Methodology
We have a script that captures Jack's Patreon follower count every 10 minutes and saves a timestamp & that subscriber count to a database that lives on my server.
This project started Feb 2021, but since then Graphtreon (link:
https://graphtreon.com/creator/jackmonroe) has come on the scene, and gives us data to daily grain. I was relieved when comparing our vs their data that it reconciles so this approach works which is gr8 news/a personal relief.
The next stage is just to export this dataset to Excel and do some basic manipulation. So everything underneath 'Subscriber Movements' (header in pink) is known fact and verifiable to an independent source (Graphtreon). Unfortunately Jack hides her Patreon revenue figure so everything underneath 'Patreon Payday' is an estimate of how much she could hypothetically earn with such a subscriber base, using a number of reasoned assumptions. Details of which are below:
Patreon Payday aka Mithering about FA
Firstly for clarification - "est rev @ £3.50ps" means the estimated revenue when we assume that 100% of subscribers are paying £3.50, we then deduct the worst case scenario of 12% platform fees* to give these net revenue figures. This doesn’t consider taxes, but we have yet to see evidence that Jack herself considers taxes so this doesn’t keep me up at night.
There is absolutely no way for us to get more detail on the type of subscribers joining or who have been with Jack since she started her Patreon in April 2017, so there will always be a degree of uncertainty re: monthly takings. In detail:
- We don't truly know the % of platform fees Jack is paying.
- There is no way of capturing the split in her subscriber base between annual vs monthly subscriptions, so some months she may take home significantly more but this should net off across a 12 month period.
- On the above - annuals are actually discounted at 15% so we run the risk of over reporting revenue across a 12 month period.
- Jack repeatedly and publicly claims that over half her subscribers are only paying £1 despite a) this being a significantly harder checkout journey with ~30 clicks versus ~5** b) this being advised against by Patreon themselves due to their fee structure.
- There is the option for custom subscriptions, and these default at £5, which is 43% higher than her minimum of £3.50
So to conclude - these revenue figures really are an estimate with a bit of give/take to what they could be. But considering the only people we see speak publicly of subscribing (whether it's on her Patreon comments page or Twitter) are subscribing to the more expensive physical rewards yielding tiers (£7, £10, £24 - heaven forbid lol) that it's improbable
to me that her average per subscriber figure is just £3.50.
*When this tracker first began in Feb-21 there was very little documentation on Platform fees available either in Patreon's documentation or online, I believe I took the highest rate found on a press release related to a round of investments/their valuation? Since then I believe documentation has been improved but we've stuck with the 12% fee for consistency. I'm not sure if this is something we should review, if anyone is super up on this please reply with the fee structure and I'll restate these net revenue figures. Sorry don't have time to dig into this myself.
** Whoever calculated this please share exact numbers and I can credit you in this write up, again sorry I didn't dig into this myself.
Results & how to interpret them
Firstly a disclaimer - I've changed the table slightly so you may notice losses have moved down a row. Detail on this in the writing below, but anyway:
Nonsensically we'll start with the 'Subscriber Movements' side, headed in pink
Using
September 2022 as an example - she opened the month with 773 subscribers and was paid for such, with an estimated minimum revenue of £2.3k. We saw 38 subscribers leave (under losses) and 93 join (gains), this nets at +55 subscribers or +7.7% month on month (MoM%).
Revenue is calculated as: (opening subscriber count * estimated per subscriber revenue) * 0.88. So this is net of her assumed 12% platform fees, but obviously not the taxes.
My caveats/ravaging insecurities below:
a) Previously we'd see a -1 tell tell loss followed up by one large incident of lost subscribers. Weirdly this has changed, in July we saw 9 separate incidents of subscriber losses spanning 24 hours; August 4 incidents spanning 24 hours. Which suggests to me we can expect to see further losses for September, we just need to wait so these numbers may be restated.
b) Graphtreon maps this as a continuous line which defs eases the above issue as well as avoiding the need to assign proper fixed time periods to losses/gains? I hate that I re-stated that row but I think it makes more sense to say okay this is her payday month, she had X subs/received Y/because -P left and +Q joined. Previously we had leavers in the month they left's row, e.g: you left in August but this wasn't realised until September payday. Neither is right/wrong, but I prefer the new way as it's how we actually talk about it, e.g: she got paid at the start of September and lost 38 subs.
Playing around with per subscriber (ps) scenarios.
Conscious of our mithering, I'd like to highlight just how much of an understatement our estimated revenue is likely to be. The following table maps out what % of her subscriber base would need to be on each tier to create the average per subscriber scenarios we use in our 'Patreon Payday' section:
In writing:
- The assumption of an average of £3.50 per subscriber is possible with 100% of subscribers opting into her lowest pre-fabricated, marketed on the landing page ATL (above the line, eg you don't need to scroll or click to expand on the page), tier.
- An average of £5.00 ps is possible with a near 50/50 split in her subscriber base to the two lowest tiers.
- The £10.00 ps is a reach just playing amongst the 4 lowest tiers (<=£12 pcm) but is still feasible with this combo weighted towards the £12.00 tier. Please notice the more expensive £24.00 & £44.00 pcm tiers have not at all been considered: we are by no means reaching with our estimates.
Next steps
Jack continues to discredit any attempts to estimate her monthly Patreon revenue, but yet to provide us with a meaningful average per subscriber revenue figure to work with, or better yet - clicking a button to show her earnings on Patreon, as recommended by the platform itself! Please empower your donors to make decisions that are right by them & their families as we face inflation of 18% and upwards.
