A new player asked this question in Player Chat late at night where no one had an answer. They noticed the funding tracking bar and wanted to know why Improbable Island isn't on Patreon. I know very little of the site, but I let them know about the Enquirer and offered a step further by posing the question.

Discuss at will. This is me. Woob woob woob woob woob!

I dunno, is there a good reason we should use Patreon?

I don't recall who with, but I was discussing the Island with someone at some point. Specifically the money going in to it.

They mentioned something other sites do, that the Island does not.

Auto-charge. Recurring transactions. basically guaranteed sales.

While this does kinda sound... er... money grabbing or... whatever... Patreon allows for this. And I know, no matter WHAT the benefit was, I would do a $10 monthly thing for an Island Patreon.

Patreon is also pretty popular, as of late. It might give the Island some exposure.

Also Patreon provides a public idea of how much the Patreon-e is receiving. Which I know I would like to know.

PayPal supports recurring payments too, but most of the money that comes in from them are from people who just forget to cancel their subscriptions, so we don't do that.

You can see our current funding level for the month at any time when logged in by clicking the "How're we doing this month?" link.

You already give me ten bucks a month for the Monthly Memento.

I dunno, it's something I've thought about, but knowing the industry numbers on recurring charges... it's a bit too much on the Dark Side for me.

Looking for more reasons to use Patreon, I looked up the fees involved.
I assume this is how fees work for the Island, currently:


This seems to be Patreon's policy:



...
Yeah. So... I'm not all for Patreon anymore.

I'd still support it if we added it to the Island.
But, all those fees just look super annoying to deal with.
And more significant than Paypal's alone.

The biggest reason I can still think of to use Patreon is its "Up And Coming"-ness. It feels popular. It feels like "all the cool kids use it," etc. Though, that still seems pretty lame, to be honest.



Here's where I found that Patreon policy image: http://neil-clarke.com/patreon-pros-and-cons-one-year/
On Patreon's actual site, this seems to be the only page outlining the fees: https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204606125-How-do-you-calculate-fees-

PayPal's is much easier to find, with a simple Google you're linked to their own page.
https://www.paypal.com/selfhelp/article/FAQ690, because I can't help not sourcing things >_>

Unlike Paypal, the entire design of Patreon leans heavily towards subscriptions. I totally get the "dark side" worries, but people who pledge money on Patreon are less likely to forget what they're paying—it's very transparent about letting you know what you're currently spending money on.

I support a tiny handful of webcomics via Patreon. (Like, four. I'd support more, but... budget reasons.) Fred's right - every month there's a complete accounting of what I spent. They keep me very aware of who I am supporting, for how much, and they make it easy to change my support up or down whenever I want.

All four of the artists (and many other creators) have said that it is a world-changer for them. I can see why. With the best will in the world, I know I would not remember to click a Donate button for each of those four comics every single month. Yet when the matter comes to my attention, as it does every month through Patreon, every month so far my decision has been the same: "Why yes, I most certainly do want to continue supporting these artists." That's what makes the difference for the artists. Multiply me by even a few hundred fans and suddenly they are able to scrape a living from their art where they could not before. Even with Patreon taking its cut, they are far, far better off. Since these are talented people making the world a better place, this is an unqualified Good Thing.

Comic artists offer Patreon rewards to their patrons. Some provide character sketches or penciled previews of an upcoming page. Others give high-resolution versions of the published web pages -- which I personally like the best because my eyes can pick up details I missed.

I suppose the most logical reward for the Island to give would be Supporter Points, same as for donations through PayPal. I'm sure Patreon provides creators with details about who's donated this month -- let's hope that's available in machine-readable form... for example, csv. There could be a few difficulties linking SPs reliably to the right character.