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Graph showing revenue for my YouTube channel vs Patreon over the years. In other words, my Patrons mean more to me than the YT algo. https://twitter.com/BenKr

by bkraz 6y ago

Graph showing revenue for my YouTube channel vs Patreon over the years. In other words, my Patrons mean more to me than the YT algo. https://twitter.com/BenKrasnow/status/1300643248508080129?s=19 https://twitter.com/BenKrasnow/status/1300643248508080129?s=...

rosywoozlechan 6y ago
Interesting you got YT Red on there too. I heavily rely on YouTube Red to avoid ads on mobile, I hope they never get rid of it. I'm guessing the revenue is so low for it on your chart because most people don't have YT Red, not because it's not pulling its weight as compared to ads. I would probably just stop using YouTube on mobile if they ever removed YT Red, I don't know how people can stand the ads. There are so many ads.
- mikeyjk 6y ago
  On Android there is an app called NewPipe to avoid mobile adds. I'm having to pinch pennies, though.
  - gundmc 6y ago
    This thread is in the context of compensating creators, not just skipping ads. Using Newpipe does nothing for creators.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - google234123 6y ago
    That's definitely breaking the TOS
    - gilrain 6y ago
      They did say they're hard up. Sheriff of Nottingham over here, scrounging the last gold coins out of the cast.
      - google234123 6y ago
        I don't think it's cheap to serve video content. That takes a lot of bandwidth, engineering, and compute resources.
      - google234123 6y ago
        It's not cheap to serve video content. That takes a lot of bandwidth, engineering, and compute resources.
        tpxl 6y ago
        And they give it to you for free!
        Applejinx 6y ago
        It scales, though. It makes sense that a thing like Google YouTube exists: if you can scale enough, it becomes worthwhile at least to yourself to provide it. Your main benefit is control and exclusivity: you can expect very large results from very small controlling actions. Most likely doesn't make you enough money to redistribute it to lots of content creators, though it serves your purposes to have 'em thinking that is what they're there for. I'm happy enough to serve consumer-grade video content at no cost to me through YouTube, on their terms. It's limiting, but I can put a lot of video out there without paying a host to serve the bandwidth. And YouTube gets to continue to pretend they are the only game in town.
- echelon 6y ago
  YouTube without YouTube Red is not worth the trouble. The YouTube Red / Google Play Music decoupling has me worried for the future of the product. I'm both upset Google Play Music is going away and that it might risk YouTube Red.
  - xmprt 6y ago
    They're still investing heavily into YouTube Premium (no longer Red) now so I don't see them getting rid of it anytime soon.
    - metiscus 6y ago
      It's also still too early in the google ADHD cycle to kill it. Probably just reaching mid life at this point.
      - google234123 6y ago
        Nah, YouTube Premium makes sense. It's basically TY without ads. Why would that be too hard to maintain?
        xmprt 6y ago
        You hit the nail on its head. Google usually discontinues products which have high maintenance cost so even if it turns out that YT Premium makes less money than people watching ads (and I highly doubt the average person watches more than $10 worth of ads in a month), they'll still keep it.
        adambyrtek 6y ago
        Not really, for example Reader had really low maintenance costs. In fact at some point it was maintained by some of its former developers in their 20% time with no official head count.
        6y ago
- madmax108 6y ago
  If avoiding ads is your only concern, then Youtube Vanced [1] does the same as well. Have used it for the last couple of months and can happily recommend it. It's practically just a modified Youtube client, so every feature just works out of the box _(unsure how this compares with Newpipe though)_. [1] https://vanced.app/ https://vanced.app/
  - bonoboTP 6y ago
    I was so confused why it's called Vanced, then I realized what's missing at the start of the word. It's genius.
  - kikokikokiko 6y ago
    For the people that do not want to give Google any money ever, you have many alternatives. I personally use Firefox(the 68 version) + Ublock Origin on Android, but you can simply use Brave out of the box. You can log to your account and have your full preferences and history. Also I use an addon to allow background playback on Firefox, but in Brave it's also out of the box. I would never support Google in any way, so no ethical concerns on my part. I support some channels through Subscribestar. Patreon does not support free speech, so it's a no go for me too.
