Why haven't we figured out monetisation for peertube? (programming.dev)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by onlinepersona@programming.dev to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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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!

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[-] onlinepersona@programming.dev 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

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 :/

Anti Commercial-AI license

[-] rglullis@communick.news 11 points 4 months ago

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.

[-] mapto@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

Thanks for doing the maths. Actually, it does show that there's a small, but unexploited market here. $2-3K a month is a very good income for the most of the world. And this doesn't have to be the only revenue stream.

[-] rglullis@communick.news 2 points 4 months ago

I really don't see how you can get to this conclusion. We can only get to the $100k/month figure by using unreasonably optimistic numbers for revenue potential. A more realistic figure would be 0.5% of the MAU donating $2/month, which brings it down to $15k/month. That would be enough to support maybe 5 creators?

The market is just to small to be relevant. I think we might even see more people setting peertube accounts as an alternative, but no sensible creator is interested in leaving Youtube.

[-] mapto@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

Even if so, your unreasonably pessimistic assumption is that this would be an exclusive source of revenue. Once content is created, cross-posting is free.

[-] rglullis@communick.news 1 points 4 months ago

The point is that no one will be creating content with the primary target of putting it in Peertube, much less "exclusively".

Yeah, creators maybe can get some extra revenue by turning some monetization feature on Peertube, but the same could be said about "just use liberapay", "just use flattr" (RIP), "just use OpenCollective" and even "just go ask in the streets".