5 ms·

I often try to support a creator and find out that monthly support is my only option ... which I am not willing to do. Here are some ways we have always suppor

by habosa 6y ago

I often try to support a creator and find out that monthly support is my only option ... which I am not willing to do. Here are some ways we have always supported creators without subscriptions: I can buy a book, watch a movie in a theater, get a CD, attend a play, buy a painting, etc. I'm still willing to do those things, I do them all the time. I'm still willing to spend a lot of money on those things. I am not willing to lay you $5/month in the future to see what you may or may not produce. I'd rather give you $100 one time for something really great.

HenryBemis 6y ago
What I am writing may not a good idea, but it works. Let's assume you like 12 patreon content creators. You can subscribe one month per year to each (1st-Jan, 2nd-Feb, and so on), binge consume the contenct they made for the past 12 months, and unsubscribe to them. This way you kick your FOMO habit, get to see what you enjoy. I do this with TV series (in a way). I stopped watching Lost, HIMYM, and a few more, and then I binge watched in the end (in the very end). I watched the last 3 seasons of HIMYM and last 2 season of Lost like this. It was more an exercise to kick the FOMO habit, and avoid the 'agony' of waiting for the next episode to drop . Most content creators give you access to all their past stuff. Again, I know this may not be ethically "good", but it's part of the game of using patreon and other content sharing management services the way it better suits ME/YOU, than them. In the scenario of enjoying 12 creators, you spread them out in the year, you spend $5 per month instead of 12*5= 60 per month. In the span of a decade, that adds up to a lot. And don't get me wrong, it's not about being cheap. If you feel bad, go and donate that saved $ in a charity. It's about controlling your time and your FOMO habit.
jillesvangurp 6y ago
What's missing here is a netflix style model where your donations are distributed among people you want to support instead of having to micromanage donations. I pay about ~30 euro per month for netflix, spotify, and amazon prime. So, it's not a stretch of the imagination that I would be willing to pay for (some) of the free content I enjoy on e.g. Youtube. However, I follow dozens of youtubers asking for donations and while I like most of them, it's not going to add up to me handing out multiple dollars to each of them on a monthly basis because it would add up to vastly more than I spend on commercial content. And it's kind of unfair to single out just a few of them. But, I'd be willing to put in 10 a month if I did not have to worry about allocating that to each of them or micromanaging who gets what. IMHO a simple distribution based on views/listens/clicks, could work. It would probably add up to just a few cents per personn I donate to; but if lots of people do that, it adds up. The deal with patreon is that you rely on a handful of people supporting you while you give away most of your content for free. IMHO most of that is unrealized potential for monetization. Several youtubers I follow have numbers of followers and views that would put some tv channels to shame and they also get revenue from sponsorships. Several others are a bit more modest but still rake in tens to hundreds of thousands of views easily. I'd love a platform that gives me a simple predictable cost per month combined with a fair, no hassle way to ensure that money gets funneled to artists, writers, coders, and other content creators I care about. Donating 10cents per month is not a thing and donating 1-10$ per month means I have to cherry pick people out of group of dozens to hundreds I might consider donating to but currently don't.
- Nullabillity 6y ago
  > But, I'd be willing to put in 10 a month if I did not have to worry about allocating that to each of them or micromanaging who gets what. IMHO a simple distribution based on views/listens/clicks, could work. YouTube Premium?
  - auxym 6y ago
    Does YT Premium redistribute any money to content creators?
    - coldpie 6y ago
      Yes, but not to your creators. Google's description is vague, but my impression is YT Premium revenue (after google's cut) goes into a big pool and is split up among all creators: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6306276#YouTube_Red_revenue_2 https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6306276#YouTube_Re... So your creators are getting paid by watch time, but not all of your $10 is going only to creators you watch.
      - auxym 6y ago
        Yeah, the Spotify model. Not the best thing if your main intention is supporting the creators you enjoy.
    - geerlingguy 6y ago
      Yes, but there are vanishingly few people who pay for it, IME. It's maybe 3% of the revenue I get on my channel.
    - charwalker 6y ago
      Some creators note it is many times what ad revenue brings them and is a significant part of their income on that platform. I think LTT and other tech creators have mentioned this however buying merch or subscribing on Patreon/their own site is a bigger generator than anything on YT.
  - 6y ago
ZephyrBlu 6y ago
> I am not willing to lay you $5/month in the future to see what you may or may not produce. I'd rather give you $100 one time for something really great What about indie hacker-type services?
GekkePrutser 6y ago
I'm exactly in that category. I often donate fairly large amounts to open source projects I really like, or that are responsive to issues raised by me. Especially the small single-dev ones. Most of them also have patreons but I usually contact them on IRC or whatever and just wire the money directly to them (saving payment platform fees as well). Even though they don't offer this as an 'official' option, they never say no to $100 ;) Of course none of these have any 'paid members only' stuff as it's open source already. However small regular amounts I'm not willing to do. My interests tend to fade quickly and I tend to forget about such subscriptions, leaving them to run much too long. It also stimulates never-finishing projects. The same with good causes/NGOs, trying to sign you up on the street. They don't want money anymore, they want your bank details. They'll never get them. In their case I think the problem is just that they're becoming too commercialised. They're thinking and acting as big corporations, CEOs making too much money, having big marketing departments etc. They're not the 'grassroots' movements they once were, and as such I don't feel like sponsoring them anymore.

