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Apple to Patreon creators: We are taking a third of your money.
Apple is now taking a 30% tax on Patreon subscriptions made in-app. This is more than twice what Patreon itself takes (8-12%). Just when you thought Apple could not get any more evil.
Never use Apple to make Patreon subscriptions.
Comments
There's already a thread about this somewhere, but I can't find it with the forum search. 😐
Patreon take ends up more than 8 to 12% by the way. For me it comes to about 20% by the time you add on their other fees. Then using Payoneer for payouts you can lose another few percent on currency exchange.
But yeah, never use the iOS Patreon app to pay for Patreon subs or products. In general it will be more expensive, unless the creator has agreed to take the hit (which Patreon recommend against).
Just use the website to pay. You can still use the app to access the site, just don't use it to pay 👍
https://forum.loopypro.com/discussion/62819/apple-patreon-and-subscription-based-payment
Thanks @NeuM !
Sorry about that!
Nothing to apologize about. Stuff falls off the radar quickly here. Referencing the other thread was only to fill in the discussion.
I’m using DuckDuckGo for forum searches now.
Good to know thank you! I liken this to venues taking a 30% cut of merch. I’m not saying they shouldn’t take something, but it’s practically criminal when they aren’t giving anything from the bar. (Badly worded analogy maybe but I’m thinking of the cut YouTubers used to get for links to apps.)
It’s all debatable, right? If you’re Apple, you need to make money for your multi-billion dollar investments and your ongoing costs to run services like the App Store. It’s not free after all, and there are millions of free apps on the App Store which provide them with no revenue. And taking 15-30% from apps/services which are sold through their store beats taking 50%, which is what physical software product resellers used to charge companies.
At some point, it might make sense for them to shave these percentages down even further, but I predict if they do that they'll be charged with "predatory business practices" or some such nonsense by some consumer group or regulatory agency.
It is yes. But at the same time, I’ve been to enough gigs in recent years and seen a sizeable reaction against that policy.
1) bands selling no merch at gigs.
2) bands deliberately playing other venues
& my favourite is….
3) wu tang clan charging something like £65 for a t-shirt & £160 for a hoodie a few years ago cos 30% of nothing is nothing.
We might find a somewhat similar response happening here.
It might be the straw the breaks the payees back.
Devs might use a different system, or promote the use of a different system.
Purchasers like myself might stay clear of the app.
I’m also not entirely sure about the free apps making them zero money.
I may be wrong but I thought devs paid something like $99 or $299 (depending on company size) to host apps. To a certain extent free adds also work to incentivise folks to buy devs paid for apps & to a lesser extent (or maybe not in other app realms like gaming) to keep purchasing in the apple system.
Of course they need to keep making profits. If they added 17% on to an iPad and added nothing then many folks wouldn’t buy it. Some would, some would hold off some might start looking at options. This might be great for them, it might not, in which case they will have to look at something else. They might then think of charging 50% having crunched some numbers. Who knows? But I know I won’t use apple to pay for my Patreon accounts.
$99 is the fee to be a developer if you want to offer your app (be it free or paid) in the App Store. If you use their tools to create apps for your business or organization and you don't sell the app through the App Store, you get the benefit of those tools with zero fee.
And I'm not seeing the connection to bands selling merch at their shows...
As much as I dislike the very concept of taking anything from people trying to support themselves or their cause through Patreon, I can see one justification from Apple's point of view.
The App Store is a business. It has policies and rules in order to do business through it. That policy is they collect 15% or 30% of the transaction as a commission. Patreon is a business. They also collect a commission. They make money using the App Store. Should Apple enable Patreon to make money using their infrastructure completely for free? That flow is also wide open to abuse. Why not create a Patreon account to, say, launder drug money?
It's easy to see this as a measure to take from the people using Patreon, but that's not what it's directed at. It's directed at preventing Patreon from profiting for free using the App Store.
(Don't mistake this for me justifying this move. I'm just offering a different way of looking at why Apple did it.)
IMO this is being made out a little bigger than it seems until you think it all the way through. First, Patreon subscriptions existing before the change aren't affected. Second, anyone can make new Patreon subscriptions unavailable through the App. Third, anyone using Patreon now undoubtedly has a web platform and a simple way for people to sign up without using an app.
Personally I doubt this affects any Patreon users significantly at all. But, with no evidence to back that up, and no skin in the game, that's an opinion that anyone should take only for what it's worth.
FWIW, I agree with you Wim.
I thought it was quite relative. Ok apples interests are far more wide ranging, but with regards to this it’s a business model that works by increasing fees to the point it’s not really working in anyone’s interest. In recent years a lot of fans & bands have reacted against it. Most agree the venues should take a cut for providing a service, but the amount they are charging is the issue. Especially as merch is one of the few places artists make any money. Passing on the cost to the consumer isnt always effective or viable while consumers have other options.
Effectively venues that charging large fees leads to screwing themselves, screwing the bands or screwing the consumer. It’s a balancing act. I thought there were parallels there.
Thanks for the info on the dev fees.
I forgot to mention in my wall of text above that Apple is surely also doing this as a preventative measure. If Patreon can profit in this way, what is to stop proliferation of other such businesses? Why shouldn't everyone open a subscription service of some kind and collect in this way if it's free?
Apple is the seller for everything going through the App Store. That means they have lots of potential legal liability for what is sold. They manage applicable taxes and legal compliance worldwide. But with something like Patreon, they have zero visibility into how the money being transacted through them is used. That's a potentially giant liability.
They pretty much have to apply policies equally across any kind of business transacted through them, no matter how worthy the cause benefiting from the subscription. Otherwise they undermine their ability to enforce the rules or to defend themselves if pursued legally.
I think it's important to understand that this isn't something new Apple is inflicting on users, or Patreon itself. The App Store has always been this way, and it has always been against Apple's terms to have in-app payments that don't go through their payment system. I think the way Patreon explained their changes, and the runway they gave, is admirable...but I feel like it's important to not overlook the fact that they were operating in a way that most of us small developers never get away with. We've seen this before with Spotify, and we know Apple wins in the end here.
In no way am I justifying what's happening, I just wanted to share that perspective for further thought. In the end, the Apple IAP system is not really even flexible enough for how Patreon works, and the best play here is to support creators through web-based means as @Gavinski suggested.
Just a thought, Ghost, an open-source platform takes 0% fees (utilizes Stripe API - so Stripe takes I think 2.9%?)
Ghost itself has a paid product, Ghost Pro, which gives the user concierge, and it priced by the amount of subscribers.
Since Ghost is open source, a little know-how and some time you can set up your own Patreon essentially for no fees. Since Stripe is the payment method, very little resistance compared to random payment forms on checkout pages within a website.
I love it. It’s clean, fast, and worth it.
There’s a bit of legwork to get going at a free rate (other than self-hosting costs, though there’s even a way to get that free through a few methods, and even really cheap set up $2-3 a month )
if anyone is interested in setting up their own website, hit me up and I’ll get into more detail. I’ve built several at this point so I’m confident I can help!