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How to compete with Patreon

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Re: How to compete with Patreon

#101

Post by BlueTemplar »

karl42 wrote: post #92
BlueTemplar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss Flattr 2.0 - a browser extension looking at your engagement ? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15557954

I do not want to support anything that optimizes for "engagement". It penalized all the really useful offerings that I use for a minute to solve my problem and then don't touch again in a long time and instead encourages addictiveness.

There is no addictiveness here, because the person whose behavior is measured and the one being rewarded for it are two different people.

EDIT : I think what you missed is how this is an issue mostly with advertising-funded websites, especially platforms. More views = more money for the website. (It even goes for Hacker News, somewhat !) But for Flattr 2.0, more/longer browsing doesn't (directly) equal more money (even for the creators, in aggregate) ! Even Patreon has an issue like this - GP is talking about the bundling issue, but Patreon still has an artificial moat that exacerbates this : not only it's annoying to reduce the funding for many other creators at once when you add a new one, you can't even reduce your funding for a specific artist to less than $1/month - regardless of how much you might be paying per month to Patreon in total !

Or are you against free markets ?? They tend to promote what people want and manufacturing wants too, you know ?

Flattr 2.0 of course still has some issues : why a very short music video should be rewarded much less than a long form blog post ? (OtoH the music video is much more likely to be much more popular across a wider variety of people, so I guess that issue is self-fixing ? EDIT: not so much for a poem ?)

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#102

Post by BlueTemplar »

kzrdude wrote: post #76
BlueTemplar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss Flattr 2.0 - a browser extension looking at your engagement ? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15557954

I used the original flattr and apparently missed the reboot too. Flattr 1 was dead for too long to carry me over anyway.

There's a 3rd-ish version that stopped promoting the extension and is closer to Patreon but with a set overall rate.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#103

Post by dangus »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #90
dangus wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The author also dumped on Patreon’s incredibly low processing fee. Who is going to compete with 5% plus payment processing? And they dumped how this processing fee is unsustainable and that the community was mad about changing it. What business is going to disrupt margins like that? That’s like saying “I’m going to sell stuff cheaper than Costco.” Good luck with that!

FYI Patreon does not offer the 5% deal to new creators anymore. Now it's 8%.

Right, and that is still low.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#104

Post by fortran77 »

diggan wrote: post #71
dyeje wrote: post #54

Discord could eat Patreon’s lunch overnight if they wanted to. Every Patreon I’ve been interested in was just a paywall for a Discord community.

Funny, none of the Patreons I'm subscribing to or been interested in, has been paywalls for Discord communities.

All the Patreons I subscribe to are YouTubers (Big Clive, Technology Connections, etc.)

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#105

Post by fortran77 »

mattdesl wrote: post #41

Crypto could provide a competitive edge to certain features in Patreon (and Bandcamp). - Instead of 4-7% payment processing fees, it can be effectively zero[1] - Instead of 8-12% fees (or 15% in case of Bandcamp), crypto industry standards tend to be in the 0-5% range. It’s not always clear to me as a creator and patron why such a significant amount of value needs to be captured for a digital asset sale. - Users of t…

I use Patreon. I wouldn't use crypto to pay a content creator. (In fact, I've never used crypto other than to try to get the software for Bitcoin running once in the early days of it.)

A person who is completely non-technical would be even less likely to use Crypto than me.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#106

Post by cbzbc »

x0x0 wrote: post #5

I think the real answer may be that patreon is, actually, a bad business; and that nobody has cracked microtransactions. Separately, while Patreon's charging changes seem boneheaded, I'd guess at least a 50% chance that they weren't driven by stupidity but rather by a CFO having a come to jesus conversation with the e-team. Driven by the fact that microtransactions run on a credit card are tough. Their giant raises m…

The real answer is that the original core proposition of Patreon was a fairly [b]boring[/b] business. It's a payment processor alongside a smaller hosting business. For most consumers of their platform it's not something they need or intend to interact with that often.

Unfortunately Patreon saw itself as primarily a tech-company able drive interactions via its own platform and capture more value from creators[]. The pandemic - and the ensuing explosion in the number of creators and consumers - fed this illusion further.

Both factors led to an influx of VC money, and now they are stuck trying to make returns against a mostly fictitious valuation.

[] This should have always been a warning sign, the average creator isn't rich, they aren't making bank on things like t-shirts.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#107

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

exizt88 wrote: post #74

Anyone who has tried to build a pay-by-work model for digital creators knows that it’s simply an awful business model. There just isn’t that much demand for creator work. And there are no “whales” among these customers to compensate. No one’s buying 10 copies of a math explainer video.

If you can find a niche it can work. My friend built his own website to sell his erotic art.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#108

Post by AlexandrB »

mattdesl wrote: post #66
CRM_CHILD_IDENT wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is the same, you are right. That´s the point - no inch more "power to the poeple" via cryptocoins.

Except these are not at all the same, and most users cannot fork or participate in PayPal/VISA protocols.

What difference does it make if they can fork or participate? The important decisions are made by Vitalik and a small group of insiders. Do users get any input on anything actually important like the Ethereum fork that bailed out the DAO investors?

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#109

Post by jlokier »

cbzbc wrote: post #106
x0x0 wrote: post #5

I think the real answer may be that patreon is, actually, a bad business; and that nobody has cracked microtransactions. Separately, while Patreon's charging changes seem boneheaded, I'd guess at least a 50% chance that they weren't driven by stupidity but rather by a CFO having a come to jesus conversation with the e-team. Driven by the fact that microtransactions run on a credit card are tough. Their giant raises m…

The real answer is that the original core proposition of Patreon was a fairly [b]boring[/b] business. It's a payment processor alongside a smaller hosting business. For most consumers of their platform it's not something they need or intend to interact with that often. Unfortunately Patreon saw itself as primarily a tech-company able drive interactions via its own platform and capture more value from creators[ ]. The…

Just a little HN editing tip: if you put a backslash before the star like this: '[\*]', it won't disappear and turn the following paragraphs to italics.[*]

[*] Footnote.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#110

Post by [deleted] »

pjc50 wrote: post #46
braza wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nobody has cracked microtransactions It's hard to agree on this one. Personal anecdote: In 2010's I worked in a micropayments broker linked with all telecom companies. The whole thing was: that NSFW creators used a shared SMS shared code (i.e. a SMS number that receives messages for several creators and the code (for instance HNCODE25) was used to move money to a balance account) and for each of the payments that p…

Under what circumstances can people be banned from PIX?

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