    - Applejinx 6y ago
      I prefer not to support SubscribeStar in any way, as that normalizes right-wing extremists who break the Patreon TOS. I guess it depends on how much distance you want between yourself and your brand and right-wing extremists, and what things you're willing to accept under the guise of 'free speech'. But that is the mother of all sub-threads, so it might not be worth us getting into that infinite recursion fueled by dishonest argument :)
      - kikokikokiko 6y ago
        I prefer that the tool I use to be the middleman between me and the creator I support to not decide for ME who is acceptable or not for ME to support. But I understand your point, this discussion would have no end here in Hackernews. Let's agree to disagree :-)
dx87 6y ago
That's probably similar to a lot of people. It seems like a lot of the people I've watched for years on YouTube have started significantly cutting down on the length of their videos, usually sub 10 minutes, and making the full video available on patreon. It's like YouTube is just a way to get a foot in the door because it's the biggest platform, and they ditch it as soon as they can.
- bkraz 6y ago
  Yes. To clarify, I post all of my content on YT for free, and Patrons help pay for it if they choose. This model seems to make everyone happy.
  - adanto6840 6y ago
    That's awesome, not only for you but I especially applaud those who pay for your content. As a game developer it makes me wonder if there's a viable & addressable market there, to work on a single game "long-term" without feeling the crunch from Steam/reviews/etc.
    - jetrink 6y ago
      Dwarf Fortress has been crowd funded since before Patreon existed and now has a Patreon page. I'm not sure you'd call it a total success though as the creators lived frugal lives for a long time in order to survive off the donations.
    - georgebonnr 6y ago
      best example I can think of! https://www.patreon.com/bay12games https://www.patreon.com/bay12games
    - elliekelly 6y ago
      There seem to be some developers who make mod content for games who do well on Patreon. Edit: I also just realized I know of a game developer on Patreon for a game that hasn’t been released yet. It seems he (and presumably his team) earn $40k/month: https://www.patreon.com/alexmasse https://www.patreon.com/alexmasse
cabaalis 6y ago
Very interesting.. You have a successful channel, sorry to see that COVID has set you back so.
xiaolingxiao 6y ago
Could you speak about why Patrons are more likely to pay on Pateron than elsewhere?
- judge2020 6y ago
  [Not op] There are a few reasons, but two big ones are being directly supporting the creator (YT requires you use memberships which are flat-rate and not user-adjustable) and getting perks for pledging (like Discord access, access to pre-release work, etc).
- bkraz 6y ago
  Probably the convenience of paying multiple creators with one credit card transaction, and one login. I guess you could call this a network effect. YT had/has various direct payment options, but they are confusing and never made as much sense as Patreon's model, which allows per-month or per-creation pledges. Strange since YT's existing infra would seem a big advantage in doing exactly what Pareon has.
- rcthompson 6y ago
  I think it varies a lot. Some Patreon creators use it as a sort of "tip jar", where the rewards for various tiers are relatively minimal compared to the main product that is given away for free. This is very common for web comics, and I'm guessing also common for Youtubers. In these cases, the main "reward" is helping to ensure that the creator can continue producing the content they're releasing for free. Other creators use Patreon as the medium by which to deliver their content, and only patrons hace access to it. So this is more like a traditional subscription model than a tip jar. And of course there are various gradations in between, and probably other models as well. So because Patreon is used in such a wide range of ways, It's hard to make generalizations about all of it. And by that same token it's also hard for Patreon to make changes in a way that doesn't interfere with the way someone is using it. (Not that this in any way excuses their numerous blunders.)
  - Semaphor 6y ago
