Why haven't YOU figured out monetization?
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
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Great idea, im wondering myself, since it was a core goal of framasofts peertube to have donation integration or something similar, but it never happened. Hope someone is still working on it.
I'm not sure what you're talking about.
None of the major Fediverse projects have real monetization.
Why single out PeerTube?
Why would you expect monetization at this point?
Do you think it should be monetized, or are you just surprised it hasn't been?
What form of monetization are you imagining?
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What's wrong with donations? Also how doesn't monetisation imply ads? What way is there to make money relabile while watching something besides ads?
Merch? That a secondary revenue stream not tied to the consumption of that product (video).
Paid subs aka recurring donations? Yeah just set up a KoFi or patreon.
Donations are one form, but the flow thereof isn't optimal in peertube. Viewers can't donate just by having an account on peertube. It's not "a click a way" like a "donated subscription" or something. I can't create an account on peertube, connect it to my bank directly or some payment processor, go to a creator and click "donated subscription", then expect money to end up with the content creator.
Youtube doesn't require setting up KoFi or patreon or something. At the base level, if your video gets popular and you have subscribers, you'll get paid (or that is my understanding). Peertube has a higher barrier.
One way would be to have a monthly subscription on your home Peertube instance with a certain percentage being passed through by the instance admins to creators on other instances.
Yup YouTube makes it very easy to receive money from adds and people that have YouTube premium. Having a YouTube premium subscription means that you are at least supporting the creator of every video that you watch a little bit (from what I can find 55% of what you pay is going to the creators). Yes YouTube takes quite a large cut, but video hosting in high quality costs a lot of money.
I think it will be very hard to do this on a decentralised platform. People don't trust just anyone with their money, so it could lead to people abandoning smaller servers and you can be sure that bad actors would pop up and try to abuse the system. And even if you do this the right way, you would have to build this system entirely before you can convince creators to move to this platform.
It will also be really hard to offer the same quality and reliability that YouTube offers, without taking a larger cut than the 45% that YouTube takes. Hosting a large video platform is expensive, and many of the Fediverse users are anti-adds and will run an add-blocker and maybe even sponsor-blocker.
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And what's youtubes cut of the Membership/Super Thanks/View Impression?
Good question. Probably high enough for people to want Patreon and KoFi and with a low enough barrier that people are fine starting out with it - something peertube cannot claim.
What way is there to make money relabile while watching something besides ads?
A monthly subscription. Source: Real life. We've explored all of these a long long time ago, and it comes down to subscription and ads, everything else didn't make the race.
bruh... read the last sentence of my comment...
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I wouldn’t mind paying a monthly subscription to the creators I enjoy in Peertube.
I’m already doing it through Patreon, but doing through Peertube would be better as these creators would see that the money is coming from a Peertube user.
It would be my preferred way too. There are plugins for Wordpress (example). that allow microtransactions, leading me to believe it should be possible for peertube as well 🤔
A few reasons:
- The userbase on the Fediverse is not big enough to support a donation-based economy.
- The userbase on the Fediverse is not big enough to support an ad-based economy. Even if by some magical powers we got an ethical ad network working here (which didn't track users and focused solely on paying people by the opportunity of broadcasting their inventory) there wouldn't be enough eyeballs to attract advertisers.
- The userbase is still anti-business.
- For all its faults, Youtube is hands-down is the platform that pay the most to content creators.
- Content creators are not willing to spend their time building out audiences on new platforms. Principles be damned, they will just go where the money is.
I've added support for crowdfunding to Communick earlier this year, and even people who are active on the Fediverse and have a vested interest in having monetization alternatives turned it down. This is why all we see are these completely fringe ideas that can only appeal for the get-rich-quick crowd.
The userbase is still anti-business.
And a significant part will remain so. This should be a haven from capitalist/corporate platforms, not a parallel market.
I'm still doggedly working on Communick and on AP-based projects because I believe in open standards and because it is our best shot at us collectively take back the web. But if we continue on this idea that the Fediverse is somehow "better" because it discriminates against small business owners, or professionals who want an online presence to promote their work, or anything that resembles "profit-motive", then this whole thing will forever remain a wasted opportunity, and we will be (once again) be giving it all away for Zuckerberg.
What we have now is just a Tyranny of the Minority. We need to grow the open web. That includes getting normies here. That includes getting people who are not part of your tribe. This includes getting people that you are able to ignore.
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The userbase on the Fediverse is not big enough to support a donation-based economy.
Could you expand on that? Why do you believe such is the case?
The userbase is still anti-business.
