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PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

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Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#291
post #41

As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization. I think people who don't make videos for a living severely underestimate how expensive it is to produce high-quality videos people want to watch. This isn't like writing a tweet or even posting a picture on Instagram. Even a decent 20-minute video can easily take 40 man-hours of high-skilled labor. I have a pretty small…

That's the thing; not everything has to be or should be monetized. The thing I miss the most are the funny dumb amateur videos.

There are several YouTube channels I love; Folding Ideas, hbomberguy, Kurtis Conner, Contrapoints, etc... but I see those essentially as semi professional / professional variations on television. Once I got into their content via YouTube, YouTube of course drove me away with horrid vile ads, and I moved on to supporting those creators on Patreon.

And that's all good - the digital medium needs places like YouTube. But that doesn't mean there isn't a huge amount of value in the amateur unmonitized video landscape. Pairing those with some niche phpbb style forums was, for me, the last time I truly enjoyed the experience of actually being on the internet.

Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#292
post #41

As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization. I think people who don't make videos for a living severely underestimate how expensive it is to produce high-quality videos people want to watch. This isn't like writing a tweet or even posting a picture on Instagram. Even a decent 20-minute video can easily take 40 man-hours of high-skilled labor. I have a pretty small…

>You cannot do that in the hopes of viewers donating $5 here and there.

But you can do that in hopes of youtube sharing a percentage of fluctuating ad revenue? Certain things can get you de-monetized, you can get strike-bombed, falsely accused of copyright infringement via automated systems, etc, and unless you are a very big channel owner, you will receive a minimal droplet of support likely involving no humans in the loop.

There are sustainable creators getting much more revenue by collecting direct subscription money from their patrons while providing exclusive or first-hand content to them which is then re-uploaded to youtube for reaching a wider audience. They can run their own integrated ad-campaings without google deciding what they are advertising or which content they can or cannot produce.

Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#293
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google splits with the creator 50-50. If you got paid $1000, so did Google. And given their hosting infrastructure, network, and other tools, I would say it's a miracle they don't charge to upload.

Not a miracle if the math works out such that their margins cover the infrastructural fixed costs. Just simple economics.

You clearly don't work in AI:)

Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#294

I've tried a few of these alternative sites, and it's just not a fun place to go find videos from interesting people working on projects, etc. A lot of unpleasant extremist videos, a lot of slop, with no good ability to filter out just what I want to see. Sure, YouTube has these too but I can manage to keep it at bay.

It does have some ability to filter. I am subscribed to a few channels on the Makertube instance and regularly watch some videos there.

You can mute channels or entire federated instances so they don't appear in feeds or search results. It does get tiresome to always have to do this when you see unwanted video's, but they do stay gone, unlike Youtube's system of "Not Interested"/"Don't recomend this channel".

All in all i've been watching less Youtube lately and starting to watch some Peertube videos and finding the grassroots nature of it very refreshing.

Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#295
post #41

As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization. I think people who don't make videos for a living severely underestimate how expensive it is to produce high-quality videos people want to watch. This isn't like writing a tweet or even posting a picture on Instagram. Even a decent 20-minute video can easily take 40 man-hours of high-skilled labor. I have a pretty small…

> lack of monetization

I mean, when you spin your own instance, because frankly, that's what the best option if you're a content creator, you can put whatever ads and monetization strategies you want. So basically the full income that gets generated gets to you, instead of splitting it with some third party that invests minimal effort. Yes, you'll have to pay someone to maintain and upkeep the server, but assumedly the people that can make the change will take that cost into account.

> a big corporation that can pay big creators million-dollar deals to make the switch.

I'm surprised by this. Isn't controlling your full production/distribution/revenue a good enough payback?

Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The matter of compensation or donation can be handled completely separately. Creators can be supported on other platforms like Liberapay, Patreon, Kofi, and many creators are supported that way. If we are talking about clickbait and making money from getting unwanted ads in people's faces, no thank you we don't need more of that.

No one donates money. It doesn't happen. Conversion rates across the board are around 1%. And then of those donations, most are the lowest tier/lowest increment. It's the most annoying and persistent counterpoint brought up in these discussions, but it has no grounding in reality. The most popular contingent of viewers are ad-supported, close behind are ad-blocking, then the last 5% are your subscribers and donators.

Then what is this: https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators/video

Not the most common way to make money from videos, for sure, but it's not "nobody", and they need hosting.

Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#297
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your issue is assuming that this is trying to replace YouTube for those who wish to try and make money from this. I suspect this is much more closer to a Google videos or YouTube back in the day which was pretty much just random videos, plus lots of conferences on there (which don't get enough views to monetize). This can easily replace that and is something I would support. YouTube hasn't always been monetising and…

It's not about people "trying to make money", it's about viewers wanting to see high quality videos. High quality videos just cost a lot of money and labor to produce. There is simply no way around this. Any platform which doesn't let creators monetize effectively will be stuck with what people produce in their free time. Which will essentially always be worse, because the competitors will have creators with actual b…

The cost of cross posting your professional YouTube video is basically nil.

Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nebula's value proposition for invited creators is dubious at best, too. They also require an off-YouTube exclusivity contract, which was especially no bueno for me.

Isn't it possible for creators to release on YouTube some time after the Nebula release? I know of a couple channels that do that, though it seems like there's a requirement to add a little extra bit on the end for the Nebula side.

I’ve seen both “Nebula first, YouTube later” and “bonus/longer content on Nebula only” as a common pattern.

Examples: Adam Neely, Tom Scott

Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#299
post #41

As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization. I think people who don't make videos for a living severely underestimate how expensive it is to produce high-quality videos people want to watch. This isn't like writing a tweet or even posting a picture on Instagram. Even a decent 20-minute video can easily take 40 man-hours of high-skilled labor. I have a pretty small…

Thr one solution I see to that is sponsorships, the number I've heard is they typically pay 10x the ad revenue of a video, and this wouldn't be affected by the platform, just the viewership numbers.

Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#300
post #94
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say your target is $500-$1000 per video and let's assume you do videos weekly. That would mean your optimistic goal is $4500 a month. Let's say you create a voluntary donation subscription at $5 per month for people willing to support your work. That means you would need 900 true fans, patrons, or whatever other label you want to give them to hit your $4500 goal. That's a 0.9% conversion rate from subscribers to…

Voluntary donations are practically impossible. Sure, you get the odd straggler, but it’s so, so rare. I have the most popular NSFW LoRA (actually a LoKR but whatever) for at least one major text to image model on CivitAI. Once it blew up I made a Patreon, maybe 6 months ago? I get $50 a month from it. I doubt that even covers my electricity costs for training. Podcasts and videos do have the advantage of being able…

> aren’t inclined to give their money away when they don’t have to

vtuber culture proves that this is categorically wrong

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