The only real attempt at monetisation that I’ve seen is https://beetoons.tv/, but they use their own crypto - making it like Odysee. Why is that?
Edit: Please, before you answer consider this monetisation doesn’t mean ads!
I feel like I’d be totally fine with ads that can be controlled user end. Like, what if there was a little switch by the video you’re watching to enable ad breaks, directly supporting the creator and the instance. (As long as they’re not baked into the stream so instances can’t force them to be always on.)
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 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 :/
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.
That’s Western fediverse.
Fediverse instance in Asia often run ads or other kind of monetisation. Like the second biggest instance.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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…
Nostr has. Over the last two months alone, their users have “zapped” (tipped/donated) other users around 950K (nearly 1 mil!) USD worth via lightning and that number continues to grow. And it doesn’t just make it easy to pay content creators, but to also put a portion of your “zaps” towards the relay you use or development of the software if you want. If you have a nostr account, you can easily tie it to a lightning address to send/receive tips, nostr doesn’t take a fee. Relays can also portion out a bit of their zaps for the people who publish the most engaging content on their relay. The possibilities are quite extensive. And because it’s over lightning, zaps happen instantly and for pennies or less in fees. Though, you can use nostr without zaps at all.
For those unfamiliar with nostr, it’s a decentralized social media software much like ActivityPub/mastodon, the main use right now is as a twitter/instagram clone but there’s also a reddit-style section being built up as well. Moderation abilities from the perspective of the instance/relay are identical. But one bonus if that if your relay goes down, you don’t lose your identity, since your identity and relay are separate. And if you change apps or relays (you are typically connected to multiple relays), all your content moves with you seamlessly. And the payment/zap infrastructure is all decentralized, relays don’t ever custody or manage the payments. If you tip a content creator, it goes directly from you to them. The lightning network has basically limitless transaction capacity. If you have cash app, it supports lightning, so you can already send zaps (you will need different apps to receive zaps though because cash app doesn’t support the LNURL standard). Strike natively supports it. And because it’s lightning, it works in every country automatically.
Long-term, if I am a content creator, which “fedi”-type system is going to be attractive to me? One where users can send me tips and mircopayments or one where they can’t? This is why I think nostr is going to win out long-term over AP/Mastodon. Mastodon could add this kind of functionality but I don’t get the impression they’re open to it. People may not want to commit to yet another $5/month subscription to a YouTuber’s patreon or nebula or whatever, but they are happy to tip 1-10c after watching a video. So there’s a psychological beauty to micropayments as well. As some random person I have made like 7c on tips this month, but I’ve also given out plenty to other people.
Source about nostr fees: https://lemmy.ml/post/17824358
Very interesting, thanks
Dam thats really cool.
Peertube has a solution built in. Creators can put in links to their Patreon, Liberapay, Ko-Fi or other donation platforms, and it’ll show a “Support” button underneath every video.
They don’t do crypto or ads in the core Peertube project. However, you can install add-ons as an instance administrator.
I don’t see any better solution as of today.
In-built monetisation that doesn’t require opening third party websites for every person you want to donate to. Maybe even a tip button or “donate subscription”. That’s what would be better.
With “better solution as of today” I meant more a viable solution as of today. And I don’t see any.
I completely agree that some in-built, more convenient monetization would be great. But… That’d immediately make them a whole different business. Now they need to handle money for people and become a payment provider. That’d probably require them to change their legal form. They need to hire people to manage that money. They get liable for it. And where money is involved there are disagreements and lawsuits. So they need an additional customer service. Probably also a proper legal team. All those people want a salary, so they have to make profit to pay them.
I think it’s a nice idea, but it would turn Peertube from a nice project that’s made by some programmers for us, the people, into a business halfway alike YouTube. And we already have YouTube. The nice thing about Peertube is that it’s about freedom and the content and less annoying business things involved.
And that’s often the case with smaller projects. Now the programmers do the thing they’re good at: program the software. If we make them do something else, that’s gonna be at the cost of the project. They’ll become managers and can’t attend to the thing they’re good at and what we’d like them to do.
