Patreon and blog subscription prices

[RobNichols]

Is it just me or are Patreon and blog subscription pricing bonkers. They typically start at a fiver a month. The price for many streaming services isn't much more than that. Netflix cheapest tier is £4.99. For that I can get all of Netflix's content made my thousands of creators. It's not much more to sign up for a music streaming service and get a huge library of Music. A woodworking magazine subscription is about the same fiver mark too, and you get a lot of content from multiple people.

But for Patreon or a substack blog subscription you typically get one maker's content. When you compare that to streaming services it seem far too much.

What's more it wouldn't be too bad if there was only one maker you wanted to support, but if people are like me they may have ten makers they follow regularly and to sign up to all their patreons or substacks you hit £50 a month very quickly, and that I think is a lot.

The thing is I'd like to support makers. I like the idea or Patreon. I just think it's too much. If there was a tier that was around £1 a month I'd sign up and support a few makers.

But at £5 a time I just don't sign up to any of them.

I wonder if there are others like me. If they dropped their prices more people would sign up and they'd actually make more money.

 

[duke]

Is it just me or are Patreon and blog subscription pricing bonkers. They typically start at a fiver a month. The price for many streaming services isn't much more than that. Netflix cheapest tier is £4.99. For that I can get all of Netflix's content made my thousands of creators. It's not much more to sign up for a music streaming service and get a huge library of Music. A woodworking magazine subscription is about the same fiver mark too, and you get a lot of content from multiple people.

But for Patreon or a substack blog subscription you typically get one maker's content. When you compare that to streaming services it seem far too much.

What's more it wouldn't be too bad if there was only one maker you wanted to support, but if people are like me they may have ten makers they follow regularly and to sign up to all their patreons or substacks you hit £50 a month very quickly, and that I think is a lot.

The thing is I'd like to support makers. I like the idea or Patreon. I just think it's too much. If there was a tier that was around £1 a month I'd sign up and support a few makers.

But at £5 a time I just don't sign up to any of them.

I wonder if there are others like me. If they dropped their prices more people would sign up and they'd actually make more money.

I hear you Rob, at present I don't subscribe to any. If I did I would opt for the less expensive option. As you said the 50 quid per month can soon increase with more patreon or substack subscriptions and get out of control.

 

[BucksDad]

That pricing works for Netflix though because they have massive scale with roughly 280 million subscribers.

For the average woodworker patreon, which is easier to get - 1500 patreons paying £1 / month or 300 paying £5? I'm fairly sure the latter.

I agree with you though, the pricing is a bit bonkers. I only pay for one membership and that is Peter Millard. Incredible value for the extra content he puts out as part of the membership, the forum is a great community and free plans a welcome bonus.

I would support more if they actually provided some benefits but when I look through their patreon feeds, they barely post and provide no additional value to me, and no, I'm not going to support people just for the sake of it, it is a quid pro quo situation!

I haven't looked into it, but I would imagine most are dissuaded from offering low price options because the credit card charges / fees probably have a minimum value + %, quickly eroding the remaining profit of a £1 / month sub. It is definitely a problem that micro payments are not more feasible yet within our banking system to support this.

 

[johnnyb]

I find the patreon concept interesting in itself. Do we think it's replacing the lesson based courses of old?
I've only listened to a few but I sometimes find them hard to follow especially when the subject is complex. I've listened to the guy from nottingham(bradshaw) mostly but Peter is also one I've seen. There both engaging talkers but Bradshaw I sometimes struggle to follow(maybe it's me) .I'm not sure I'd pay solely for this aspect. But your implying a support aspect. Which I've never considered.

 

[Stuart M]

I often do the Netlfix comparison when I'm considering signing up for someone's Patreon, and as previous commenters have replied, it's all about scale. You can also compare Netflix to the cost for a beer, a coffee, a magazine, a DVD etc etc, and it comes out pretty favourably.

If they were to charge £1 per month, they'd probably be as well going to YouTube to take advantage of their monetisation options and larger platform rather than staying behind Patreon's paywall.

