Wetlook World Forum

THE INTERFACE: I agree with you, not the best display method, and with endless scrolling it can be hard to find what you want UNLESS that Producer meticuously tags every post with relevant keywords (which I do) so that fans can find what interests them and skip what does not interest them. Bear in mind, most mainstream Patreon creators do not mind about the scrolling and tagging problem because most creators only post their "benefits" for 1-2 months, and then they DELETE those posts and benefits, so they only keep 1-2 months of scrolling history on their channel and then they erase older posts. I do not do this and cull my benefits and posts.... and I keep all my posts and benefits (videos and photosets) online in perpetuity. So for example, I joined Patreon 1 year ago and all my new members can scroll back and get all 12 months of history and videos and photosets.....but most mainstream Patreon creators only give their members 1-2 months of history and they ERASE their older postings as they go forward.

THE BILLING SYSTEM: I can empathize with the billing cycle problems that Patreon members feel is not right.....but the Patreon billing cycle is even WORSE for the Patreon channel owners, because the default setting on their system is that a member ONLY gets charged on the first of each month....and is granted a GRACE PERIOD if they join in the middle of the month. So if a Patreon member joins on the 5th of any month, he will be given a 3 week grace period and NOT charged at all until  the1st of the next month....and then Patreon will allow members to CANCEL during that same month before they are even charged. This means what happens is....a Patreon member can sign up in the middle of the month.....grab all your private media for free, and then cancel BEFORE the 1st of the month and he never gets charged at all, and the Producer gets raped and ripped off.  Patreon members are quick to "game the system" and they abuse it -- these people are called Pledge Skippers or Patreon Skippers....and every month last year I was getting about 30% "skippers" each month who were grabbing my stuff and then cancelling and skipping without ever paying for their membership. The most gauling thing for me was that when you cancel a membership the Patreon system prompts the person to check a box as to why they are cancelling....and most people say "I got what I wanted and have no need anything else" but the most gauling answer the Patreon skippers say is "the channel is not updated enough". This really irks me when people say that, because I update my channel DAILY with extra stuff for my members, so how can somebody say I am not updating my channel enough....when I update EVERY BLOODY DAY. These Patreon skippers are people having a laugh at our expense.  Anyway, the default setting for the Patreon billing cycle is NOT to charge members UNTIL the first of the next month and allow them to join in the middle of the month and get everything without paying for 2-3 weeks and it allows people to cancel before they are ever billed. Thankfully...there is a way to solve this problem....because Patreon allows channel owners to CHANGE their billing cycle from "charge on the first of the month"  to "charge immediately when the member joins"....so I changed my billing cycle....I had to......because 30% of my members were skipping out each month without paying a dime. Imagine if you ran a restaurant where you allow Patreon members to get a free lunch every day for 2-3 weeks, and not have to pay their billing until next month, and then 30% of those people each month never show up to pay their bill. It is totally demoralizing for Producers to work their butts off every day and get ripped off each month by 30% pledge skippers. So, the fairest thing for Producers and their members, is to change the billing cycle from 1st of the month, to bill immediately.

THE REAL BENEFIT FOR MEMBERS:.... is that Patreon allows fans who do not have a credit card to get Producers media via using Paypal instead. Most wetlook producers cannot install Paypal directly on their sites (I have been suspended and cancelled 3 times in the past by Paypal, who do not approve of my websites). I view Patreon as a conduit....as a mechanism whereby folks who want to acquire my media and want to use Paypal, while they cannot use Paypal directly on my sites, they can use Paypal to join Patreon and then I grant them 1 or 3 or 10 downloads per month from my Megastore site, depending on their Patreon tier membership. I not only provide unlisted Youtubes and exclusive photosets to my Patreon members, I also grant them free videos from my Megastore site as well.

THE REAL BENEFIT FOR PRODUCERS / CONTENT CREATORS.....it allows you to offer your products to non credit card holders via using a Patreon account as a 3rd party gateway to Paypal. Moreover you are more encouraged and motivated to produce more media if you get better support from your fans, because Patreon is a much better way to receive funding and support than trying to monetize your Youtube channel (which uses the Google Adsense monetization system). Basically the Youtube monetization only works well if you a) produce mainstream content and not fetish content, and b) if you are able to reach 50K or more subscribers. Unless you meet those 2 criteria (which nobody in the wetlook world ever has, or is ever likely to do) then Youtube monetization is basically a scam that Youtube perpetrates on fetish content creators. I will explain why Youtube monetization is a rip off for wetlook producers. Take the number one wetlook channel on Youtube, which is Dima, and my own channel stats. DIma has the most subscribers with 12K subscribers and his average views are 66K views per month. My YT channel is far behind with only 7K subscribers but has average views of 663K views per month. The Youtube/Google Adsense monetization payout rate is around $1 per 1000 views per month, so these 2 channels could in theory earn only $66 and $663 per month in ad revenue from Youtube, but we can't earn a dime because under Google Adsense rules all fetish media is DISQUALIFIED and cannot join their program unless it is more mainstream etc. OK, thats cool...no problem....but what irks me is while we cannot make any ad revenue from our Youtube creations, THEY CAN....because under the Youtube Terms of Service rules it grants Youtube the right to run ads against our media....so THEY can make money by running ads against our clips, but they disqualify us from participating in their ad program ourselves. If that is not bad enough, they scam us on our traffic rankings as well, because they place an AGE GATE restriction on many of my videos....which they say is designed to protect children.....b/s ...no it is not....it is a scheme to steal our traffic because when they age restrict a video it means that video cannot be embedded and played from our external sites, and it forces our viewers to jump from our site to go to the main Youtube site instead to play that video. If this was about protecting children, then WHY is not OK to play that video inside our own external sites but it is perfectly OK for people to watch that same video from inside the main Youtube site. So, it has nothing to do with "safety" and it is merely a clever scheme Youtube uses to deny you the traffic on your external sites, and to force more traffic to visit their main Youtube site instead.......as Yakoff Smirnoff used to say "What a Country !".

Getting back to Patreon.....it is helpful for Producers because they can't get much support via Youtube views, but if they make some of their Youtubes unlisted and make those only visible to their Pateron members, then at least they can get a few hundreds dollars each month from their fans. It is not much, but it is a better alternative to Youtube monetization.

If you have any questions.....I can provide more insights. Patreon is not perfect, but it does have some side benefits.

MK

https://www.patreon.com/wamtec