Feel free to come up with a solution. I’d like to hear it. Because I’d also like to see some bigger Youtubers on Peertube. And they won’t come if they have to spend money on servers, instead of earning money.
It’s true that peer tube is the ugly duck of the fediverse right now. But I don’t think is about monetization.
On its core it’s true that is the most complex project as videos are resource heavy, and producing videos is time consuming.
I don’t think people does not make videos because lack of monetization but because lack of users. And there are little users because there are little content.
IMHO the UI and UX should be the smoothest of all fediverse because it need to put it as easy as it can to everyone to attract as many users or creators as possible.
Because, let’s be true, monetization (even you can already monetize if you want) is useless is there’s nobody watching anyway.
IMHO the UI and UX should be the smoothest of all fediverse because it need to put it as easy as it can to everyone to attract as many users or creators as possible.
Thats true of ALL platforms. Fediverse or not. Biggest reason Linux fails where Windows 11 sucseeds is because the vast VAST majority cannot figure out linux’s user experience.
In windows, you install a program by downloading a file, and double clicking it. To change settings you go into the control panel. To update a program, you download another file, just like installing it.
I could literally never have a keyboard hooked up to a windows pc, assuming all my web browser bookmarks are already saved, and I don’t want to reply to any messages online.
With Linux, you can’t do that. You can’t just uninstall terminal, and expect to get help online if something is new and confusing to you. First thing they say in Linux is “ok, to help with this problem, open up terminal”. It’s baked into the Linux culture, just the same as a mouse is baked into the Windows culture since the 80s.
Now I use Linux as a standin for peertube, or any other platform since I haven’t used peertube. But the lack of Linux users, despite having the technical superior OS just shows how a bad user experience can cripple a platform.
The way Linux sucseeds is by having a distro that embeds into its own culture the lack of terminal. A distro that not only DOESN’T come with terminal, but uses it as a “selling” point. Heavy airquotes there since I’m not suggesting that this distro cost money.
As for peertube, I’ve been meaning to try it for a while. All it needs is good content, good user experience, and it should be the EASIEST of the fediverse platforms to sucseed. Look at youtube. Find me one creator who says “I enjoy dealing with youtubes overarching control and restrictions”.
I’ll wait…actually no I won’t. I got things to do.
Point is, if you normalize a federated video platform where the content creator can control their own hosting? Youtube would die, and content creators could negotiate their own prices to serve ads individually on their videos.
And they don’t HAVE TO host their own videos. Just that they can.
If I host a peertube instance, and 5 of my friends want to create videos, but not host them, then I can host them. But if I get greedy and say they must obide by my rules, then they can say fuck off and host it themselves. It takes overarching power away from the hoster, and that would be VERY appealing to a lot of content creators.
Then once you have the good user interface, and good content, you gain the followers, and with the followers comes the monetization.
And yes, it will be ads. Because if there were a better model, don’t you think tv, and streaming services, and youtube, and the internet would have already been doing so by now?
First, please clarify what sort of non-ad monetization you are talking about.
Second, we don’t need monetization. The commercialization of the Web, while handy for a while, is exactly why it’s decayed so much. We don’t need to import the cause of web rot here.
Unfortunately, Content Creator is not likely a solid long-term career. Don’t take this as dismissive of the effort that goes into quality videos. Some people really do treat it legitimately as a craft. However, the vocation was basically created through heavy subsidies from tech/ad companies, trying to get eyes on the ad space that they want to sell. Due to Chicago School economics (line must go up), and the fact that there is only so much ad space, tech companies are going to look to remove the cost of these subsidies, likely through a combination of generated content and removal of payouts, so that myopic investors can be happy.
So, how can you support yourself while still creating videos, etc? Well, if you don’t have a production company supporting you, you’ll need to learn business yourself or sell your talent to someone who is running a production company. As much as I would like for people to be able to do whatever they want with their lives, we’re currently stuck in a neoliberal hellscape where a working artist has to work and also be a business person.
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.
