Was just checking Jim's Graphtreon, as I'm wont to do, and I noticed that the precipitous drops always happen on the 1st of every month.
Has this been discussed before? Is this a result of how Graphtreon aggregates data, or how Patreon processes charges? Can you pledge to a Patreon for a single month without committing or do you have to manually cancel?
Patreon charges the first of every month. With some creators doing weekly posts, some users can pledge, grab content till the end of the month then cancel the pledge before billed. It's why most builds and such for patreon games are restricted to higher tiers and only released after people have been billed.
Patreon then takes into account the amount of people that have cancelled their pledges and adjusts the subscriber numbers accordingly. So instead of looking for monthly sub loss with Jim, a more median line average can tell how badly he's bleeding instead.
Graphtreon is just a website that aggregates data using Patreon's API. The bad thing about it is that when users hide how much they earn or how many subs they have out of fear of ridicule, Graphtreon can't track that. So it estimates instead.
Since we're on
Graphtreon, let's go over some graphs.
A basic overview of Jim's Patreon:
6.4k subs paying about $2 = about 12k a month for him. This number has more or less been consistent for the past 5 years.
When he came out as Non-Binary, he had 7.5k subs and was earning about 14k a month at his height.
This is his weekly graph-rate, the date listed, September 2020 is special because that's when he takes a dip in subs.
It was also around this time he started posting with the wig on twitter I think. That's where we see the first drop off of pledges. He had slowly gained subs through 2020 but that is what caused people to unpledge.
The spike was in May of 2021, when people in wrestling or left leaning found out about him and pledged I think. Anyway, take a note of that slow drop off in subs, 2k lost beginning in May 2021.
He's basically back to how much he was earning in 2019.
One more, total video ranking. Patreon has categories like podcasts, video commentaries, adult games, that sort of thing. What ranking does is it ranks the total number of pledges a channel has. A channel below in rank can earn more than a channel above in rank if they have more pricier subscriptions. $5 a sub as opposed to $2. You can hide per month donations and but you can't hide ranking. This is how Graphtreon estimates how much a patron earns I think, subs x min pledge. You can hide pledge numbers by turning a membership private but then you don't get ranked and good luck if anyone finds you organically.
Anyway, Jim has been in the "Video" category since he started his Patreon in 2014 and he's always been in the top 10 in pledges till about 2018 when he got bumped down to top 20.
Oh look, October 2020. He went from 14th to 28th in the space of about 4 months and sits at 36 today.
Q.E.D, Jim's patreon hasn't grown in 3 years despite coming out as Non-Binary and the dosh thrown at him by lefty loonies.