating to Paypal. Does that mean Paypal doesnt work? The proposition does not make sense...

[cruano]

> And the model where some patrons receive a reward encourages transactionalism and disappointed patrons when they don't get the reward they expected.

More than that, I don't think Patreons will ever be able to compete in a world where Netflix/Max/Disney exists just by making content. For example, if you consider the $10 tier of The Command Zone[1], you'd have to weight that in against something like the Disney+ catalog, which I think is even cheaper and definitely has a lot more content?

[1] https://www.patreon.com/commandzone