Ghost as a Patreon/SubscribeStar alternative?

[osanaiko]

I randomly stumbled across this service

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It seems to be a possible Patreon alternative, where you pay a monthly fee of 9$ but then they take 0% additional fees except for the payment processor costs(!) Apparently they make most of their money by selling preconfigured hosting for creator's website and assets, but you can also bring your own server if you are technically capable.

As far as I can see there is no content restriction policy other than "must not break any laws", and there are posts in their support forums detailing how to create 18+ sections/hide 18+ content from users unless they opt-in.

Has anyone heard of them before? or even used them?

 

[Perverteer]

I've come across Ghost as well, it's a project by a former core WordPress developer. The features of Ghost seem to be interesting and

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, among other platforms. I can't find anything about adult content in their terms, other than this phrase:

By using any Service, you agree not to do, or permit others to do, any of the following:
Through the Website, your site, or using our Services, transmit, distribute, post, store, link, or otherwise traffic in Content that you believe or have reasonable grounds to suspect:
[...]
f. is offensive, profane, contains or depicts pornography that is in breach of applicable laws and regulations;

There are some questions

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on their forums, but not a lot of answers, or the answers are a few years old and refer to Stripe integration (which Ghost doesn't seem to offer anymore?)

At first I though you'd collect payments directly via PayPal or any other payment gateway (because those are listed under

You must be registered to see the links

), but Ghost seems to do

You must be registered to see the links

similar to Patreon. They have Wise and Direct bank account options.

All in all it might be an interesting alternative at first glance to be honest.

 

[yilkin]

Not disagreeing with the premise, just want to add some clarifications:
Ghost themselves are a blogging platform, which offers

You must be registered to see the links

(from third-party providers) that allow for patreon/subscribestar-like behavior.

refer to Stripe integration (which Ghost doesn't seem to offer anymore?)

One of which is Stripe, which Ghost

You must be registered to see the links

.

At first I though you'd collect payments directly via PayPal or any other payment gateway (because those are listed under

You must be registered to see the links

), but Ghost seems to do

You must be registered to see the links

similar to Patreon. They have Wise and Direct bank account options.

Your first thought was right; payments come from the integrations (

You must be registered to see the links

,

You must be registered to see the links

,

You must be registered to see the links

,

You must be registered to see the links

, etc). What you noticed concerning Ghost payouts, only refers to payouts for referrals to Ghost's premium subscriptions (a.k.a. one of

You must be registered to see the links

).

 

[peterppp]

it doesn't matter what the site allows as much as it matters how you get paid... if the payment processors used allow your adult content. anyone can put up a webpage and collect payments through paypal and stripe, but as soon as they find out you're getting paid for porn, they ban you.

patreon has a special deal with their payment processors to allow adult content but then they have to be restrictive with what they allow, hence no incest and so on

there's really no way around the censorship unless you find a payment processor willing to accept anything that isn't outright illegal. and that will come with heavy fees

 

[RPDL]

Thanks for showing me this yilkin - we've used ghost so I'll give my opinion on it.

It's great. There are upsides and downsides though and if you hit a snag, it can be disastrous for you.

Pros:

1. No patreon cut.
2. (An illusion of) more control.
3. Assuming you can find a payment processor who you're positively certain won't fuck you, you can both 1) save a lot of money and 2) you're not a slave to the patreon TOS.

Cons:

1. You don't have the patreon "shield" - any issues with payment will need to be fixed by you. For example, if someone clicks twice and gets double charged, you need to fix it.
2. If using paypal, you lose pseudo-anonymity. With patreon, people can sub with paypal and the money goes [customer > patreon > you], with Ghost it's [customer > you]. Paypal can and will ban people who break their TOS so this pretty much renders paypal unusable with Ghost.
3. Chargebacks and other credit card fuckery (stolen CC's) are your problem. Stripe bans people who chargeback too much but it's something you need to pay attention to.
4. Ghost is selfhosted so you need to host it yourself or find someone to do it for you. Ghost itself doesn't hold much userdata (payments go through a processor) but you'll need to setup things like email too.

IF, and it's a massive IF you're 100% sure you won't get binned by your payment processor, Ghost will be amazing. Problem is, no such thing exists and all it takes is one person to report you and you'll lose everything you've built. I'd 100% recommend it otherwise.

Development can be extremely frustrating too, it took them 18 months to merge a one line fix.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Assuming you can find a payment processor who you're positively certain won't fuck you, you can both 1) save a lot of money and 2) you're not a slave to the patreon TOS.

Oh, but there's many of them, really.

Why not one of the leaders on the market, for both none adult and adult content,

You must be registered to see the links

?

Adult Pricing
10.8% - 14.5%

Okay, probably not a good idea, so, perhaps

You must be registered to see the links

, by example ?

