Thanks for the response, Brad. I had a feeling this would be your position, and I think it largely hinges of the very low number of cheaters you get. Looking at my stats, about a THIRD of all the backers I ever got paid a lifetime amount of $0, so in my case is not a trivial number.

In fairness, I’m more than willing to admit that this is largely the result of how poorly I’ve run my Patreon. It may be that this will turn around once I switch to a monthly charge rather than per creation. It’s still a significant concern. I know (from listening to ComicLab and Webcomic Confidential) that you’ve setup a system where you contact individuals privately to “explain the rules” (including the block if they cancel pre-payment), and I’m thinking of expanding on that idea but with a different tack. Here’s how I’m thinking of approaching it:

– Set up the Charge Upfront as a default
– Contact anyone who registers during the last week to explain about the double-charging
– Offer that they skip the next month, and, if they want, I can send them an email reminder to rejoin on the 1st of the following month.

In my mind, this is a hassle-free solution for the backer that doesn’t rely on Patreon coding a reminder email option. If I was ever going to ask Patreon to code something, it would be a customizable cutoff date after which I’m willing to give a backer the next month for free.

In the meantime, however, the above seems like a fair solution to the problem. It seems less work to me than checking every month to see if the new backers cancelled their support before being charged. I also think backers would appreciate that I manually work around Patreon’s limitations to save them some money.

Thoughts?

–Jaycee

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Jaycee Knight.