The only real attempt at monetisation that I’ve seen is https://beetoons.tv/, but they use their own crypto - making it like Odysee. Why is that?
Edit: Please, before you answer consider this monetisation doesn’t mean ads!
A few reasons:
- The userbase on the Fediverse is not big enough to support a donation-based economy.
- The userbase on the Fediverse is not big enough to support an ad-based economy. Even if by some magical powers we got an ethical ad network working here (which didn’t track users and focused solely on paying people by the opportunity of broadcasting their inventory) there wouldn’t be enough eyeballs to attract advertisers.
- The userbase is still anti-business.
- For all its faults, Youtube is hands-down is the platform that pay the most to content creators.
- Content creators are not willing to spend their time building out audiences on new platforms. Principles be damned, they will just go where the money is.
I’ve added support for crowdfunding to Communick earlier this year, and even people who are active on the Fediverse and have a vested interest in having monetization alternatives turned it down. This is why all we see are these completely fringe ideas that can only appeal for the get-rich-quick crowd.
The userbase is still anti-business.
And a significant part will remain so. This should be a haven from capitalist/corporate platforms, not a parallel market.
I’m still doggedly working on Communick and on AP-based projects because I believe in open standards and because it is our best shot at us collectively take back the web. But if we continue on this idea that the Fediverse is somehow “better” because it discriminates against small business owners, or professionals who want an online presence to promote their work, or anything that resembles “profit-motive”, then this whole thing will forever remain a wasted opportunity, and we will be (once again) be giving it all away for Zuckerberg.
What we have now is just a Tyranny of the Minority. We need to grow the open web. That includes getting normies here. That includes getting people who are not part of your tribe. This includes getting people that you are able to ignore.
That’s Western fediverse.
Fediverse instance in Asia often run ads or other kind of monetisation. Like the second biggest instance.
The userbase on the Fediverse is not big enough to support a donation-based economy.
Could you expand on that? Why do you believe such is the case?
The userbase is still anti-business.
I’m starting to get the impression that this is the biggest hindrance. That and the common misconception that “ads = monetisation”, which IMO big tech has hammered into users very well.
For all its faults, Youtube is hands-down is the platform that pay the most to content creators.
True, but it doesn’t have to stay that way.
Content creators are not willing to spend their time building out audiences on new platforms. Principles be damned, they will just go where the money is.
Probably better tools could contribute to that. Something opensource that allows engaging with all major platforms + peertube and others could swing things in another direction. Imagine if peertube, mastodon, and so forth were just a toggle or a “sign up” form in the app. It could increase adoption by its simplicity: “Never heard of this platform, but I’ll just enable it and see what happens” could very well be possible.
I’ve added support for crowdfunding to Communick earlier this year
Wait a minute… I think I recognise that! Didn’t you make a post that was massively downvoted (or received negatively), because people didn’t understand what you were trying to do? “If it’s not steady income I won’t use it” is something I recall…
Edit: Lemmy is missing the feature to favorite other users :/
Could you expand on that?
Go take a look at all Mastodon instances that ask for donations to keep running: you will see that all of them get at most 2% of their user base to donate. No donation-based instance is big enough that it can afford to pay FTE salaries for moderation and/or administration. And this is for something that affects people directly when they don’t contribute.
Go take a look at some youtubers in the “1M-10M” subscriber range that have a Patreon. You will see that the most of them manage to convert 0.5% to 0.8% of their subscribers into direct contributors.
The open web (ActivityPub sans Facebook) is now at ~1 million active users. Even if we got 2% of these users to contribute $5/month to different creators, we are talking about a “Total Addressable Market” of $100k/month. Even with “best case” numbers, it is just too low to be attractive to a substantial number of creators. Compare with Youtube: it’s estimated that they paid out around 7 billion USD to all its creators in 2023.
Thanks for doing the maths. Actually, it does show that there’s a small, but unexploited market here. $2-3K a month is a very good income for the most of the world. And this doesn’t have to be the only revenue stream.
