Alternative to Patreon, Please?

Premium Subscriber Erik in Nevada wanted to really help True, but he didn’t want to do it via the new effort on Patreon, the “crowd-funding” platform for creative endeavors.

He asked instead if I would “Please install a ‘donation’ click linked to PayPal.” Seems like a reasonable request: it’s in the sidebar on pretty much every page of this site, and it allows you to choose how much to send. The funny part: two other readers found it before Erik could get back to it (and others have found it since).

When he did, Erik sent $100 and asked, “If you can (easily) set a reminder to send me a Pay Pal ‘invoice’ for $100 every six months, that would be convenient.”

Yet Another Login

I do understand not everyone wants to set up Yet Another Account on Yet Another Site, no matter how much you want to support the independent voices you love. In fact, I know some don’t want a Paypal account either, so you can do the same thing through True’s shopping cart, too, so you can use your credit/debit card. (That’s right here.) Paypal is handy, but they’re clunky enough to have made some people pretty angry (including me…). It’s all about making things easier for you.

Though Patreon is pretty cool, and we’re making good progress toward our first-level goal: already more than 80 percent of the way to getting all outside advertising off of True’s web site! Even just $1 really helps. It looks like the smallest amount you can pledge is $2, but you can actually edit your pledge to be any amount you want (though I think there’s a $1 minimum — below that, fees eat it all up): $1, $1.50, $9.27, or whatever works for you.

Remember, anything $4 and up gets you Premium each week in addition to helping to get the ads off the web site! Of course you can change or stop your pledge at any time, too. It really is a powerful platform. See True’s Patreon page here, and thanks so much for helping True keep publishing!

Update

There was later some trouble with Patreon, so indeed there is now a true alternative: a self-hosted solution that not only is done directly in True’s shopping cart, but doesn’t have Patreon’s fees taken off the top. See this page for more information.