by habosa 6y ago

HenryBemis 6y ago

What I am writing may not a good idea, but it works. Let's assume you like 12 patreon content creators. You can subscribe one month per year to each (1st-Jan, 2nd-Feb, and so on), binge consume the contenct they made for the past 12 months, and unsubscribe to them. This way you kick your FOMO habit, get to see what you enjoy. I do this with TV series (in a way). I stopped watching Lost, HIMYM, and a few more, and then I binge watched in the end (in the very end). I watched the last 3 seasons of HIMYM and last 2 season of Lost like this. It was more an exercise to kick the FOMO habit, and avoid the 'agony' of waiting for the next episode to drop . Most content creators give you access to all their past stuff. Again, I know this may not be ethically "good", but it's part of the game of using patreon and other content sharing management services the way it better suits ME/YOU, than them. In the scenario of enjoying 12 creators, you spread them out in the year, you spend $5 per month instead of 12*5= 60 per month. In the span of a decade, that adds up to a lot. And don't get me wrong, it's not about being cheap. If you feel bad, go and donate that saved $ in a charity. It's about controlling your time and your FOMO habit.

jillesvangurp 6y ago

What's missing here is a netflix style model where your donations are distributed among people you want to support instead of having to micromanage donations. I pay about ~30 euro per month for netflix, spotify, and amazon prime. So, it's not a stretch of the imagination that I would be willing to pay for (some) of the free content I enjoy on e.g. Youtube. However, I follow dozens of youtubers asking for donations and while I like most of them, it's not going to add up to me handing out multiple dollars to each of them on a monthly basis because it would add up to vastly more than I spend on commercial content. And it's kind of unfair to single out just a few of them. But, I'd be willing to put in 10 a month if I did not have to worry about allocating that to each of them or micromanaging who gets what. IMHO a simple distribution based on views/listens/clicks, could work. It would probably add up to just a few cents per personn I donate to; but if lots of people do that, it adds up. The deal with patreon is that you rely on a handful of people supporting you while you give away most of your content for free. IMHO most of that is unrealized potential for monetization. Several youtubers I follow have numbers of followers and views that would put some tv channels to shame and they also get revenue from sponsorships. Several others are a bit more modest but still rake in tens to hundreds of thousands of views easily. I'd love a platform that gives me a simple predictable cost per month combined with a fair, no hassle way to ensure that money gets funneled to artists, writers, coders, and other content creators I care about. Donating 10cents per month is not a thing and donating 1-10$ per month means I have to cherry pick people out of group of dozens to hundreds I might consider donating to but currently don't.

Nullabillity 6y ago
> But, I'd be willing to put in 10 a month if I did not have to worry about allocating that to each of them or micromanaging who gets what. IMHO a simple distribution based on views/listens/clicks, could work. YouTube Premium?
- auxym 6y ago
  Does YT Premium redistribute any money to content creators?
  - coldpie 6y ago
    Yes, but not to your creators. Google's description is vague, but my impression is YT Premium revenue (after google's cut) goes into a big pool and is split up among all creators: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6306276#YouTube_Red_revenue_2 https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6306276#YouTube_Re... So your creators are getting paid by watch time, but not all of your $10 is going only to creators you watch.
    - auxym 6y ago
      Yeah, the Spotify model. Not the best thing if your main intention is supporting the creators you enjoy.
  - geerlingguy 6y ago
    Yes, but there are vanishingly few people who pay for it, IME. It's maybe 3% of the revenue I get on my channel.
  - charwalker 6y ago
    Some creators note it is many times what ad revenue brings them and is a significant part of their income on that platform. I think LTT and other tech creators have mentioned this however buying merch or subscribing on Patreon/their own site is a bigger generator than anything on YT.
- 6y ago

ZephyrBlu 6y ago

> I am not willing to lay you $5/month in the future to see what you may or may not produce. I'd rather give you $100 one time for something really great What about indie hacker-type services?

GekkePrutser 6y ago

I'm exactly in that category. I often donate fairly large amounts to open source projects I really like, or that are responsive to issues raised by me. Especially the small single-dev ones. Most of them also have patreons but I usually contact them on IRC or whatever and just wire the money directly to them (saving payment platform fees as well). Even though they don't offer this as an 'official' option, they never say no to $100 ;) Of course none of these have any 'paid members only' stuff as it's open source already. However small regular amounts I'm not willing to do. My interests tend to fade quickly and I tend to forget about such subscriptions, leaving them to run much too long. It also stimulates never-finishing projects. The same with good causes/NGOs, trying to sign you up on the street. They don't want money anymore, they want your bank details. They'll never get them. In their case I think the problem is just that they're becoming too commercialised. They're thinking and acting as big corporations, CEOs making too much money, having big marketing departments etc. They're not the 'grassroots' movements they once were, and as such I don't feel like sponsoring them anymore.