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How to compete with Patreon

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71–80 of 234 posts

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#71
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.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#72

Still never got answers how Jack and Pomplamoose got away with the “Beat It” cover video that propelled him upward. Still seems shady. Still will never go near anything endorses or touched by Amanda Palmer.

What's wrong with the cover? What's your issue with Amanda Palmer?

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#73

Still never got answers how Jack and Pomplamoose got away with the “Beat It” cover video that propelled him upward. Still seems shady. Still will never go near anything endorses or touched by Amanda Palmer.

It's a great cover...what do you mean with "get away with"?

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#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.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#75
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that "less restrictions on horny stuff" means "more restrictions from payment processors" nowadays. Doubly so if you're a Russian platform like Subscribestar is.

hahahhaa Subscribestar is Russian? Well that's gonna be fun for all the furry artists posting super-gay stuff on there once it gets big enough for the Russian government to notice.

Wonder if they will care if it's mostly a foreign audience.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved Flattr ~10 years ago. You said "I have $40/month" and then these funds were allocated based on which things you flattr'd during the month (there were little buttons on the websites/blogs). Of course you could also say "include this content creator every month". It was so simple and elegant. As a consumer I had cost control, too. Plus there were no micro-transactions, only one charge to me.

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.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#77

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…

> - Instead of 4-7% payment processing fees, it can be effectively zero[1]

There are disadvantages to using Layer 2 of a blockchain, and you are ignoring the costs of on-boarding and off-boarding from cryptocurrency.

> - Users of the platform could be given more control such as forking the OSS protocol if the core devs go off the rails or try to extract more than what users feel it’s worth. This is especially interesting given the recent polarizing changes to Patreon and Bandcamp’s business structures.

In this case you're speaking of doing Patreon on the blockchain, not merely using cryptocurrency transactions? How would that work and how wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to do with a public, possibly federated, server running a FOSS Patreon software?

> - Settlement times can be measured in minutes or hours rather than days, weeks, or months.

Are settlement times going down with FedNow? And even CC transactions take seconds, do the content creators care that much about getting the money immediately and isn't that a greater fraud risk?

> - Anonymity and local-first data privacy could be achieved, at least theoretically. Practically, very few L2s have yet to reach complete privacy using zero knowledge proofs and related cryptography.

I admit to not being familiar with the situation but aren't all transactions public on the blockchain? How that can be anonymous unless you're using something like Monero? And I'm not sure what local-first data there is, you meaning having the paywalled content downloaded to your device if you subscribe?

> - Mitigating centralizing factors such as Patreon’s control over what is a morally acceptable revenue stream. Content like NSFW art might be currently acceptable, but this could change on a dime if the company decides to change its values.

What about illegally acceptable revenue streams? How would such a platform stop being banned due to illegal content?

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#78
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.

Yes and no. It's similar - exact? - to the music industry or Hollywood. *Lots* of frogs to kiss and an occasional unicorn.

The platforms would be wise to have reoccurring revenue from the dreamers, and also backend points on the unicorns.

In general, in 2023+ the biggest problem seems to be signal to noise ratio. There so much content being scattered about, it's increasing more difficult to find quality. More and more (personal) resources are lost to getting past the noise. There's less time and energy left for the quality.

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#79
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…

People like the service that the middle man provides. They may not like the middle man, the fees, etc. but tell someone that "your transactions are not reversible, if you lost your money that sucks I guess, even if we messed up" and they will be happy to pay that transaction fee with another provider instead. Even with the small amounts, you either have to approve each transaction (which leads to another category of…

> People like the service that the middle man provides. They may not like the middle man, the fees, etc. but tell someone that "your transactions are not reversible, if you lost your money that sucks I guess, even if we messed up" and they will be happy to pay that transaction fee with another provider instead.

This might not be entirely realistic, but the idea of passing that choice on to the end user seems interesting:

  Payment of 12.99 EUR (VAT of X% included) to $vendor for $service, choose one:
  [ ] - regular payment, 0.50 EUR fixed fee
  [ ] - safe™ payment*, 2.00 EUR fixed fee
  * safe™ payments can later be disputed and reversed, if necessary
Or something like that. I mean, regulation aside (this is a thought experiment), I can already choose whether I want to pay extra for tracking for international deliveries and when buying goods, sometimes extended warranty/insurance is offered as an option. Why wouldn't I get the choice whether I want my payments to carry less overhead OR have the protections you'd expect with the "middle man", as a choice within the same payment platform?

Re: How to compete with Patreon

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author starts the article with "take Patreon's lunch money". What lunch? The one VCs fed them? Is Patreon even profitable?

See, this is what immediately turned me off the article. I don't WANT a payment system that is about beating up other payment systems in the schoolyard and making them cry. I want a payment system that takes money on my behalf and then pays me with it. I'll put up with a lot of inefficiency if it's boring and predictable. You're gonna have a heck of a time prying me away from Patreon in favor of your new lunch-money…

To your point, it's foolish to pick a fight with a grizzly bear (i.e., Patroen). It's smarter to ask: where is there a market not being fulfilled? Then if that goes well enough eventually *maybe* you look to square off with the grizz. But to run into the sprawling plenty of room forest intentionally looking for a gizzly? That's foolish.
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