Alternatives to Patreon - Maybe for Adult games

[Kaffekop]

Reading it. it appears they've reached their goals. So, that said, my question is how successful they'll be.

Their site is supposed to be launched on spring;

If....IF they actually manage to put all those features, while accepting Every kind of content like they actually said, then it would be an awesome news...
Let's see how this will develop.

Hi
Sponsorion caught my eye and I reached out to them with a few questions of the top of my head:

1: How will you handle vat for creators? Will you offer the same service as Patreon in this regard?

2: Will Payoneer be a part of your payment solution for transferring money from your site?


3: How about certain sexual fetiches, like incest, rape, mind control and such? Will they be allowed on Sponsorium?


4: Is Paypal going to be part of this?
_____________________________________________
Here is their response:​

1. The payment processor we're in talks with for receiving payments, EmerchantBroker, does indeed handle VAT, so it will likely be similar to the service Patreon offers (automatically taking it into account). EMB is a 'high risk' processor that openly works with the adult content industry. Its rates are also highly competitive, with the initial rate of 3.95% +0.35c for new partners that will eventually fall to ~2.95%+0.35c (which is nearly identical to the rate [2.9+0.35] Paypal is giving Patreon).
High Risk processing has gotten a great deal more competitive over the past decade in general, although most of them
aren't capable of handling crowdfunding platforms.

2. Although Payoneer is, in practice, a major processor for adult content of all kinds, it appears their corporate policy is to deny this and refuse to work with companies that admit to having any interaction with the porn industry (even if the company itself is not involved in the porn creation). This is based on the last time we tried to speak with them, and suggests that they'll only work with us if we deceive them. That strikes us as a poor, rather unstable choice for our processing needs. Our current plan is to handle payouts by directly utilizing bank ACH services. Which is done by competitive payout handlers as well, they just have the process expedited / automated.
This does mean that payouts will work more like they did when Patreon was getting started (a few days after the start of each month). They probably also handled the ACH process themselves back then, although we don't know that for sure. In the long run we'll need to fully automate the payouts, but in the long run we'll also be a sizable company which will open doors not readily available for a start-up.

3. They will be allowed, yes. Everything you mentioned is legal to depict in the U.S., which is what will be determining what is and is not allowed. We're incorporated in Illinois, to be specific.

4. Paypal is extremely hostile to adult content creators, we're not working with them. It took Patreon several years to get Paypal on board, and we don't know what kind of concessions they had to make to do it. At the very least we'd need to be a multi-million dollar company for Paypal to even consider working with us without demanding content restrictions.

Please feel free to email us any other questions you may have!

Best Wishes,

The Sponsorion Team
________________________

Cheers - Kaffekop

 

[DawnCry]

Yep sponsorion seems more reasonable each day, however they don't have any visibility so I think they aren't ready yet.

 

[pystudios]

Payoneer is not an option due to it's Terms of Service Agreement...

Spoiler: Prohibited use of the service

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

I have a billing service that works.

 

[przewodo]

Sigh, look I'm gonna give a bit of feedback because you truly need it.

While you are focusing a lot on payment proccessing you are losing the marketing one.

Don't take me wrong it's important the payment proccess, however let me ask you a question, what exactly are you offering to a current creator on patreon?.

The only difference is that you are letting them have incest, mind control and many other fetishes banned by patreon, however if you think that it is enough you aren't gonna make it.

The thing is that most creators have the following choice, become a creator of patreon while having a few limits on fetishes but having a big public, or go to your page that is completely unknown and insecure while having that freedom. I would say no one would risk it.

What you have to do is to attract creators at all cost, especially those that are from patreon and have been fcked by it. To do that a good way would be to tell the creator "If you join us you will receive more money from your supporters for three months because we won't take the adult pledge fee for that time".

This is called an incentive, after three months the creator would start to pay the fee as normal. With policies like this you will attract more people who will take the risk that you are with a new page.

Another important point is advertising, you should immediately contact pages like lewdgamer to write an article selling you as the response to the patreon politics change, contact youtubers of adult content to talk about your page and try to give as many guarantees as possible so people will feel safe.

Then on another point you need to write on all adult forums related to games to earn even more advertising, it is important to be active on the forum and talk with people. That's why usually you need a public manager or public relations because those things consume a lot of time.

Next is about the name of your site, it sucks HARD. This is because it will be incredibly hard for you to gain a good SEO or better said search engine optimization. You won't have a good visibility with the name adult pledge, you need to create a proper name, one easy to remember and that if you try to find it on the internet won't give you non related stuff for free. It is better to have one new word to call yourself rather than normal words. It isn't like it will be impossible with adult pledge however it will be much harder.

Finally just try to think about useful things that would be great to add because it would be useful for both creators and supporters, this is just a tiny guide about marketing.

Hi! Thanks very much for all advises. We are really considering not charging our fee for 3 months for all creators that join us. I´m in contact with the big players, but they don't feel comfortable to join us now because we just started and they don´t know if the platform is well tested and support huge number of access and transactions.

