2018/1/9 Patreon blog: Integration update

Example System / Community Edition Patreon Integration

2018/1/9 Patreon blog: Integration update

Synopsis

Happy new year everyone. We'd like to share some update about NVR-Patreon integration. Primarily, the updated packaging and reward restructure has been decided and is scheduled to be announced soon. We'll also explain our rationale behind the change. Pre-existing patrons will enjoy same rewards at the time they become our patron.

Blog content

First of all, we'd like to inform everyone that we have successfully received our first cycle of payment from the Patreon platform at 2018/1/1. What a significant day to Genius Vision! The amount is $43.35 USD in total. I know for a development team like us, this kind of amount isn't really a "helping amount", but it represents the support from our users which gives us strength to move forward. So we are genuinely appreciated. This "actually receiving cash" step is very important to us, because it helps us to understand the entire process the Patreon platform has presented to us, from creator page design, writing, recruiting patrons, and actually receiving payment. From this perspective, we have just completed the necessary verification for the Patreon platform. Here we like to thank everyone who has participated the patronship in the Dec. 2017.

However, there are some new facts that we discovered during this process that was previously unknown to us. One of them is the so-called "transaction overhead". Of the $43.35 actual payment we received, an additional 14.72% of the cash is deducted by the Patreon platform (not counting another 5% Patreon platform fee, according to its dashboard as shown below).

According to Patreon platform's explanation, the high percentage of "processing fee" is caused by the small-value transactions, particularly the $1 (or $2) transactions. For payment platform like PayPal or credit cards, the payment platform itself set a minimum per-transaction fee. As a result, the more small-value transactions we have, the more the "transaction overhead" will be incurred. I guess this is quite straightforward like physics laws. We just have not thought about this earlier, because, well obviously we are new to this Patreon platform.

I guess that's why I've read somewhere that the average patron's contribute is about $10/month in the Patreon platform. If the campaign is properly arranged that makes each transaction become average $10, then the transaction overhead will become negligible, and the distance to our goal will also be shortened significantly.

Shortly within one week after receiving the first cycle payment, another unexpected thing happened. Although new patrons still coming in on daily basis, on the other hand, slowly, some patrons (especially $1 ones), are leaving. As a result, the patron amount stuck at certain point.

This is a unfortunately phenomen, because it shows that part of our small-value patrons has the tendency to be patron for only one cycle. For those users, $1/month means exactly $1, not /month. It clearly means these users "strongly want to use our software, but strongly don't want to pay". They are paying because they are compelled by our current policy. Our current policy states that "minimum one cycle of $1" is required to download the CmE software package, and this is exactly what they were willing to offer.

This fact completely changed our plan, because in our original thought, if we accumulate enough number of $1 patrons, then the number will still be good and the goals will still be within our reachability. Now, it would seem the situation isn't anywhere near what we have imagined. It seems that allowing $1 to download CmE ironically opens a gate for those who are "forced to pay" to become our unwillingful patrons. Those users are, for the lack of a better word, pretty "counterproductive" from the viewpoint of Genius Vision. But this is just from the viewpoint of our new business plan. I still thank everyone who has ever became our patrons, even including those $1 users. So we're not being unthankful here. It is just a fact we observed. Careful obversation during this period is essential for developing our future plans.

If our software is not worth even $1/month, then the total usage of CmE should be "lowered" since we enforced the patron-download policy after 2017/12/19. However, according to our constantly monitoring effort, the result is otherwise: the total usage of CmE actually became higher. (Another interpretation is that maybe that some people suddenly realized that if they use the software later, it may not be free? Like after a season of water shortage, the demand of water will suddenly increase, because people anticipate they may be in lack of water.)

Later on, a concensus has formed inside Genius Vison team, that maybe we should raise the download patronship barrier to $5/month. Although for those "forced patrons", it's only $5, not /month, but for people who actually wants to be our patrons, the $5/month is still way under the average patronship in the platform (which is $10/month). We need our patrons to be in the right mindset, and $1 (with only one month) patrons is "not at all" what we are looking for.

I guess what we really want to express here is:

Please become our patron, only when you want to.

If one feels "compelled" to become our patron by our current patron-download policy, then it means one may have some kind of urgency to apply our software. In this case, maybe what one really needed is the Commercial Edition, because for personal-use, there is seldom any "urgency" that one must be compelled to be $1/month patronship (and not very willingly so one must withdraw the patronship right after the minimum 1 month cycle).

In order to avoid the compelled patronship and to recruit patrons in the right mind, raising download barrier may be the only way.

The conclusion

Therefore a revision to the V2 structure is needed, based on the two reasons mentioned above, which are:

Small-value (such as $1 or $2) transactions incur much higher transaction overhead.
Small-value download barrier opens a gate for unwilling users to become our patrons and immedately withdraw their support after minimum one cycle.

The updated packaging and reward restructure can be looked-up here.

This revision primarily removes all reward layers under $5. Also, we added "software downloadability descriptions". To summary, in the V1 plan, $1/month or above will grant you to download the latest version of CmE package, while $5/month or above will grant you download the archived version of packages. In the V2 plan, however, $5/month or above will grant you to download the latest version of CmE package, while $10/month or above will grant you download the archived version of packages.

Another main point is that we introduced a Patron+ attribute to each patrons. To simplify, each patron either have this Patron+ attribute, or doesn't have. Pre-existing patrons are considered to have this attribute. This attribute is much equivalent to the "Lite vs. Professional" difference in the commercial packaging, so it will be easy to understand.

A noteworthy addition in the V2 plan, is that we designed in the free tier, "Software download might not be always available. Available hours will be announced. " As a free software package, download requires bandwidth and server maintenance. Since free users don't want to share any cost at all, the availablility will not be always-on.

We consider this to be pretty fair. In that way, disgruntled user can't claim that "free NVR is not really free". Well, it's free, just not always available for download. So, if one want it to be "always available for download", then patronship $5/month is required.