Question to Everyone

Krystel

That's very strange. I think charge up front, because you ARENT ripping people off, its them trying to do it with you, and I think youve been around and cool enenough that charging up front when this kind of attitude occurs should be expected.

ijuinkun

Yeah it's definitely rude for somebody to join and then leave without paying even one months' worth.

Evermore

Charge them up front. Put a disclaimer in the pledge levels about the potential double charge to let people know and make a recommendation to wait until the new month to pledge. If they want to be a long term contributor or they don't mind paying twice in a short period, they will heed the disclaimer. If they really just want to pledge and run, they'll do that or go away. You shouldn't have to deal with this on a regular basis. Keep in mind that people who cut and run can very possibly repost everything they took somewhere else (and are much more likely to than people who actually want to support you). Even if you take action against them on here, that damage will be much harder, if not impossible, to correct.

Chibi Biscuit

I thought about it some and I'm going to leave it as it is. It sucks, but I would rather just deal with the folks that abuse it than potentially double-charge any legitimate new patrons.

Wolx Edwards

If you charge up front just be sure to inform everyone. Your art is well worth it mate :D

Yugemos

Yeah, some people are just dishonest. Even if I were to join an artist's Patreon just to get existing content, I would keep my pledge long enough to pay. Not everyone feels that way though, and you shouldn't get ripped off.

Oxdarock

I've seen this concern from a lot of creators. About someone pledging at the end of the month and getting charged again on the first. However, that's not really your problem. If you make it clear that you have the charge upfront option in effect, then it's up to whoever is interested in your Patreon to either wait till the beginning of the month, or pay once to download everything from your gallery then bail out.

Don't let it get to you everything will be OK ^_~

GentleFan

I'd say charge upfront. Even if a newcomer gets the highest tier of $10, getting charged $20 within the course of a week isn't gonna break the bank for most people.

Maniko, conduit of hugely adorable, massively destructive beans

While this kind of behaviour sucks and I've seen it with a lot of the patreons I support, there's really no elegant solution outside of charging upfront. It may be worth putting a big fat disclaimer on the info page that you charge upfront so people can better plan for that, but it also makes it harder to pledge to you on a "whim" of course. At the end of the day, I think it may be best to just ignore this kind of thing and carry on for those people who genuinely love your stuff and want to support it. It's a bit like piracy - it's unfortunately going to happen and everything you do about it most likely will hurt your genuine supporters the most.