Do people have to make a living of it?

Can't we have a place online where out data isn't being sold, aren't being bombarded with ads, or begged for subscriptions?

I don't think anyone should be able to monetize themself on here. Donations are fine, but only for the select few actually keeping the servers on.

Bring money into it and most things go to shit.

No

Selling ball pics $20 ball vids $45 (1 min w/ jiggle). dm me to purchase.

If you pay me $1,000,000 I will consume an entire pineapple, skin and all. This is my final offer.

I can just add a link to send me money through Cash app on every comment I make 🤷🏻‍♂️

I think that the fundamental issue that you're going to run into as that as things stand, the Fediverse -- and especially the Threadiverse, lemmy+kbin -- is smaller than similar social networks. And it's probably a good bet that any kind of income scales up with with audience size, and cost likely doesn't.

So whatever you do, I suspect that one of two things are going to be true:

• It's something that violates ToS on other social media and so can't be done there.

• It's something that is also being done on other social media, and you're just also doing the same on the Fediverse to expand reach a bit.

Not everything needs a profit motive attached. I'd argue nothing should, but I don't think profit has made social media better overall.

Donations; things like Patreon or whatever. If you enjoy someone's content and are financially stable you have a bit of a moral obligation to give them a bit of money for it. Likewise, you should give your instance admins a few bucks to cover their hosting costs.

Creators could use the Fediverse to show off their products in order to get people to support them on Patreon (or Subscribestar or Ko-Fi or your subscription platform of choice). Or maybe even get them to buy their products on Itch, Bandcamp, Etsy, Steam and so on. Twitter and Reddit never really were ways to make money, but instead a way of pulling people towards other revenue streams.

The traditional model where people get paid by ads (such as Youtube or Twitch) is honestly dying with the rise of adblockers. Although I could imagine people on the Fediverse running a "premium subscription" plan and sharing their revenue with creators like Youtube Premium though.

For a full fediverse alternative to Stripe/Patreon/Paypal that isn't crypto based? Probably not going to happen. Besides the technical challenges, you need a good rapport with payment processors that you can only get if you are a big company and comply with their demands (which many fediverse instances would not be willing to sacrifice their morals to do).

Only seeing this a week or so after it was posted but feel the need to reply. One of the major motivations for myself and a significant portion of others who joined the Fediverse is the decay caused by commercialization of the WorldWide Web. I'd further argue that this decay is a mirror of the non-digital world and the impact of the hyper-comoditization championed by neoliberalism.

Humans don't exist purely to serve commerce and transactional financial systems. Those systems are invented by and intended to serve humans. We need, for our health, spaces and activities that are not transactional and financial in nature. The Fediverse, as it currently exists is such a place.

Artists and other creatives are a vital part of humanity. Unfortunately, we've been sick in a neoliberal hellscape that demands a commercial reason for anything to justify its existence. If one wants to entertain people on the Fediverse, there are a number of possible models that could help one to make a living, while still not falling into the hyper-commercialization that has infected the Web. Most of the ones that come to mind could work well elsewhere too. Here's some examples that come to mind:

• Form a non-profit related to the desired artistic medium. Through donations and grants, one can both make a living with their art and help others that are interested in the medium.

• Form an artists' cooperative, whether for a single medium or multiple media. If the coop becomes known for talented artists who make good work, they can then act like a union, supporting eachother in contract negotiations and other collective bargaining to ensure that members are fairly compensated for their efforts and are able to make a living.

• Markets. I know several working artists that make the vast majority of their income in-person at local markets (farmers' markets, swap-meets, etc). For performing artists, it may be possible to get bookings with the market organizers. For those that make pieces of still or recorded art, it can be sold directly.

With any of these, places like the Fediverse become a place to engage with people who know the artist and show their work to those not familiar. I strongly suspect that the Content Creator/Influencer as a "job" will not have long-term stability as it is being subsidized heavily by the platforms themselves, who are making money selling ads and enduser data, both of which are seeing more pushback from both users and governments as they are leveraged by bad actors and unscrupulous businesses chasing infinite growth.

Same way as anywhere else, but with fewer built-in middle men.

Ads can be served by instances or by individual creators. I expect if the Fediverse grows, many creators will be posting regular ads or sponsored content. The Fediverse has no built-in system for that, which makes it more difficult, but also so much more flexable as instances, platforms, and users can build, integrate, or negotiate whatever fits their needs.

Similarly, creators can take commisions or sell their work as rhey would elsewhere. If anything, this is easier as creators can easily link or promote whatever service fits their needs from a personal website (IE a store) to a Patreon.

Go on mastodon and click on public, it's 80% spam and ads