I'm starting to get the impression that this is the biggest hindrance. That and the common misconception that "ads = monetisation", which IMO big tech has hammered into users very well.
For all its faults, Youtube is hands-down is the platform that pay the most to content creators.
True, but it doesn't have to stay that way.
Content creators are not willing to spend their time building out audiences on new platforms. Principles be damned, they will just go where the money is.
Probably better tools could contribute to that. Something opensource that allows engaging with all major platforms + peertube and others could swing things in another direction. Imagine if peertube, mastodon, and so forth were just a toggle or a "sign up" form in the app. It could increase adoption by its simplicity: "Never heard of this platform, but I'll just enable it and see what happens" could very well be possible.
I’ve added support for crowdfunding to Communick earlier this year
Wait a minute... I think I recognise that! Didn't you make a post that was massively downvoted (or received negatively), because people didn't understand what you were trying to do? "If it's not steady income I won't use it" is something I recall...
Edit: Lemmy is missing the feature to favorite other users :/
Could you expand on that?
Go take a look at all Mastodon instances that ask for donations to keep running: you will see that all of them get at most 2% of their user base to donate. No donation-based instance is big enough that it can afford to pay FTE salaries for moderation and/or administration. And this is for something that affects people directly when they don't contribute.
Go take a look at some youtubers in the "1M-10M" subscriber range that have a Patreon. You will see that the most of them manage to convert 0.5% to 0.8% of their subscribers into direct contributors.
The open web (ActivityPub sans Facebook) is now at ~1 million active users. Even if we got 2% of these users to contribute $5/month to different creators, we are talking about a "Total Addressable Market" of $100k/month. Even with "best case" numbers, it is just too low to be attractive to a substantial number of creators. Compare with Youtube: it's estimated that they paid out around 7 billion USD to all its creators in 2023.
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WHY DON’T WE MAKE THIS SHITTIER???????????
Funny, I said "monetisation", you heard "ads". Do you think that's the only way to monetise something?
Funny, I said "monetisation", you heard "ads".
You don’t know what I heard. Please do not speculate.
Do you think that's the only way to monetise something?
No, but I’ve been around the block often enough to know that “monetization” almost always means “take something away from people and then sell it back to them”.
Ads are best case. I can filter those out. The rest is worse.
You don’t know what I heard. Please do not speculate.
OK, then.
Ads are best case. I can filter those out. The rest is worse.
What other options do you think there are?
You keep posting that link without making a point. What is your point?
I don't think that's mean to be OP's point but rather a footnote for anti-AI copyright stuff or something. I saw few other people do that as well.
I'll talk about the link if you can tell me which monesation options you know of, besides ads, and how you think they'll make peertube worse.
Because anyone with a computer can host a peertube instance. Therefore is you want your videos on peertube it will cost you nothing more than what you already have : a computer running and an internet access.
The only real barrier is having the time and the knowledge to set it up.
Peertube is tech solution to host video, not a way to make money with videos. Monetisation can be done with peertube, but it's up to creators to set it up.
Peertube is tech solution to host video, not a way to make money with videos. Monetisation can be done with peertube, but it’s up to creators to set it up.
Why should it be up to the creators? On youtube creators don't have to think about "setting up monetisation". Upload a video, ads are active, done. Peertube doesn't have something that simple - and I'm not saying "we need ads". Monetisation != ads.
Because YouTube wants you to not think, but just provide content and shut up.
Peertube (libre softwares in generals) requires to think about things and to make choices by yourself. It doesn't try to be more than what it is = a tool for easily host videos.
Peertube isn't a platform.
Because YouTube wants you to not think, but just provide content and shut up.
What's wrong with that? When you drive a car, ride a bus, fly on a plane, or use anything in general, do you have to understand the inner workings of everything?
Well if you don't know how to operate a car, you should not drive. If you don't know the basics, you won't be able to do small repairs yourself. If you don't know nothing about cars at all, you will likely have to paid more than someone with more knowledge to obtain the same result. Ask any cab if he just pays and doesn't know anything about cars.
If you're a video creator who wants to make money with your videos, you should be knowledgeable about monetisation and video making. Don't be lazy, it's just your job.
Well if you don’t know how to operate a car, you should not drive
True, but you don't have to understand how an engine works in order to drive a car. Same goes for content creators. They don't have to understand how monetisation works to get started on youtube. It just happens.
If you’re a video creator who wants to make money with your videos, you should be knowledgeable about monetisation and video making. Don’t be lazy, it’s just your job.