About the SEO, we are currently having about 800 access daily, and our website just have one project for now. There is some things that we will be improving sooner.

Thanks Very much!

 

[Jai Ho]

I tried to create an account on Adult Pledge last week - not a creator account, a pledger account. The registration requires input of a birth date. No matter what birth date I entered, it was invalid and the little X on the right side would never go away. I sent an email. No reply yet, and the birth date part of account creation is still broken. If people cannot create an account, how do they pledge?

This interaction - or really, lack of any response, makes me rethink the viability / trustworthiness of the site. I get it that it is a new service, but not being able to create an account seems like a pretty big thing.

 

[Jai Ho]

Hatreon is not an alternative, at least not for me. Even ignoring the odious company you'd be keeping, there is the matter of payment. Do they have a history of it? What processors are they using? There is no way they are getting those rates from reputable processors. People are not going to be paid what the expect to be paid.

I had never head of Hatreon, so I Googled and read a Newsweek article. One of many things that I noticed was-

"Wilson’s main pursuit is fighting for the right to distribute blueprints online for 3-D-printed firearms in hopes of rendering gun control laws obsolete. He is

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for the right to do so."

I don't care about your opinion for or against gun control so please do not tangent there. I post that to make you think about the Feds. Don't you think Homeland Security will be scouring the pages at Hatreon more carefully than other places? Why in the world would I want to create an adult novel and post it on a place I knew the Feds were going to scrutenize?

 

[przewodo]

I tried to create an account on Adult Pledge last week - not a creator account, a pledger account. The registration requires input of a birth date. No matter what birth date I entered, it was invalid and the little X on the right side would never go away. I sent an email. No reply yet, and the birth date part of account creation is still broken. If people cannot create an account, how do they pledge?

This interaction - or really, lack of any response, makes me rethink the viability / trustworthiness of the site. I get it that it is a new service, but not being able to create an account seems like a pretty big thing.

Hi! I´m here to help you. We did not get any email, and I look on spam folder to make sure. We already have more than 100 users on our database.

Can you send a PM to me with an screenshot of the problem? And what is the address of the email that you sent?

Thanks!

 

[Jai Ho]

Hi! I´m here to help you. We did not get any email, and I look on spam folder to make sure. We already have more than 100 users on our database.

Can you send a PM to me with an screenshot of the problem? And what is the address of the email that you sent?

Thanks!

PM Sent. If you did not get an email,then your

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link on your website is also not working, that's what I used to report the issue.

 

[Jai Ho]

Problem resolved. User error - sort of. There was a checkbox that was supposed to be checked. Unfortunately, the site uses light grey font on white background - there was a checkbox, but it was invisible on my screen. I did not know it was there until przewodo sent me a screen print asking if I had checked the box. Lol, once I fished around and found the checkbox the registration worked like a champ!

 

[Jeancul]

I fucking don t undersand why paypal is a problem for paid for hardcore or fetish porn > here a little list

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. I see on the list you have the possibility to buy some video on pornhub . On porn hub there is many videos whit some fetish. (incest tag whit so many fucking list that can take days to see all this shit) So wtf ?
There is too, many porn site whit visa or mastercard and you get acces montly for anything

And for a virtual game whitout rape, piss or necroshit is a scandal to have this possibility of an (VIRTUAL/Not Real)incest story whit a virtual dad a virtual daugther or mom ... ?!!!!...

Someone had think to send a mail to paypal , visa or mastercard to ask directly if they realy care about if in the same time many compagny make video about incest story (whit actors ! not real familly peoples) and they get money for that

Here a list of production

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and they ask for a visa or mastercard again

For the fun here a daugther ask her daddy is creditcard probably for get acces for a good porn game !

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[Zippity]

This is like the third thread I've seen since yesterday talking about practically the same topics...

Be careful about some of these newer patron type websites claiming to be less restrictive versions of Patreon... Do your research into both the legality of their sites and/or company, are they a legally registered company, as well as research all their partners, their country of origin, owners experience with running a company at all, business partners, how big is the company, how experienced are their customer service staff, and so on... Are they registered with companies/organizations that monitor business practices (such as the Better Business Bureau), are they compliant with local and/or international consumer protection laws, etc? Ask all the same questions of their partnered payment systems...

Just be aware of the inherent risks you may be taking with both your money, your bank account information, and your personal information, when dealing with some of these newer companies offering to be a miracle replacement...

You can see my most recent post regarding one of these companies

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...

I also looked into Sponsorion, but they are not even up and running yet, so there is no current information on anything to do with their company... Their website is more of an advertisement (it's not even a https site) then having answers to questions like what I listed above... It's just a few advertisement like bits of information and a contact us link...

They do appear to be going with crowdfunding to raise capitol to start their business through

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... Which shows the primary contact as being from Canada... When I tried to look up Sponsorion, Inc. (which is listed as the copyright owner at the bottom of their website) in any sort of Canadian government site like

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I couldn't even find it... And their website doesn't even list financial partners yet so we can't look into those... Based off the location listed on the crowdfunding site, that person was in Quebec, so I looked up the company in the official

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website for Quebec, Canada and it's not registered with them either... They're not registered with the Better Business Bureau either...

