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Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

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Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#321

Post by vyrotek »

WikipediasBad wrote: post #318
pillowkusis wrote: post #7

I have seen so many content creators go full time and create awesome work because Patreon gives them a format to incentivize their followers to pay them. The economics are beautiful — turns out just 1,000 people (a pittance on internet mass media websites) donating $5 a month will totally change the way you run your life. And even better, these artists are independent in a way no artist has ever been before. You’re n…

Is there a patreon specifically made for open source or coding projects?

You can use Patreon for that. Evan You has one to fund development of Vue.js

https://www.patreon.com/evanyou

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#322

Post by mirimir »

PKop wrote: post #42
pillowkusis wrote: post #7

I have seen so many content creators go full time and create awesome work because Patreon gives them a format to incentivize their followers to pay them. The economics are beautiful — turns out just 1,000 people (a pittance on internet mass media websites) donating $5 a month will totally change the way you run your life. And even better, these artists are independent in a way no artist has ever been before. You’re n…

I've seen Patreon kicking people off their platform for political reasons, so it is not decentralized, though certainly more so than alternatives existing before Patreon. The evolution will converge towards content creators being funded through decentralized crypto currency platforms so that the money cannot be prevented from getting to creators if someone wants to pay them. Something more along the lines of https://…

I'd love to write on Patreon. But there's no option for payouts via Bitcoin. Patrons could pay via credit/debit cards, and Patreon could payout in Bitcoin via Stripe. But they've specifically blocked Stripe's Bitcoin option. To "fight against fraud", whatever that means.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#323

Post by WikipediasBad »

vyrotek wrote: post #321
WikipediasBad wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a patreon specifically made for open source or coding projects?

You can use Patreon for that. Evan You has one to fund development of Vue.js https://www.patreon.com/evanyou

Oh very cool. So coders do use patreon but they are a minority? Maybe that itself is a good startup idea.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#324

Post by WikipediasBad »

WesleyLivesay wrote: post #275
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a difficult problem for sure. I actually built an open source donation platform before I did a Patreon page [0]. Over the past 2 years, I've earned $1500 on it. I've always had an average of maybe $20-30/mo in recurring donations, plus anywhere from $0-$300/mo in one-offs (usually on the left of that scale). Until last month, I had been making $30/mo in recurring donations on the FOSS platform, and now I'm up to…

I can echo this, my Patreon isn't for software, but I get more per month on Patreon than I was getting per year through donations with basically the same level of marketing.

I'm thinking of getting a team of friends to make a Patreon platform but tailor made for software devs/code projects/open source projects rather than creative content. As someone that's on hacker news and has a patreon but isn't for software, do you have any suggestions for someone like me that wanted to develop a patreon focused on software?

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#325

Post by tanilama »

dna_polymerase wrote: post #142
bryanlarsen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They kicked off 8chan but kept The Sarkeesian Effect so in my opinion they've got it exactly right. They keep up pretty nasty stuff in the name of free speech, but don't let you cross the line into doxing and the like. I much prefer having sensible humans at the helm than have something purely anonymous.

There is no "getting it right" in free speech. Either you allow free speech or you don't, if you are keeping one controversial thing but kick out the other you gave up on free speech. You can't kick someone out because you think its right and claim allowing free spech.

Free speech doesn't mean without consequence, you said nasty things people don't agree, they can choose to not offer you service, just like how restaurants do, and it is entirely within their freedom of speech.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#326

Post by Neeek »

hyperdunc wrote: post #316
Neeek wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having watched the whole thing, it sounds like this Lauren Southern (the journalist in question) was using funds from Patreon to help blockade a ship in the Mediterranean. They though the ship was leaving to collect migrants, apparently it was being used by doctors without borders for search and rescue operations. The CEO states in the first couple of minutes that they wouldn't be supporting that kind of activity…

s/search and rescue vessels/people smuggling vessels

Sure, assuming Doctors Without Borders is in the people smuggling business now, it is still a seaworthy vessel instead of a makeshift raft, the kind that is responsible for that drowned toddler washing up on European shores which is specifically used as an example of the possible harm that would be in breach of the company's content policy.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#327

Post by Veratyr »

neaden wrote: post #2

I like patreon but at the same time I'm a bit uncomfortable with how the interaction aspect of it sometimes works. Lots of artists are essentially charging for interaction with them rather than a product. From the article: "In this system, it’s almost impossible to separate a work of art from its creator — or, at least, its creator’s public persona. Is there a future for someone who wants to be a musician, but not a…

This depends a lot on the creator. I support 22 creators and there are 3 that I really interact with at all and that's only because my rewards require it (they're artists and I get commissioned works). Some of them promise a monthly Skype call or something like that but artists you're talking about are definitely a minority.

> “I don’t think the reclusive thing is going to happen anymore. That’s not the world we live in."

I think that's true for most creators but I also don't think it's impossible for an artist to just throw up music tracks, videos or artworks with no title, no description and no interaction and still have people support them.

Personas are more popular but it's not the only way to go about it.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#328

Post by Veratyr »

WikipediasBad wrote: post #319
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #107

Patreon is starting to take off for open source, too, which is great. I set one up and it offsets a good deal of the infrastructure costs for my projects. Many FOSS Patreons have pretty low figures - please go looking for them and support your tools!

Do you mean coders on patreon itself? Any links to coder patreons I can look at? Or do you mean a new startup that's patreon for open source/coders? It would be really interesting to build a patreon platform tailor made for coders if the market for it is not already taken by patreon.

> Do you mean coders on patreon itself?

Yes, they're on Patreon proper. Patreon isn't constrained to entertainment.

> Any links to coder patreons I can look at?

A few I know or Googled:

- https://www.patreon.com/bcachefs - Works on a new filesystem

- https://www.patreon.com/cemu - A WiiU emulation project

- https://www.patreon.com/ShareX - An open source Windows application for sharing stuff

- https://www.patreon.com/evanyou - Works on Vue.js

- https://www.patreon.com/alanstorm - Works on lots of open source stuff in the PHP community

There are a ton for game projects and such.

Just go to Patreon and search for "Open Source" and you'll see a bunch.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#329

Post by [deleted] »

dna_polymerase wrote: post #142
bryanlarsen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They kicked off 8chan but kept The Sarkeesian Effect so in my opinion they've got it exactly right. They keep up pretty nasty stuff in the name of free speech, but don't let you cross the line into doxing and the like. I much prefer having sensible humans at the helm than have something purely anonymous.

There is no "getting it right" in free speech. Either you allow free speech or you don't, if you are keeping one controversial thing but kick out the other you gave up on free speech. You can't kick someone out because you think its right and claim allowing free spech.

[deleted]

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#330

Post by PhasmaFelis »

PKop wrote: post #42
pillowkusis wrote: post #7

I have seen so many content creators go full time and create awesome work because Patreon gives them a format to incentivize their followers to pay them. The economics are beautiful — turns out just 1,000 people (a pittance on internet mass media websites) donating $5 a month will totally change the way you run your life. And even better, these artists are independent in a way no artist has ever been before. You’re n…

I've seen Patreon kicking people off their platform for political reasons, so it is not decentralized, though certainly more so than alternatives existing before Patreon. The evolution will converge towards content creators being funded through decentralized crypto currency platforms so that the money cannot be prevented from getting to creators if someone wants to pay them. Something more along the lines of https://…

Can we get a list of which sites Patreon has kicked off their platform? The only one I've seen mentioned so far is 8chan, which was posting kiddie porn and SWATting people. If that's the line, I'm 100% okay with it.
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