Understand the numbers listed on my Patreon

  • Updated

The earnings number and paid member count listed under your Patreon heading and your Membership insights page are approximations of your monthly or per creation earnings and membership count. Think of the overview and summary as a snapshot of your current membership health.

The paid member count and earnings estimations are pulled from the active paid members list in your Relationship Manager.

While our examples show a US Dollar ($) amount, yours will appear in the supported currency you and your paid members have selected. To learn more about currencies, please visit this help center article: Selecting my billing currency

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Where can I review my processed earnings? 

Use the Earnings dashboard, and Payouts reports for your monthly totals. These reports are reliable records of what we've processed for you in a given month.

The earnings number listed on your Patreon will fluctuate as paid members come and go, and as we retry declined payments throughout the month. While you can use this number as a snapshot of your earnings, it will adjust throughout the month.

Your Membership dashboard is your best resource for digging into paid member count by join date and tiers.

How are we calculating the number shown on your Patreon?

We add your active membership payments and then take into account the following:
  • Payment fees 
    We use the percentage of your payment processing fees from the previous month as an estimator. There may be fluctuation in this amount depending on what is processed.
  • Platform fee
    This fee will vary depending on the plan that you are on and is deducted from the total to give you a more accurate estimation of your take-home earnings. 
    To find out more about the platform fee, visit     this help center article: Creator fees breakdown.
    If you are on the legacy Founder's Pricing, visit this article: My earnings fees (founding creator)
  • Declines
    The total amount of declined payments from the month. Paid members can have an active membership and still be in a declined state — don't worry, they won't have access to your page content until they resolve their payment. We remove declined payments and members from your paid member count and earnings estimation that you see until their payment is resolved.

Why did my numbers suddenly change? 

If you use one of our legacy billing models; monthly, charge upfront, or per creation, we process your paid members’ payments throughout the day on the 1st. The earnings and paid member count listed on your Patreon may fluctuate the most in the first few days of the month if you use one of our legacy billing models. Any declined payments from paid members will be subtracted from the earnings number.

If you are a charge upfront creator, you’ll see the biggest shift on the 3rd of the month. There is a brief delay between payment processing on the 1st of each month and when paid members who canceled in the previous month are removed from your “Active” member list and paid member count.

Paid members who canceled in the previous month do not have access beyond the 1st of the month; however, these members are not removed from your paid member count and "Active" list until 12 midnight Pacific Time on the 3rd of each month. If you notice a sudden decrease in your paid member count, it means that those canceled members have been removed from your count.

We’re actively working on ways to shorten this delay so as not to interrupt your workflows.

How can I tell who has canceled before the 3rd of each month?

  1. By heading to your Relationship Manager, and filtering by the “Cancel Date” column.
  2. Members who have a “cancel date” in the previous month no longer have access to your posts and will be removed from your paid member count at 12 midnight on the 3rd. 

Do I lose paid members who decline?

No – but we do deduct declines from the earnings number listed on your creator Patreon. We regularly retry your paid members’ declined payments throughout the month, and your earnings number will likely increase to reflect any payments that process later in the month. So don’t feel discouraged.

How do I know which paid members’ payments declining? 

You can visit your Relationship Manager and use the filters to find the group of paid members whose payments we were unable to process– again, don’t worry, we’ll retry them throughout the month for you.   

 

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