I am writing this while incredibly exhausted, so pardon the lack of editing and the brusqueness!
IF YOU MISSED IT: My Patreon was suspended for ‘suspicious activity’ the other week due to one fraudulent patron signing up with multiple accounts and stolen credit cards, pledging a massive amount, and then filing chargebacks which got my account put under review. I couldn’t post anything, couldn’t access any of my dashboard, and while I was aware of this from the beginning (it’s a common scam- someone pledging huge amounts and then asking for a portion back as ‘payment’ for getting you more patrons. I told him to eat shit and die.) I wasn’t able to block the accounts. Despite my account being in ~good standing~, the official word I got from Patreon is that they suspend first, ask questions later, and that you should individually report each of these patrons when they crop up.
Okay. That’s stupid, but sure. Keeping taking that big fee from me each month while doing nothing to protect your most vulnerable creators, I suppose.
Anyway.
Between this, paypros cracking down on artists like me, and just the general state of things, I was pretty stressed out and fed up! So I rehauled some of my member site backend to now be independent of an individual processor- I was originally using the Patreon plugin so that my patrons could easily log in with their current credentials. Well, during that whole business, none of them could fucking log in. I had to do a bunch of nonsense on my end so that they could log in again.
As always, convenience is the enemy of security.
When I first started this whole thing I was handing out login credentials manually to each subscriber to a hand coded website. While I’ve upgraded since then, I’m going back to the old way of doing things- each time someone subscribes, I make them an account with their email, and send them those details via email to prevent loss of credentials. (They can now change their own passwords and such, which is an improvement, of course. :P)
Now new subscribers (or old, if they want to switch) can sign up through Patreon or my newly minted SubscribeStar. Obviously SubStar still isn’t safe (I see what you people did to the Degrees of Lewdity dev!) but it’s still safe-er. I have spent the last entire week doing emails and calling various high risk pay pros about what to do. I contacted 20 of them. I am getting so much mileage out of my phone plan while here in Guadalajara, you guys.
I will probably make a post about those various conversations, but it really just boils down to groups of creators needing to band together to get accounts as groups, honestly. Most of us are too small for them to want to pay someone to even look at your website. Also, furries kissing humans is still bestiality, apparently. Cowards.
Essentially those are the two options until my store is back up– thankfully that’s down for good reasons. Once my store is back I’ll start processing subscriptions through there too, as with some elbowgrease and an open API you can make a payment portal for just about any company. I’m also going to start accepting check, money order, and cash.
Where was I going with this. Uhhh. Considering supporting me if you like my comics? Or even just the general knowledge gathering in regards to this shit. Both places have tip jars, as does my store (when it’s up).
And the obligatory links to go scream at paypros, including the one from the Cartoonist Co-op that I helped set up.
Shit’s crazy! Wow. Bye!
