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How to compete with Patreon

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Re: How to compete with Patreon

#111

Post by AlexandrB »

xcdzvyn wrote: post #99
kodra wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patreon creators actively voted against crypto.

Of course, and there was great uproar when Discord implemented linking Ethereum wallet addresses to your account - not because it's harmful, or even because it's a bad idea, but because of this pervasive concept in some internet communities that cryptocurrency is bad simply because it is.

This is silly. There is a several hour long YouTube video outlining many of the reasons why crypto is bad. There are articles and books and analyses galore. Plenty of ink has been spilled regarding why crypto is bad. What I haven't seen is any clear headed analysis of why crypto is good that doesn't fall back on "but fiat is bad because government" or on gold bug notions of "it has value because it's scarce".

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#112

Post by concordDance »

corbezzoli wrote: post #84
diggan wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Same, I only hear about Patreon on YouTube.

Fiction authors are who I give my patron money to.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#113

Post by game_the0ry »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #50
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…

Last I checked, NSFW art wasn't currently acceptable, payment processors would refuse to deal with you... so how do the likes of Patreon and OnlyFans managed to get a pass ?

There was a HN post while back that speculated that they might be using "cascading" payments where OnlyFans will load balance across payment processors to keep the charge back rates low.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#114

Post by wryanzimmerman »

tester457 wrote: post #95
ok_dad wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buddy are you for real? It’s perfectly legal to sell under a fake name (or for instance, as an LLC) as long as you pay your taxes as your real identity! You need to maybe not try to replace patreon if you’re this clueless.

But can't anyone just look up the owner of the LLC, that info is public? I believe that if someone with a patreon wants their identity to stay private, making an LLC (depending on the name of it) may backfire?

There are several states where you can form an LLC without making your information public. In New Mexico you don’t even need to tell the state.

I can’t tell if you’re talking about the US though, if you’re referring to other countries it may be much more restrictive, lots of places seem to require ID and registration for basically anything.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#115

Post by timbit42 »

smeej wrote: post #62
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…

Even granting that those things do apply, there's another major hurdle for any platform that would try to do this with crypto: You can't autobill. Every time you want a payment, you need a signature from the sending wallet. The closest you can get is a smart contract where someone pre-loads a certain amount of money and it trickles out as the months/works roll out, but it will eventually deplete. Then what? Subscript…

You seem to mean Bitcoin when you say crypto. Other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum can do autobill.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#116

Post by throwaway98797 »

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…

if you stay in crypto fees are small

the port to fiat is the problem

someone somewhere will need to change USDC / USDT (eek) to fiat

either all visitors of the platform or the platform forms those relationships

this is the weakness of crypto enthusiasts’ arguments. they live in the world where crypto won and you can buy goods within their ecosystem.

this is simply not true… yet?

i’m actually a fan of crypto, but these naive or bond header arguments are not useful to convince anyone. it’s like saying you can lose weight eating mcdonald’s, you can but will most?

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#117

Post by karl42 »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #101
karl42 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (ev…

The creators are encouraged to create engaging/addicting/long content if that is what causes higher payments. Therefore, I much preferred the original Flattr where I defined which creator was beneficial to me.

I don't think that Flattr2 is more true to a free markets vision than Flattr1. Neither do I believe that a free market is necessarily better than a regulated market. Markets are a highly useful tool, not a goal themselves.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#118

Post by BlueTemplar »

mattdesl wrote: post #52
BlueTemplar wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I checked, NSFW art wasn't currently acceptable, payment processors would refuse to deal with you... so how do the likes of Patreon and OnlyFans managed to get a pass ?

NSFW art is not illegal; VISA won't block you if you fund an artist who is drawing or photographing nudes, and Patreon's current policy is that this form of content is acceptable.[1] [1] https://www.patreon.com/en-GB/policy/community-guidelines

AFAIK the crux of the matter is exactly in how VISA and the like are judge, jury and executioner on these matters : if they don't think what you are doing is acceptable, being legal won't change anything about that.

And as far as I remember, Patreon also had similar issues with terminating accounts of people that they (not judges !) have decided to have violated (IIRC) hate speech laws ? (This wouldn't be an issue if antitrust was working properly and Patreon hadn't become so big that alternatives aren't even on people's radars (GP's ignorance about Tipeee being an example), but here we are...)

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#119

Post by BlueTemplar »

karl42 wrote: post #117
BlueTemplar wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (ev…

The creators are encouraged to create engaging/addicting/long content if that is what causes higher payments. Therefore, I much preferred the original Flattr where I defined which creator was beneficial to me. I don't think that Flattr2 is more true to a free markets vision than Flattr1. Neither do I believe that a free market is necessarily better than a regulated market. Markets are a highly useful tool, not a goal…

Hmm, good point, but since the extension is open source you could always have decided to disable that part, or even more importantly - reprogram it yourself to whatever definition and weights of engagement that you would like ?

https://github.com/search?q=flattr&type=repositories

(It's also out of control of the creators trying to artificially increase engagement by doing tricks with the Flattr 1.0 buttons on their websites.)

Apologies for linking to GitHub, but that's where the official repository is, so...

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