Patreon is a very good idea š
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Forget the stickers, t shirt and FTP app and Iām in. The S4 coupon is very generous.
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Never heard of Patreon, but it sounds like a good idea.
How exactly does it work? Automatic payments from a designated credit card, or manually executed donations (monthly, random?)?
Are you prepared for world domination? ;-)
Itās an automated, monthly payment, either from a credit card or PayPal.
You can choose your monthly pledge, and are able to adjust it accordingly.
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Right, wos 'appening? Iām confused! Imagine youāre explaining it to a 5 year old. What are we donating towards/for? Stickers and a T?
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Still working for that first million. Need one for me firstā¦ So starting with $5 a month until then.
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Guys, I think Isaiahās last post is trying to get the point across that devās , like most of us, have families and financial commitments and changing direction mid-stream is VERY hard to do. I know heās fairly well into v4, if not heavily thinking about v4.5 features, so I donāt think things will happen immediately ;)
Patreon is a good way to start on a new venture, especially when you donāt have a payment gateway setup for customers to pay you on a recurring basis. To @isaiah: On the same hand, (I know you did that post tongue-in-cheek) but it must have something substantial in the goals. I think it needs a hard look at the vision of where it would go. People need hard āmeatā to chew on, itās not about, T-shirts/stickers or some side project like an FTP menubar app. Itās all about features in the main app youāre proposing ;)
Iāll throw this out there for everyone to chew on: basically, as Isaiah has said, the current money stream scenario for Stacks for current customers has been $30, roughly every three years. That works out to a āsubscriptionā model of a little less than a $1 a month. Obviously, Stacks has volume & I donāt know exactly what that is, but itās fairly substantial.
To do a new venture will require commitment up front from enough people to warrant the change in direction and heāll need help in development as well. So the āsubscriptionā model would be something like $3 -5 / mo maybe, which would be 3x to 5x what heās getting now.
Obviously, if and when Isaiah is ready, then heāll have to market the living crap out of his plans and then you guys will need to support him financially, as well as, helping to spread the word in the forums and support the idea when you talk to other people.
Itās good to discuss these things and I think the reasons for the idea of a Stacks stand-alone have warrant. Weāll have to see what the future holds and all I can do is hold up my hand and support Isaiah as a dev and a fan.
Bill
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Nothing. Nothing is happening. Not yet at least. I was mostly just interested in getting feedback about patreon.
I donāt know much about patreon myself. But it seems like it might be well aligned to my goals.
What do you think?
I think so, too.
Compareable to a certain level (ok, Vue is open source): Evan | Creating Vue.js | Patreon
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What are the goals?
Sorry, but lots of different strands above, so not entirely sure what the aim is.
Itās not like kickstarter. There are no specific goals or timelines.
I think the core of patreon is: the artist/maker/creator promises to continuously make thing(s).
When you join you get special access to the person, the process, and/or the things.
Thereās no commitment and no timeline, so whenever thatās IS interesting you join in. And whenever it stops being interesting you cancel.
If that seems pretty wishy washy, thatās good feedback for me. If you hate this or love it, thatās fine. I just want your opinion.
Also: constructive criticism is appreciated. Tell me how youād make it better. I want to know that too.
I donāt love or hate it, but thatās because Iām really not sure what it is I should love or hate. Weāre not donating/subscribing/investing in a Stacks app, or Stacks 4, or an FTP app, rather in you? We put money in, but what do we get out? Is there something tangible at the end of it? Or, if investing in you, like some sort of bargain bucket Dragons Den do we get a share of something that is produced?
I get Kickstarter, as you are investing in someone in the hope that they will output something that you either want to use. I doāt get the notion of giving someone money with no clear objective. Iām not against it, I just donāt get it.
Put it another way: If you, or someone with your skills asked me to invest in them to produce X. If I thought X had value Iād consider it. if someone with your skill asked me to invest in them so they could go and beaver away and see what they come up with, Iād not walk away, but Iād at least want to know where they hope to go.
I think we should give Isaiah time to release Stacks 4 before we can hear his goals for stand-alone Stacks app and the Patreon, or Kickstarter, or whatever.
In all fairness, Patreon is more for content creators (videos, music, podcasting, blogs, etc.). Iāve not seen it used by any software devs. With content (as above) you can create a lot in very short periods of time. Some podcasters make videos of their podcasts available to Patreon members. Music makers make exclusive tracks available - though you gotta figure the best stuff is going on the actual releases. Etc.
I donāt know how effective it would be for Isaiah (or any dev thatās doing anything more than wrapping free/very cheap code in a stack).
Just my $.02
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Follow my link I posted above. Thatās a software developer creating one of the most growing JS libraries.
itās a chicken and egg sort of thing. and it has a lot to do with the way people use RW and Stacks: infrequently.
there arenāt enough users of Stacks at any one time to fund much of an app. we could probably kickstart a little app.
but over the course of 12-18 months there are many many more users. with those users we might have something. but itās uncertain maybe it could be a full app or maybe something a bit more modest. i donāt think weād know until we got there.
i think patreon could offer a way to let users chip in to something bigger that might be less tangible.
but @steveb has made it abundantly clear that i would have an uphill battle convincing RW users to contribute to something like that.
canāt kickstart it. canāt patreon it. hmmmā¦
maybe there is no way to get from here to there.
Yes, I saw that. But thatās a real outlier. Take a look at the Explore Patreon and see who the majority of users are: https://www.patreon.com/explore?ru=%2Fevanyou
Iād have to say you would be making life hard for yourself with the Patreon approach. But it can work, itās just rests on your skill at getting your message across.
Iām getting that your reluctance to go Kickstarter is because you donāt really have an end product to focus on?
Maybe thatās the first thing to get clear in your head? Certainly, itās easier to get the masses to support something tangible opposed to a general direction.
Regarding your Patreon page thingie, is it real? Are you starting the ball rolling now and looking for support? Iāll sign up no problem to Patreon for you, accepting its up in the air at present, if it is actually supporting you and your development.
nope. just numbers. there are a lot of Stacks users in total. but they donāt tend to be active all at once. my guess (ok, heavily researched āguessā) is that this could only drive about 30% of the funds needed to build an app.
i would have to find a way to make the kickstarter go a bit viral or learn how to type three times faster.