Preferred sites for donations? (patreon, gumroad, subscribestar, others?)

I’m looking into what options we have for donations. Lots of sites won’t allow anything related to adult content, or rely on payment processors that won’t.

I’m curious if people have a preference of a donations site. Or if I missed any (in the title).
These all support monthly subscriptions, but patreon does not support one off tips.

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Patreon should work I assume. Even though they don’t allow adult content (unless it’s animated - makes sense, right?).
I think as long as you don’t post any pictures etc. it should work. Some scripters also have a Patreon and it seems to work, as long as they don’t link any adult content.
Upside is, you get consistent donations, because the payment is monthly. But at the same time this could be a downside, because people may don’t want to give money monthly. For this sites like buymeacoffee are good, where people can just donate something and don’t have to pay monthly.

You can maybe even try both. Have a Patreon for people who want to support longer and don’t mind paying monthly and a normal donation site like buymeacoffee, where people can just leave a single donation, if they don’t want to pay monthly.

Have you looked into Ko-Fi? I’ve seen E-models use it all the time for a smaller donation platform.

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I would realize “donations” with multiple options:

  1. Patreon
    Funscripts aren’t adult material, it’s data like csv, just based on a adult video. As site owner you don’t need to post or talk about adult material on patreon. I think it would be enough to post a monthly user report of data usage or similar information. I hope, when the support check the site they don’t see all the piracy in here, else they will ban the account. Maybe the site should not the be the theme of the patreon. The fees are to high for low donations.
    5% to 12% +30¢ on each transaction

  2. Gumroad
    For those who don’t want to subscripe (but it is possible) and donate only one time. The fees are to high for low donations.
    2.9% to 9% +30¢ on each transaction (Gumroad Pricing – Free to start. Pay less as you grow)

  3. Buymeacoffee
    For those who don’t want to subscripe.
    5% fee

Exclusive scripts for donators will be a big push for the system. I have a good experience with gumroad, pay out is always right on time.

Honestly in regards to Patreon, you don’t even have to make it about adult content at all.
What you are providing is technical support and web development to a community, not adult content.

You could have a tier system where higher patreon tiers have a flair next to their name, maybe they have more script request slots, maybe they have a stronger script request vote, maybe there are donator-only scripts like @mADsCRIPTS suggested. Build it around community perks.

There are plenty of youtubers, streamers, whatever that provide only tiers of access for an external platform like discord via patreon and I don’t think it’s ever been an issue.

Some usage data of the site or statistics would be very neat to see, but does put you more at a risk to being directly linked to the site.

+1 to adding a non-subscription alternative like ko-fi for others.

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buymeacoffee relies entirely on paypal/stripe, which don’t allow adult content. You could use it, but run the risk of getting caught and shut down later. Gumroad isn’t exactly built for one off tips, but you can use it for such, and it supports direct deposit.

Curious if anyone’s used subscribestar, since it seems to do both subs and one offs

SubscribeStar is where creators go after Patreon meddles with their work. Adult game creators don’t have to censor content there.

I don’t know how the fee schedule works, or how they avoid the censorious influence of credit card companies, but they’ve been doing it for a while now, and I’ve not seen any specific complaints about the platform.

added sites for $ donations Donate to EroScripts

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I was banned from Patreon and Buymeacoffee for sexual content, I guess because I script live action stuff, not animated? I refunded one of my donations on buymetacoffee, so I think that flagged my account for review and subsequent ban. Any form of credit card payment has recently been put under extreme scrutiny because VISA and Mastercard want nothing to do with adult content. I just learned about this from the Pornhub documentary on Netflix. In reading the docs on gumroad, they also banned any adult content “featuring sexually explicit images or video or real, live, human adults”. The scripts themselves just csv files sure, but they are tied to video, so the area is kind of grey. If it’s grey, they rather side with the safer option of banning me. I wasn’t doing it for the money anyway, it was just nice to feel appreciated for my work. I am surprised Patreon hasn’t banned this website yet, as it does feature “real human adults”.

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