Who uses Patreon? Does anyone want an addon to promote forum members who are patrons?

Stuart Wright

Stuart Wright

Well-known member
I want to gauge the interest in an addon, which connects to the Patreon API to get a list of patrons, compare their email addresses with the email addresses of forum members, and depending on which tier they are on, they have a specified user group added to their profile in order to give them extra privileges and badges etc.
This addon is already working on AVForums and I will consider beautifying it for release if there is interest.
Are you interested in this Patreon <-> Forum connectivity?
 
I wouldn't mind. Although, it would be nice if there was a "lite" version as well as a paid version. Right now, I have zero patrons, and zero income, so some sort of limited functionality would be nice for hobby sites.
 
I'd definitely be interested. I think a Patreon connection to XenForo can make it easier for admins to offer additional offerings to financial supporters/donators. The more additional content & exclusives you offer the more likely members will be to donate.

I assume you've already worked out the user group upgrade when subscribed / downgrade when expired connection?

Thanks for offering this to the community.
 
KensonPlays said:
I wouldn't mind. Although, it would be nice if there was a "lite" version as well as a paid version. Right now, I have zero patrons, and zero income, so some sort of limited functionality would be nice for hobby sites.
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It cost @Stuart Wright money to have the add-on developed, costs money to maintain, and there is the continued cost of support (usually in time).

A lite version just adds on top of those costs with an additional add-on which will require maintaining two code bases.
 
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Forsaken said:
It cost @Stuart Wright money to have the add-on developed, costs money to maintain, and there is the continued cost of support (usually in time).

A lite version just adds on top of those costs with an additional add-on which will require maintaining two code bases.
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Lite doesn't have to mean free, but could be a lower cost, less features.

If it's more than 25, it would be out of my budget, due to no jobs in my area.

I probably won't be renewing my xf license due to increased price, 70 was already a lot to ask for, for me.

I can see how two codes or whatever would be hard (not a coder, I don't know the specifics), but I've seen plenty of add-on for other, different software, with a basic free, or limited, cheaper license.

I believe a service for patreon called patronizer or something allows free use up to a certain number of patrons, then charges past a certain number of them.
 
KensonPlays said:
Lite doesn't have to mean free, but could be a lower cost, less features.

If it's more than 25, it would be out of my budget, due to no jobs in my area.

I probably won't be renewing my xf license due to increased price, 70 was already a lot to ask for, for me.

I can see how two codes or whatever would be hard (not a coder, I don't know the specifics), but I've seen plenty of add-on for other, different software, with a basic free, or limited, cheaper license.

I believe a service for patreon called patronizer or something allows free use up to a certain number of patrons, then charges past a certain number of them.
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Not going to take this off-topic, but Patreon really is only a fit when you have a decently sized audience that is willing to subscribe or else the fees do not make sense and you are better off looking at alternative revenue sources. It is good for visibility, but if you do not already have some visibility there really is not much benefit.
 
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Forsaken said:
Not going to take this off-topic, but Patreon really is only a fit when you have a decently sized audience that is willing to subscribe or else the fees do not make sense and you are better off looking at alternative revenue sources. It is good for visibility, but if you do not already have some visibility there really is not much benefit.
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I believe i'm grandfathered into their old structure, before they made the fee changes.
 
I wouldn't go to the cost of building two versions.
The addon matches the email address in Patreon with the email address in the forum, so it automatically processes patron members.
So if members use a different email address in Patreon and the forum, then the addon will not identify them and apply the usergroups.

It adds usergroups dependent on the patron's monthly pledge and it removes the usergroup(s) if people cease being patrons.
We have already developed the addon to suit us with just two tiers. £3 per month or 300 in API and £10 a month or 1000 in the API.

2.webp

We'd need to create the ability for admin to add multiple tiers.
There are also some unknows. We base the tiers on the monthly pledge. There might be other criteria which we haven't anticipated.
Also a patron in a higher tier will have all the usergroups added for lesser tiers. This is not necessarily how some admins would want it to work.

I'm also investigating the possibility of producing a 'live' list of patrons for use in a video. Maybe you've seen the scrolling (usually multiple column) list that some creators use at the end of their videos. It's possible to output a CSV from Patreon but it would have to be done manually and it's clunky. So I'd have a download of a responsive, local web page with multiple columns of patrons which can then be used in OBS Studio (or maybe some other streaming platform) with a vertical scroll filter.

There will be additional cost to make it more flexible for admins which would be a few £hundreds.
The cost for a license would be in line with other addons which I sell.
I'm not going to bother to do this unless I know it will sell a reasonable number of licenses.
 
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Forsaken said:
Not going to take this off-topic, but Patreon really is only a fit when you have a decently sized audience that is willing to subscribe or else the fees do not make sense and you are better off looking at alternative revenue sources. It is good for visibility, but if you do not already have some visibility there really is not much benefit.
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The first option for Xenforo admins, I think, is to look at using the built-in user promotion feature.
But there are other ways for people to support creators and I think it's worth considering offering them so that people have a familiar or preferred way to donate.
That's why we have Patreon and BuyMeACoffee. They are getting a cut, but some people would only donate via those platforms.
The other advantage of using forum integration is that you can give perks to patrons on your forum. Obviously this can make the Patreon offering more attractive.
 
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Stuart Wright said:
The first option for Xenforo admins, I think, is to look at using the built-in user promotion feature.
But there are other ways for people to support creators and I think it's worth considering offering them so that people have a familiar or preferred way to donate.
That's why we have Patreon and BuyMeACoffee. They are getting a cut, but some people would only donate via those platforms.
The other advantage of using forum integration is that you can give perks to patrons on your forum. Obviously this can make the Patreon offering more attractive.
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Yeah, I was just trying to avoid going into alternatives as you're gathering info on the interest of the add-on, and don't need the thread going off topic into monetization strategies lol.
 
Sounds good, I'd buy it.

Stuart Wright said:
The addon matches the email address in Patreon with the email address in the forum, so it automatically processes patron members.
So if members use a different email address in Patreon and the forum, then the addon will not identify them and apply the usergroups.
Click to expand...
Maybe just adding a simple custom user field of "Patreon Email" could add some more flexibility. If it exists then use it, if not default to using the members XenForo account email for the connection.
 
Stuart Wright said:
If you mean multiple Patreon accounts then no, at the moment it caters for one. How many do you have?
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For one of the projects, we allow our artists to advertise their Patreons, and we currently have around ~10 artists; that is obviously not going to happen, but we'd probably need at least 3.
 
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