    Glynn Stewart (sci-fi author) uses it [0] to release his novels 2 weeks before they land on Amazon, which is when they get removed from Patreon as he is part of KU. So both to give people an alternative to Amazon despite technically being Amazon exclusive and to allow people to get them early. [0]: https://www.patreon.com/glynnstewart https://www.patreon.com/glynnstewart
slg 6y ago
You didn't include perhaps the most interesting part. You currently have 662k subscribers on Youtube while 1,221 subscribers on Patreon. Those numbers obviously aren't constant throughout the entire time frame of that graph, but it would generally indicate that less than 0.2% of people becoming patrons was enough to surpass the revenue from Youtube. I still have my doubts of how this scales for both consumers and Patreon as a company, but there is no question that this model is great for established content creators.
- hkmurakami 6y ago
  Those numbers look similar to Zynga’s whale user ratios.
  - slg 6y ago
    The numbers might be similar, but I don't love the comparison due to the ethical differences between the two. There is a lot more shady psychology and manipulation going on with Zynga than there is when a creator of free content starts accepting donations through Patreon. This is especially true when the membership bonuses are setup like Ben's in which they are mostly just being thanked in slightly more elaborate ways as the donation level increases. https://www.patreon.com/AppliedScience https://www.patreon.com/AppliedScience
    - eru 6y ago
      Importantly, there's a limit to how much money you can spend on a single 'client' [0]. I don't think Zynga had meaningful limits on whale spend per game? [0] I assume client is the inverse of a patron? Just going by Roman usage.
      - hobofan 6y ago
        Is there? Apart from the preset tiers, you can usually specify a custom amount to donate monthly, so you could easily spend a few thousand per month on a single creator.
tedmcory77 6y ago
The question is, do you do different things for YouTube vs. Patreon. Potentially, YouTube is more akin to a short lived annuity vs. a Patreon job. Maybe not, depends on the accretion of your content.
crispyporkbites 6y ago
Will Patreon become the real YT killer? They already have the best content creators on their platform, what’s to stop them building out a similar video hosting setup with search and discovery? Google might want to nip this in the bud now with a cheeky 2bn $ acquisition...
- Barrin92 6y ago
  > what’s to stop them building out a similar video hosting setup with search and discovery? for starters the absolutely abysmal performance of their site. I think Patreon found a good idea but good lord scrolling through a patreon account with someone who has a lot of posts basically stress tests my laptop fan
  - crispyporkbites 6y ago
    Right but that can fixed with a few million dollar and few months. I don’t think many (any?) companies fail because of web app performance
    - RL_Quine 6y ago
      Reddit is getting there.
      - tirpen 6y ago
        Definitely. You can still opt in to keep using their old interface thankfully, the difference in both performance and UX is staggering. When that option disappears from the site, so will I.
        jandrese 6y ago
        The day they discontinue old.reddit.com is the day I stop visiting the site. The new version is like a case study in everything I hate about "new" web UX.
    - 6y ago
creddit 6y ago
Love your YT videos! I’m always impressed and learn something new.
ridaj 6y ago
YouTube is just monetizing a different part of your funnel. They both work together — you might not get many viewers interested in sending you money via Patreon either if your videos weren't getting an audience on YouTube via said algo...
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
>In other words, my Patrons mean more to me than the YT algo. Good, but isn't YouTube algo your primary discovery funnel? Does YouTube provide you metrics such as organic visits e.g. searching in YT, clicking on related videos, trending etc. vs direct visits e.g. clicking your video link from Reddit, HN, other websites etc.?
- anchpop 6y ago
  Youtube does provide those metrics
shankysingh 6y ago
Just a side-note: just discovered your channel, pretty interesting content.
CydeWeys 6y ago
Do you have paying subscribers through YouTube? I'm curious to know, when presented an equal choice of Patreon vs subscribing via YouTube, what % of paying subscribers choose each option.
timemct 6y ago
I sub to heaps of science infotainment channels and the YT algo hasn't ever recommended your channel. I think that anecdotally shows how broken the YT algo is. You just got one more YT sub and a potential new Patreon sub, too. Cheers!