 

[przewodo]

Hello.

I write to you regarding your post about my site Adult Pledge, in your post you estimated that we could be a personal information risk because of the information we asked, because there were a few complaints about it we have modified it already only asking for the country now because of VAT reasons, about the payza payment processor we currently do not have any better option because almost all payment processors decline us just because one of the following reasons:

-Adult content
-We are a start-up

I just wrote to you so that I could cleanly explain those points

Have a nice day

 

[Zippity]

Hello.

I write to you regarding your post about my site Adult Pledge, in your post you estimated that we could be a personal information risk because of the information we asked, because there were a few complaints about it we have modified it already only asking for the country now because of VAT reasons, about the payza payment processor we currently do not have any better option because almost all payment processors decline us just because one of the following reasons:

-Adult content
-We are a start-up

I just wrote to you so that I could cleanly explain those points

Have a nice day

It's great that you are taking some strides to alter your sites issues with regards to Security Software warnings concerning it... But my original warning in the post above yours is still a valid example of questions people should always have when it comes to newer overseas companies offering alternatives where money is involved...

For your company specifically, if you want to garner more trust, just be very transparent with how your company operates and offer solutions for folks who may run into issues... Such as:

How does your customer service department work? Is it a phone number you call, a live online communication service, or just via e-mail?

Do members having issues with paying or receiving payment communicate directly with your customer service department to resolve an issue, or are you pawning off all financial responsibility on Payza? What if Payza becomes an issue with regards to the money changing hands for members, are you going to be financially liable to the members for failure of Payza to pay members in a timely manner or at all?

Do you have links to any official press releases regarding your company?

Do you have a business license to run your business in the country of origin?

Do you have a publically available copy of your business plan?

Is your business registered with business monitoring companies like the Better Business Bureau and others?

Answers to questions like these, and more, will help build trust with folks before they take the sort of personal and financial risk typically associated with overseas companies... I also understand your plight in finding a suitable partner for the money transaction part of your business, but everything I found when researching Payza mostly pointed in bad directions for most folks using them... And as you say it was tough finding a money transaction company willing to work with adult/erotic/sexual based content companies especially with the more extreme fetish themes you want to allow for your site... And that in itself should point out just why companies like Patreon have the rules that they have... It should open folks eyes to just how difficult a proposition it is to run a large and successful business when it comes to certain business practices and association with certain topics and/or subject themes...

 

[Jai Ho]

Hello.

I write to you regarding your post about my site Adult Pledge, in your post you estimated that we could be a personal information risk because of the information we asked, because there were a few complaints about it we have modified it already only asking for the country now because of VAT reasons, about the payza payment processor we currently do not have any better option because almost all payment processors decline us just because one of the following reasons:

-Adult content
-We are a start-up

I just wrote to you so that I could cleanly explain those points

Have a nice day

@przewodo
Books use black fonts on a white background for a reason – it's easy to read.
Your super-light grey font on a crisp white background is nothing less than impossible to read. When you create a communication barrier between the creators and patrons, you have lost me as a patron and possible creator.

 

[przewodo]

@przewodo
Books use black fonts on a white background for a reason – it's easy to read.
Your super-light grey font on a crisp white background is nothing less than impossible to read. When you create a communication barrier between the creators and patrons, you have lost me as a patron and possible creator.

We didn't think that people would find the text color a problem, however we have changed it.

 

[Jai Ho]

We didn't think that people would find the text color a problem, however we have changed it.

You are awesome! Thank you!

 

[Moo8]

Xmoonprod good games too

 

[przewodo]

You are awesome! Thank you!

No problem. We are here to help. You can find us too on our Discord channel:

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[gamersglory]

So the writing has been on the wall for quite some time now. With the Incest ban being the first shot. That Patreon is looking to clean up there platform. To the point that patreon is applying censorship on what you can and can not say. You as a Dev may have noticed a dip in your donations and that is do to patreons making a mass exodus from the falling platform. I was hoping to have an alternative ready by this point but the costs of site development and legal that needs to be dealt with beforehand requires a lot more money then I have. I myself have left Patreon as a funding platform and will be leaving altogether in a few months and I see Patreon going out of the adult business soon.

 

[PixelRepublic]

The main problem is the safe alternative for game developers. Having the developers trust the site as their main source of income.

I'm a web developer, and as for the development cost of such a site, they're not that extensive once the infrastructure is in place, and a strong relationship is established with an understanding solicitor. It's something I've thought of and discussed with my own solicitor and some colleagues.

I've done similar on a much smaller scale in the past, but even with cost and legal not being an issue, there are a lot of other matters that must be addressed. As much as I know that I could produce the site, I couldn't make it a reliable success on my own. As much as I (like anyone else invested) could and would give it my all, I would kill myself just trying.