Yeah, I disagree. Adding that barrier is exactly the attitude greybeard linux users have and why linux has the bad image it has. It shouldn't be necessary to be knowledgeable about everything in order to do something. Having a lower barrier for entry encourages use.
I would say that the comparison hit a wall here. It seems that there is nothing between pushing a button to get money and learning how peertube is coded and is working internally for you... To be fair to YouTube creators, pushing a button isn't enough to make you money in most cases.
There is 2 things here: 1_ you want to make and host video. 2_ you want to make videos and make money with it.
In case 1 you don't care about money, so there is no problem. In case 2 you want money, to me if you want money you should know how to make money with the tools you have (or use other tools if needed). I agree that with Peertube it's harder to move from case 1 to case 2 easily as it is with YouTube. But the main focus of YouTube in the last years is not sharing content but making money. As I was saying Peertube is a video host software not a tool to make money with videos. It isn't build with this goal set as the primary one.
Why does it need monetisation? Why can't we have a place online where we aren't bombarded with adverts or having our data vacuumed to sell to advertisers?
I have no issues with sponsorship in videos or creators plugging their stores/Pateron/Kofi in content. What I mind is pre roll and shoehorned ads partway through content that have no respect for my audio settings or the flow of the content.
Why can’t we have a place online where we aren’t bombarded with adverts or having our data vacuumed to sell to advertisers?
I'll repeat this again: monetisation does not mean ads. If you believe ads are the only way to monetise something, you have been lied to or are giving in to programming.
Why does it need monetisation?
How do you think content creators survive?
Why does it need monetisation?
Because the number of people who are willing to put in the work and create quality content without any potential reward is too low to be relevant. Without a credible model for monetisation, content creators will always prefer to stay in the closed platforms. If we want the open web to be a real alternative for everyone and not just a fringe thing, we need to be able to attract everyone.
data vacuumed to sell to advertisers?
Maybe I am getting old, but I do remember the time where "ads" did not automatically imply "Surveillance Capitalism". The problem is not the former, but the latter.
I have no issues with sponsorship in videos or creators plugging their stores/Pateron/Kofi in content.
Easy for you to say, but how many creators do you know that can make a living exclusively off their Patreon? And of those that do, how many managed to get known without putting their content on a closed platform?
the number of people who are willing to put in the work and create quality content without any potential reward is too low
Maybe, but the number of dimwits willing to make sensationalist drivel to make a buck is staggering. Exhibit A, any Youtuber. I prefer not to have that incentive in the Fediverse.
Do you know that story about the pottery teacher that made an experiment by separating students into two groups, one was going to be graded by how many pieces they made (quantity), the other by their best piece (quality), and that in the end the group that worried about quantity ended up producing better work than the ones focused on quality?
It's the same thing with the internet. You are familiar with Sturgeon's Law, right? Instead of looking at the 90% of crap (quality), we should find always to churn out as much content as possible so that the non-crap 10% can be of a reasonable number.
I honestly do not care about the dimwits on YouTube, but it pains me that I can not convince someone like @[email protected] to leave YouTube to post his content on an open alternative, because that would be the same as asking to stop having the resources to keep doing the amazing work that he does.
So, in your pottery story only one in 10 mass produced pots would be better (by some fuzzy criteria) than those by somebody who actually pit their mind and creativity to it? Sounds wasteful AF, dude.
Similarly, a glance at that Geerling guy's website tells me that he is already maintaining around twenty different social profiles. So I guess his Youtube ad revenue goes into supporting that promotional effort, as well as the amazing work I've never heard of.
I respect your efforts with Communick, even if I don't agree with your examples. I'm just not interested in an internet that tries to center commercial revenue as a raison d'être. I'll support people who would be doing what they do without that motivation.
I'm not arguing for "commercial revenue as a raison d'être". I'm arguing that it's a numbers game.
Even if 100% of the people here on this small, elitist, open web were "good" (which is not true), a web that is universal and only 10% "good" would be better.
Why does it need monetisation?
Hosting costs money. "Monetization" doesn't mean disruptive ads.
Hosting cost money, so an host can setup a patreon to make money to host his peertube instance.
Monetisation like YouTube-monetisation means ads everywhere because, monetisation on YouTube comes from publicity.
Hosting cost money, so an host can setup a patreon to make money to host his peertube instance.
That's a type of monetization.
Monetisation like YouTube-monetisation means ads everywhere because, monetisation on YouTube comes from publicity.
OP didn's ask about "YouTube-like monetization".
Op wasn't very specific on what monetisation he was talking about either.
What is your point exactly?
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