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The creator economy can't rely on Patreon

joanwestenberg.com

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Re: The creator economy can't rely on Patreon

#121

Post by bombcar »

hoseja wrote: post #52
blitzar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that the "creator economy" was meant to democratise content and make everyone able to make a living from being a "creator". In reality the maximum number that can be sustained in this manner is less than the number of salaried listicle writers at media outlets.

Just adding to others: not everyone, anyone. The promise was that you don't need to go through nepotistic middlemen and can just directly engage with an audience solely on the merit of your work.

It's the same problem that manufacturing has had for decades now - sure, every single town in the world could have it's own beer, there's nothing preventing that, and the additional cost per beer would be minuscule - but shipping is so cheap and the savings from consolidating so high, that unless there is substantial outside pressure it's not going to happen.

Re: The creator economy can't rely on Patreon

#122

Post by electroly »

ahzhou wrote: post #92
electroly wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the same few sponsorships constantly: Skillshare, Brilliant, Nebula, Hello Fresh, BetterHelp, Raid: Shadow Legends. I like to guess which one it's going to be when the creator starts telling a made-up story that leads into the sponsorship segment. The fact that it's the same ones, over and over again, across a wide spectrum of channels, makes me think that sponsorship is not yet a proven reliable source of inco…

Its a two sided marketplace and companies only care about the conversion they get from different channels. If demand dries up, it will be reflected in more attractive pricing - I don’t think it’s likely that the entire market pulls out. FWIW - it seems like the campaigns are working. You seem to be familiar with the brands and someone below chimed in on how one particular brand is great. Multiply that by the viewersh…

My point is that in a healthy market, we'd expect a large number of sponsors and a large number of creators. What we seem to have in reality is a tiny number of sponsors and a large number of creators. Where are all the sponsors? Nearly my whole YouTube subscriptions list lives at the whim of basically three sponsors. If, indeed, they decide to cut their spend, the creators will all essentially have to accept it because there aren't a lot of other sponsors to choose from. It doesn't have to be a full withdrawal from sponsorships for it to be devastating for creators.

Re: The creator economy can't rely on Patreon

#123

Post by skybrian »

picadores wrote: post #106

There is also a deeply worrying trend to "milk" creators, in "controversial" topics, by banning them and taking the income for the company. It allows for unholy alliances of company revenue, controversial topics, and state driven brigading.

I’d normally take a ban as an indicator that the website doesn’t want that content. What’s the evidence that they actually do?

Re: The creator economy can't rely on Patreon

#124

Post by lewismenelaws »

dotnet00 wrote: post #107
lewismenelaws wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s different for everyone, but for me, it’s similar to the 1 minute section like you mentioned. I integrate it within my video. Not sure if this is what you’re referring to, but if someone doesn’t disclaim that something was sent to them or paid to say it. Highly illegal. Reason I say Patreon is a lot more work is because usually you need to build an incentive with Patreon as well (community, BTS, extra content).

The incentive doesn't have to be meaningfully extra work though, many of the creators I follow just have the patreon incentive be stuff like getting access to videos a week early, getting access to a discord to hangout in or if they're streamers, having one of their streams each month limited to supporters. But on top of that, I have never really thought much about the incentives anyway, I join the patreons/youtube m…

Appreciate the insight. Something like this is something I have been debating and hearing this is great.

Re: The creator economy can't rely on Patreon

#125

Post by lewismenelaws »

monkey_monkey wrote: post #93
mdorazio wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

White dude making coding videos with the usual modern algorithm-inspired cringe thumbnails and titles. It definitely seems to be working, though - over 500k subs is impressive.

500k subs and a very low level of actual views...

Long form has been expirementation to see what works the last year or so. Shorts is how we grew a lot, long form still needs work but getting there!

Re: The creator economy can't rely on Patreon

#126

Post by j-bos »

kalleboo wrote: post #21
Roark66 wrote: post #4

What creators need is a better youtube algorithm. Is it just me, or has youtube recommendations become almost unusable by now? Some years ago when I spent "an hour watching YouTube" I'd watch a huge majority of videos recommended by the algorithm based on my current subs. Today it is 1%. Why? I'll give you an example. I have varied interests, I sub and regularly watch a number if channels in each of my hobbies, but f…

> This was a week ago. My youtube feed is still full of car repair howto videos FWIW, if you go into your view history, you can remove videos from there, and they will no longer influence your recommendations

This, I've found that people most comfortable with algorithmic feeds regularly prune what they don't want and cultivate what they do. Even tiktok is subject to this, albeit with an exceptional high bar for skipping skills.

Re: The creator economy can't rely on Patreon

#127

Post by cma »

egypturnash wrote: post #108
grey_earthling wrote: post #37

Patreon knows that Patreon doesn't work - they don't fund themselves by donations on Patreon; instead they take a cut of other people's donations. And the model where some patrons receive a reward encourages transactionalism and disappointed patrons when they don't get the reward they expected. Liberapay's model seems much more sustainable - donations only, no rewards; Liberapay fund themselves via Liberapay because…

Patreon also takes VC funding on a regular basis; if you ask Jack Conte what his plan is for when they come back around looking for profit he will just blow a bunch of sunshine up your ass about how all these investors are just totally great people who believe in supporting the arts .

When they raised rates for new creators but grandfathered in existing ones it was pretty much outed as a network effect VC scheme.

Re: The creator economy can't rely on Patreon

#128

Post by squigz »

sibeliuss wrote: post #105

Patreon is one of the buggiest, broken websites I've ever visited. I am tempted every time i use it to stop everything and build a competitor.

I've never really encountered many bugs on Patreon - but I do want to see more options in this space, so please do!

Re: The creator economy can't rely on Patreon

#129

Post by xzz »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #104
karaterobot wrote: post #99

Subscription services like Patreon are the only way I give people money unless they sell a product I want. I'm not going to watch commercials, and I'll skip sponsored videos or segments every time. If the idea is that not enough people use Patreon for you to make money, then go ahead and run advertisements, I'll just move on down the road to someone else. If the idea is that Patreon in particular is bad—that it takes…

Reality is the vast majority of people will absolutely refuse to pay content creators. Even legit newspapers with large staffs can’t get people to subscribe. Most people are ok with ads though. Your best bet is some sort of split where a small niche try’s to go subscription because there’s no chance of a widespread content creator subscription service that can replace ads.

How about, for example, delaying content releases until certain funding milestones have been reached? This will act as an incentive for people to pay for the content. If they want it released even earlier, they should pay more?

Re: The creator economy can't rely on Patreon

#130

Post by mjhay »

xzz wrote: post #129
HDThoreaun wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reality is the vast majority of people will absolutely refuse to pay content creators. Even legit newspapers with large staffs can’t get people to subscribe. Most people are ok with ads though. Your best bet is some sort of split where a small niche try’s to go subscription because there’s no chance of a widespread content creator subscription service that can replace ads.

How about, for example, delaying content releases until certain funding milestones have been reached? This will act as an incentive for people to pay for the content. If they want it released even earlier, they should pay more?

That doesn't get past the free-rider problem. That kind of thing can also wind up angering some people (which is kind of entitled, but that doesn't mean it isn't real)
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