How to get your patrons to avoid the iOS Patreon fee

The fees for Patreon patrons through the iOS app suck. If your patrons have to pay the extra cost it ends up being 40-50% more for them. If you eat the cost, it ends up being a 30% loss in your earnings. On top of that, iOS has a 75 day holding period before your earnings are released.

So whats the most direct way to encourage patrons to NOT USE the iOS app payment system? Offer a direct link for each reward tier in the reward description. When the user clicks on this link, it opens in the browser, not the iOS app, letting the user bypass the whole iOS payment system.

How to set this up:

1. Get your checkout link for an individual reward: In order to make this link, you need your Patreon page name and the reward id.

   • YOUR_PAGE_NAME: The name used in the link to your page. This is just whatever your patreon url name is. In our instance its: okoa.

     
     
     

   • YOUR_REWARD_TIER_ID: You can find an individual reward id in your Creator Patreon dashboard > Membership > Edit (whichever reward you choose). Its the number at the end of the url.

     
     
     

   • Then just sub in YOUR_PAGE_NAME and YOUR_REWARD_TIER_ID into this link:
     
     https://www.patreon.com/checkout/YOUR_PAGE_NAME?rid=YOUR_REWARD_TIER_ID
     
     
   • Test it out. This link should work on all browsers/apps/etc. It just links to the checkout page for a specific reward tier.

2. Edit your reward description as html and add the direct link

   • In your Creator dashboard > Membership > Edit (whichever reward you choose), edit your reward description as html.

     
     
     

     
     
     

   • We recommend you edit the html in a separate text editor and copy and paste the text because Patreon’s html editor was buggy for us. You can use this as a loose template. Make sure you sub in your own reward description, your non-iOS reward price, and your checkout link:
     
     <p>Whatever your reward tier description is.</p>
<p></p>
<p>iOS app users: This reward is only $1/mo if you sign up through your web browser instead of the app: <a href="https://www.patreon.com/checkout/YOUR_PAGE_NAME?rid=YOUR_REWARD_TIER_ID">Checkout in your browser</a></p>
     
     
   • We have not tested this particular copy for performance. We recommend tweaking to what makes sense to you, but other copy we’re testing:
     • iOS app users: This reward is only $1/mo (or whatever your regular pricing is) if you sign up through your web browser instead of the iOS app:
     • iOS app users: Want to save 40% on your membership every month? Sign up through your web browser instead of the iOS app:
     • iOS app users: Want to pay less for the same content? Sign up through your web browser instead of the iOS app:

Caveats:

• So what’s wild about this is that currently, clicking the link from the reward description auto opens in Patreon’s app browser. It’s literally a seamless process for the user to just click the reward link instead of using the built in payment process. Tbh, this may not work forever. Technically developers aren’t allowed to directly link to alternative methods of payment in an iOS app, but you are not the app developer so...
• This link/note will be visible for all users, not just iOS users. But the link you’re using is just the regular checkout link in a web browser or android app so there really isn’t any harm if a non-iOS user clicks on it.
• Apple pay: So Apple Pay is still available as an option when the user clicks on the browser link. On the bright side, Apple Pay doesn't have the crazy fees, but the downside is that the payment processing period is still long. We’re not sure if it’s the same 75 day withholding period (we’re still testing that out, but does anyone else have info on this?), but it’s still probably good practice to discourage your patrons from using Apple Pay.
• We haven’t tested if this improves conversion rates to non-iOS payment methods long term so use at your own discretion.
• If the user is already subscribed through iOS, Patreon will not let the user resubscribe directly through Patreon until their existing membership is completely over.
• It does look like Patreon is beta testing letting creators opt out of iOS payment methods (based on just poking around other creators’ pages). So this may be just a stopgap fix. Although who knows, you may still see better overall earnings with providing the link in the reward description v just yanking out all iOS payments.

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