My conclusion is that lowest-tier Netflix is still ridiculously cheap, despite the adverts and non-4K. We're currently on the lowest tier because at the time we only had 10Mb download (now we have Starlink) and I can't quite believe we are still only paying 4.99 for something we watch 1-2 hours of every day.

I follow a comedy creator on Patreon. They have 2,071 members paying $5 / $10 or $25 per month. It's basically their full-time job, job, and they earn enough to pay for co-hosts / guests. The odd thing is that there's usually only around 20 comments per episode, at most, so I question how many of these have set-up a monthly payment and just not bothered to cancel. I enjoy their content enough, that I'd probably just keep paying If I was no longer watching regularly, at least for a few months or so

They're also part of a wider community and put live streaming content on Youtube where dozens of regulars pay $5/$10 to get superchats read out by the hosts.

So, the scale is

1. $5 for Netflix,
2. $5 for a month of sorta-exclusive shows (roughly 10-12),
3. $5 to have your 150-character superchat read out.

I would probably pay £20 per month for some sort of online woodworking / DIY school. I'm currently signed up to WWGOA and DIY University, but both are too US-centric. If anyone knows of a UK alternative, please let me know!

 

[johnnyb]

I never realised patreon was a separate thing tbh. I'll take a look.

 

[Nick c]

I often do the Netlfix comparison when I'm considering signing up for someone's Patreon, and as previous commenters have replied, it's all about scale. You can also compare Netflix to the cost for a beer, a coffee, a magazine, a DVD etc etc, and it comes out pretty favourably.

If they were to charge £1 per month, they'd probably be as well going to YouTube to take advantage of their monetisation options and larger platform rather than staying behind Patreon's paywall.

My conclusion is that lowest-tier Netflix is still ridiculously cheap, despite the adverts and non-4K. We're currently on the lowest tier because at the time we only had 10Mb download (now we have Starlink) and I can't quite believe we are still only paying 4.99 for something we watch 1-2 hours of every day.

I follow a comedy creator on Patreon. They have 2,071 members paying $5 / $10 or $25 per month. It's basically their full-time job, job, and they earn enough to pay for co-hosts / guests. The odd thing is that there's usually only around 20 comments per episode, at most, so I question how many of these have set-up a monthly payment and just not bothered to cancel. I enjoy their content enough, that I'd probably just keep paying If I was no longer watching regularly, at least for a few months or so

They're also part of a wider community and put live streaming content on Youtube where dozens of regulars pay $5/$10 to get superchats read out by the hosts.

So, the scale is

1. $5 for Netflix,
2. $5 for a month of sorta-exclusive shows (roughly 10-12),
3. $5 to have your 150-character superchat read out.

I would probably pay £20 per month for some sort of online woodworking / DIY school. I'm currently signed up to WWGOA and DIY University, but both are too US-centric. If anyone knows of a UK alternative, please let me know!

I often do the Netlfix comparison when I'm considering signing up for someone's Patreon, and as previous commenters have replied, it's all about scale. You can also compare Netflix to the cost for a beer, a coffee, a magazine, a DVD etc etc, and it comes out pretty favourably.

If they were to charge £1 per month, they'd probably be as well going to YouTube to take advantage of their monetisation options and larger platform rather than staying behind Patreon's paywall.

My conclusion is that lowest-tier Netflix is still ridiculously cheap, despite the adverts and non-4K. We're currently on the lowest tier because at the time we only had 10Mb download (now we have Starlink) and I can't quite believe we are still only paying 4.99 for something we watch 1-2 hours of every day.

I follow a comedy creator on Patreon. They have 2,071 members paying $5 / $10 or $25 per month. It's basically their full-time job, job, and they earn enough to pay for co-hosts / guests. The odd thing is that there's usually only around 20 comments per episode, at most, so I question how many of these have set-up a monthly payment and just not bothered to cancel. I enjoy their content enough, that I'd probably just keep paying If I was no longer watching regularly, at least for a few months or so

They're also part of a wider community and put live streaming content on Youtube where dozens of regulars pay $5/$10 to get superchats read out by the hosts.

