4 ms·

Patreon is falling into the same problem, banning people who they don't agree with. People are moving all their eggs from Youtube to Patreon.

raverbashing 9y ago
Do you have an example?
- sschueller 9y ago
  Maybe not the best example but Lauren Southern is one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtImwK5TI4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtImwK5TI4g
jerf 9y ago
"People are moving all their eggs from Youtube to Patreon." That's less of a concern though, because Patreon is easier to replace than YouTube. The problem with YouTube is that, at least as long as the Internet chatter I hear is still accurate, YouTube itself is still losing money, so replacing YouTube involves being able to immediately hugely subsidize people watching lots of video, and to be willing to do so when it is demonstrated that even the market leader who gets all the good ad contracts is losing money, so there's no payday if you win. That's a tough sell. Patreon can't literally be replaced in the legendary "HN denizen claims to be able to replace $X in a weekend", because dealing with taking payments takes longer than that. But it's feasible down in that range, and said replacement at least has a cash flow and a clear path to ramen profitability. It's gonna be a competitive field and Patreon has all the name advantage right now, but it's a feasible plan for a "true startup" of just a few people in a garage in a way that "let's replace YouTube!" isn't. In fact there's at least three competing services I've heard of that already exist, and I have no reason to believe I've heard of them all.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  > Patreon can't literally be replaced in the legendary "HN denizen claims to be able to replace $X in a weekend", because dealing with taking payments takes longer than that. Stripe literally has an offering just for this use case: https://stripe.com/connect https://stripe.com/connect Forum + Stripe Connect + CDN for Video (Cloudfront, Fastly, Whatevs) = Patreon replacement. You could literally replace it with a weekend Hackathon.
  - patrickaljord 9y ago
    You're missing the network effect. With Patreon you can see who your friends are supporting and use the network effect to influence or signal to your friends who you're supporting, kind of like Kickstarter. Conversion rates are higher too because chances are your would be supporters already have an account on Patreon. It's like anyone could write a Facebook clone, the hard part is cloning the community.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      Network effect is overrated. I don't look at any of my friends on Patreon. I don't even think I have any Patreon friends. Its just a more simple way for me to Paypal people I want to support.
      - gwenzek 9y ago
        Agreed l. Also network effect may happen IRL and on FB, no need to rely on Patreon for it
  - jerf 9y ago
    I observe that "Stripe Connect" does not have a "click here to purchase" button but a "Contact Sales" button. I think if you dedicated an entire weekend to the task of being ready to accept credit cards through your website on a subscription basis that you would not be accepting cash on Monday. I seriously doubt that this is just a click-through exercise. I seriously hope this is not just a click-through exercise.
    - wonderwonder 9y ago
      I have used connect a number of years ago. I think it may take a week or so to get approved. (relatively painless process) Once approved it took me maybe a week to get the payment functionality working. I was a much lesser developer then as it was essentially one of my first forays into api's and web development. After approval a skilled developer could absolutely bang out the core functionality in a weekend. Using regular stripe for direct payments is even easier and you can have a fully functional payment system / shopping cart in a few hours. My above statements though in no way reduces what Patreon has done, they excelled at execution and driving traffic to their service as well as excellent usability. No small feat and not easily reproducible. Much the same as the way Facebook succeeded and myspace and friendster failed. Vision and incredible execution.

raverbashing 9y ago

Do you have an example?

sschueller 9y ago
Maybe not the best example but Lauren Southern is one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtImwK5TI4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtImwK5TI4g

jerf 9y ago

"People are moving all their eggs from Youtube to Patreon." That's less of a concern though, because Patreon is easier to replace than YouTube. The problem with YouTube is that, at least as long as the Internet chatter I hear is still accurate, YouTube itself is still losing money, so replacing YouTube involves being able to immediately hugely subsidize people watching lots of video, and to be willing to do so when it is demonstrated that even the market leader who gets all the good ad contracts is losing money, so there's no payday if you win. That's a tough sell. Patreon can't literally be replaced in the legendary "HN denizen claims to be able to replace $X in a weekend", because dealing with taking payments takes longer than that. But it's feasible down in that range, and said replacement at least has a cash flow and a clear path to ramen profitability. It's gonna be a competitive field and Patreon has all the name advantage right now, but it's a feasible plan for a "true startup" of just a few people in a garage in a way that "let's replace YouTube!" isn't. In fact there's at least three competing services I've heard of that already exist, and I have no reason to believe I've heard of them all.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
> Patreon can't literally be replaced in the legendary "HN denizen claims to be able to replace $X in a weekend", because dealing with taking payments takes longer than that. Stripe literally has an offering just for this use case: https://stripe.com/connect https://stripe.com/connect Forum + Stripe Connect + CDN for Video (Cloudfront, Fastly, Whatevs) = Patreon replacement. You could literally replace it with a weekend Hackathon.
- patrickaljord 9y ago
  You're missing the network effect. With Patreon you can see who your friends are supporting and use the network effect to influence or signal to your friends who you're supporting, kind of like Kickstarter. Conversion rates are higher too because chances are your would be supporters already have an account on Patreon. It's like anyone could write a Facebook clone, the hard part is cloning the community.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Network effect is overrated. I don't look at any of my friends on Patreon. I don't even think I have any Patreon friends. Its just a more simple way for me to Paypal people I want to support.
    - gwenzek 9y ago
      Agreed l. Also network effect may happen IRL and on FB, no need to rely on Patreon for it
- jerf 9y ago
  I observe that "Stripe Connect" does not have a "click here to purchase" button but a "Contact Sales" button. I think if you dedicated an entire weekend to the task of being ready to accept credit cards through your website on a subscription basis that you would not be accepting cash on Monday. I seriously doubt that this is just a click-through exercise. I seriously hope this is not just a click-through exercise.
  - wonderwonder 9y ago
    I have used connect a number of years ago. I think it may take a week or so to get approved. (relatively painless process) Once approved it took me maybe a week to get the payment functionality working. I was a much lesser developer then as it was essentially one of my first forays into api's and web development. After approval a skilled developer could absolutely bang out the core functionality in a weekend. Using regular stripe for direct payments is even easier and you can have a fully functional payment system / shopping cart in a few hours. My above statements though in no way reduces what Patreon has done, they excelled at execution and driving traffic to their service as well as excellent usability. No small feat and not easily reproducible. Much the same as the way Facebook succeeded and myspace and friendster failed. Vision and incredible execution.