Anecdataly, I currently support 5 creators, with an average pledge of $5/mo, for a total of $25/mo.
Under the current system, I calculate that of my $25, $1.25 goes to Patreon, PayPal gets $1.07, and my creators get $22.67 (divided between them proportional to my pledges). 90.7% of my payment goes to my creators.
Under the new system, where the 2.9%+$0.35 is charged per pledge, that changes to me paying $27.48 (+2.48), $2.58 (+1.33) goes to Patreon, PayPal gets $1.15 (+0.08), and my creators get $23.75 (+1.08). The increase going to Patreon is greater than the increase going to the creators. 86.4% of my payment goes to my creators.
The more pledges I make, the smaller the percentage that goes to my creators. For a fixed budget, it makes sense for me to make a few, large pledges than many, small pledges.
The PR problem here is that Patreon pitched this as shifting the transaction costs from the creators to the patrons, while keeping their take the same. I could get behind that,
Under that regime, my payment would become $26.11, PayPal would get $1.11 of that, Patreon would get $1.25, and my creators would get $23.75, regardless of if I do it as 1 pledge of $25 or 25 pledges of $1. But that’s not what they went with.