So, the scale is

1. $5 for Netflix,
2. $5 for a month of sorta-exclusive shows (roughly 10-12),
3. $5 to have your 150-character superchat read out.

I would probably pay £20 per month for some sort of online woodworking / DIY school. I'm currently signed up to WWGOA and DIY University, but both are too US-centric. If anyone knows of a UK alternative, please let me know!

Have a look at Waters and Acland they do an online course £99 per year. Haven't subscribed to it as I'd rather do face to face so can't vouch for how good it is.

 

[Blister]

Some users on UKW don't support this forum and have huge amounts of posts , Can't see
them paying for subscriptions on any other platforms either.
I support this forum and pay a monthly youtube fee.

 

[Doug B]

But without regular posters forums can stagnant & fail it’s these regular posters who keep the forum active so to my mind there’s an argument that the more posts you have the more content you added so why should you pay, you’re supporting the forum with the time you dedicate to it.
As for You tube I have over the last twelve months been watching more of it & as of yet there’s no one that has impressed me sufficiently that I would support them monetarily

 

[AJB Temple]

I agree with Doug. I used to support the forum with a membership, but stopped because as a personal choice I do not want to funnel money through a Panama registered commercial operation. At the same time I stopped originating WIP threads and posting pictures and dramatically reduced posting, despite feeling that UKW is a useful forum. The value in a forum is it's membership and volume of visitors, through which the commercial owners are able to generate advertising revenue and a saleable email database. Fair enough. I would only contribute financially to a forum platform that is UK owned and run, and if run for profit pays tax in the UK. My personal choice.

 

[AES]

Strongly agree with Doug B and AJB temple above.

Personally I don't pay for anything. As far as UKW is concerned I feel (rightly or wrongly!) that the time I take to reply "genuinely" to Qs posted here is already a contribution that "adds some value" to this Forum. That's as far as I'm prepared to go (financially speaking).

And again speaking entirely from the personal viewpoint I just don't care where "the Forum concerned" (UKW or any other) is based/pays taxes.

Re Patreon. I do regularly watch a number of channels on YouTube. Those that I watch are obviously enjoyable and educative to me. Some of those "offer" (in some cases that should definitely be termed "PUSH"!) a Patreon subscription. And in some cases the Patreon sub offers "additional benefits". But never having taken up those offers I cannot say if those benefits are worth it or not.

I really do appreciate the time and effort (plus a fair amount of cash in hardware and software I believe) that goes into making those videos. And that time and effort for a single individual must FAR outweigh those that a huge (presumably) company like Netflix ploughs into making the content it sells (in terms relative to the one man band).

But sorry to disappoint Netflix (and everybody else out there, one man band or not), I just don't subscribe to anything on the internet that requires me to pay money. In the same way that I never "publish" anything anywhere on the internet that I intend to "sell" or have already "sold" or wish to retain copyright on.

Yet another case of an aged, sceptical skinflint failing to "keep up with the times" I guess.

Personally I get more "pleasure" (and "educational reward") spending at least some of my free time researching and writing my own "stuff" (NOT limited to UKW posts by any means).

If it's any "consolation" to those YouTubers that I do watch regularly, I reckon I spend about twice as much of my spare time writing my own stuff as I do watching theirs.

 

[whostolebenfrog]

I get a huge amount of value from some channels. Some of them have offered me countless hours of entertainment, others have given me tips that have saved huge amounts of time. I'm going to build a garden room soon(ish!) and some of the tutorial videos are genuinely amazing. They are pretty much all the information you need to build one - saving incredible amounts of research or costly mistakes!

But you're right you can't support them all. I usually rotate a few subscriptions around to whoever I'm enjoying at the time. I can't support all the creators I follow but if I chuck one or two of them £5 a month I feel like that's a reasonable amount for me to contribute. Other people support the various other creators too so I don't worry too much about making sure I'm being fair.