Collecting the details below before applying for a merchant account will help speed up the approval process:

Government-issued photo identification

Signed merchant application

Voided check or bank letter

Three months of bank statements

Three months of processing statements

Information regarding your adult business (and its products or services)

Along with the above documents, you should also be ready with a website that is secured with an SSL certificate, uses HTTPS, and includes the following:

• Your company's legal name and logo
• Contact details (phone number or email)
• Privacy Policy page
• Terms & Conditions page
• Footer with the company name
• Return and Refund Policy page

Yeah, in the end, the reality is that you'll have a high fee rate and/or very intrusive demands, because banking sector is one, if not the, most regulated sector, and not respecting one of those restriction would mean the impossibility to operate.
There's surely some payment processors that have lower rate and no intrusive demands, but they come with a counterpart that would be even more annoying: Being lax, they'll not be seen as worthy by your own bank (or PayPal if you use them as intermediary) and you risk to be kicked out. Something that would be even more annoying if it's directly your own bank that kick you out.

IF, and it's a massive IF you're 100% sure you won't get binned by your payment processor, Ghost will be amazing.

As long as you're ready to, among other things:

1. Deal with the payment processing issues, that are double subscriptions as you said, but also, among others, declined payment due to a lack of fund, declined payment because the credit/debit card have expired, fraud claims, refund claims ;
2. Payback the frauds from your own pocket if you choose a payment processor who don't explicitly say that it deal with this itself ;
3. Deal yourself with the taxes processing (something that Patreon pre-process for you) ;
4. Accept the risk to be kicked out by your own bank.

The second point being the most annoying and having the capability to lead you to personal bankruptcy. For memory, Patreon have a frozen deposit of US$ 20 Millions and use its interest to cover the frauds payback ; it's thanks to this that you can use PayPal, Visa and MasterCard with Patreon.

 

[RPDL]

Yeah, in the end, the reality is that you'll have a high fee rate and/or very intrusive demands, because banking sector is one, if not the, most regulated sector, and not respecting one of those restriction would mean the impossibility to operate.

Not just that, the trustpilot reviews of most of these sites are horrific. Numerous cases of funds being held hostage, 6-12 month waiting periods to get paid - stuff like that. It's just not worth it.

Unfortunately, it'll be a cold day in hell when a "good" payment processor will allow this kind of content so there's really not much can be done. Pick up that can citizen, fall in line.

 

[Perverteer]

Not disagreeing with the premise, just want to add some clarifications:
Ghost themselves are a blogging platform, which offers

You must be registered to see the links

(from third-party providers) that allow for patreon/subscribestar-like behavior.

One of which is Stripe, which Ghost

You must be registered to see the links

.

Your first thought was right; payments come from the integrations (

You must be registered to see the links

,

You must be registered to see the links

,

You must be registered to see the links

,

You must be registered to see the links

, etc). What you noticed concerning Ghost payouts, only refers to payouts for referrals to Ghost's premium subscriptions (a.k.a. one of

You must be registered to see the links

).

Thanks for diving a little deeper into this. I only did a quick google search and didn't read up on what the premium subscriptions for Ghost were. In that case Ghost does exactly what I initially thought and it's the same functionality you can achieve with other platforms (WordPress + WooCommerce + Memberships for example).

The bottleneck for the self-hosted use-case (with Ghost, or anything else) is the payment processor as others have already pointed out. Stripe and PayPal may (and will) ban you as soon as they find out the content you're peddling, as it's against their ToS.

Oh, but there's many of them, really.

Why not one of the leaders on the market, for both none adult and adult content,

You must be registered to see the links

?


Okay, probably not a good idea, so, perhaps

You must be registered to see the links

, by example ?


Yeah, in the end, the reality is that you'll have a high fee rate and/or very intrusive demands, because banking sector is one, if not the, most regulated sector, and not respecting one of those restriction would mean the impossibility to operate.
There's surely some payment processors that have lower rate and no intrusive demands, but they come with a counterpart that would be even more annoying: Being lax, they'll not be seen as worthy by your own bank (or PayPal if you use them as intermediary) and you risk to be kicked out. Something that would be even more annoying if it's directly your own bank that kick you out.




As long as you're ready to, among other things:

1. Deal with the payment processing issues, that are double subscriptions as you said, but also, among others, declined payment due to a lack of fund, declined payment because the credit/debit card have expired, fraud claims, refund claims ;
2. Payback the frauds from your own pocket if you choose a payment processor who don't explicitly say that it deal with this itself ;
3. Deal yourself with the taxes processing (something that Patreon pre-process for you) ;
4. Accept the risk to be kicked out by your own bank.

The second point being the most annoying and having the capability to lead you to personal bankruptcy. For memory, Patreon have a frozen deposit of US$ 20 Millions and use its interest to cover the frauds payback ; it's thanks to this that you can use PayPal, Visa and MasterCard with Patreon.

CCBill, Payment Cloud or even Epoch are all options, but Ghost doesn't specifically offer an integration for those processors, so you'd have to build your own. As you've pointed out, all those high-risk processors charge high fees and require you to have a rolling reserve to pay for any fraud and chargebacks.

I only know of one smallish AVN developer who went the CCBill way and that's Gumdrop Games of Dual Family (in)famy. Not sure how or if they're still collecting payments via their website though.

I've been tempted in the past, to create a self-hosted subscription service for my games (likely based on WordPress), but the whole nightmare of supporting a service like that and getting a high-risk payment processor is still scaring me off. So I'd love to hear success stories from other developers (if there are any).

 

[MissFortune]

I only know of one smallish AVN developer who went the CCBill way

Not much to add here, but I know Pixieblink has mentioned it a few times, but I'm not sure if he's currently using or has at all.