by bkraz 6y ago

rosywoozlechan 6y ago

Interesting you got YT Red on there too. I heavily rely on YouTube Red to avoid ads on mobile, I hope they never get rid of it. I'm guessing the revenue is so low for it on your chart because most people don't have YT Red, not because it's not pulling its weight as compared to ads. I would probably just stop using YouTube on mobile if they ever removed YT Red, I don't know how people can stand the ads. There are so many ads.

mikeyjk 6y ago
On Android there is an app called NewPipe to avoid mobile adds. I'm having to pinch pennies, though.
- gundmc 6y ago
  This thread is in the context of compensating creators, not just skipping ads. Using Newpipe does nothing for creators.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- google234123 6y ago
  That's definitely breaking the TOS
  - gilrain 6y ago
    They did say they're hard up. Sheriff of Nottingham over here, scrounging the last gold coins out of the cast.
    - google234123 6y ago
      I don't think it's cheap to serve video content. That takes a lot of bandwidth, engineering, and compute resources.
    - google234123 6y ago
      It's not cheap to serve video content. That takes a lot of bandwidth, engineering, and compute resources.
      - tpxl 6y ago
        And they give it to you for free!
      - Applejinx 6y ago
        It scales, though. It makes sense that a thing like Google YouTube exists: if you can scale enough, it becomes worthwhile at least to yourself to provide it. Your main benefit is control and exclusivity: you can expect very large results from very small controlling actions. Most likely doesn't make you enough money to redistribute it to lots of content creators, though it serves your purposes to have 'em thinking that is what they're there for. I'm happy enough to serve consumer-grade video content at no cost to me through YouTube, on their terms. It's limiting, but I can put a lot of video out there without paying a host to serve the bandwidth. And YouTube gets to continue to pretend they are the only game in town.
echelon 6y ago
YouTube without YouTube Red is not worth the trouble. The YouTube Red / Google Play Music decoupling has me worried for the future of the product. I'm both upset Google Play Music is going away and that it might risk YouTube Red.
- xmprt 6y ago
  They're still investing heavily into YouTube Premium (no longer Red) now so I don't see them getting rid of it anytime soon.
  - metiscus 6y ago
    It's also still too early in the google ADHD cycle to kill it. Probably just reaching mid life at this point.
    - google234123 6y ago
      Nah, YouTube Premium makes sense. It's basically TY without ads. Why would that be too hard to maintain?
      - xmprt 6y ago
        You hit the nail on its head. Google usually discontinues products which have high maintenance cost so even if it turns out that YT Premium makes less money than people watching ads (and I highly doubt the average person watches more than $10 worth of ads in a month), they'll still keep it.
        adambyrtek 6y ago
        Not really, for example Reader had really low maintenance costs. In fact at some point it was maintained by some of its former developers in their 20% time with no official head count.
        6y ago
madmax108 6y ago
If avoiding ads is your only concern, then Youtube Vanced [1] does the same as well. Have used it for the last couple of months and can happily recommend it. It's practically just a modified Youtube client, so every feature just works out of the box _(unsure how this compares with Newpipe though)_. [1] https://vanced.app/ https://vanced.app/
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  I was so confused why it's called Vanced, then I realized what's missing at the start of the word. It's genius.
- kikokikokiko 6y ago
  For the people that do not want to give Google any money ever, you have many alternatives. I personally use Firefox(the 68 version) + Ublock Origin on Android, but you can simply use Brave out of the box. You can log to your account and have your full preferences and history. Also I use an addon to allow background playback on Firefox, but in Brave it's also out of the box. I would never support Google in any way, so no ethical concerns on my part. I support some channels through Subscribestar. Patreon does not support free speech, so it's a no go for me too.
  - Applejinx 6y ago
    I prefer not to support SubscribeStar in any way, as that normalizes right-wing extremists who break the Patreon TOS. I guess it depends on how much distance you want between yourself and your brand and right-wing extremists, and what things you're willing to accept under the guise of 'free speech'. But that is the mother of all sub-threads, so it might not be worth us getting into that infinite recursion fueled by dishonest argument :)
    - kikokikokiko 6y ago
      I prefer that the tool I use to be the middleman between me and the creator I support to not decide for ME who is acceptable or not for ME to support. But I understand your point, this discussion would have no end here in Hackernews. Let's agree to disagree :-)

dx87 6y ago

That's probably similar to a lot of people. It seems like a lot of the people I've watched for years on YouTube have started significantly cutting down on the length of their videos, usually sub 10 minutes, and making the full video available on patreon. It's like YouTube is just a way to get a foot in the door because it's the biggest platform, and they ditch it as soon as they can.

bkraz 6y ago
Yes. To clarify, I post all of my content on YT for free, and Patrons help pay for it if they choose. This model seems to make everyone happy.
- adanto6840 6y ago
  That's awesome, not only for you but I especially applaud those who pay for your content. As a game developer it makes me wonder if there's a viable & addressable market there, to work on a single game "long-term" without feeling the crunch from Steam/reviews/etc.
  - jetrink 6y ago
    Dwarf Fortress has been crowd funded since before Patreon existed and now has a Patreon page. I'm not sure you'd call it a total success though as the creators lived frugal lives for a long time in order to survive off the donations.
  - georgebonnr 6y ago
    best example I can think of! https://www.patreon.com/bay12games https://www.patreon.com/bay12games
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    There seem to be some developers who make mod content for games who do well on Patreon. Edit: I also just realized I know of a game developer on Patreon for a game that hasn’t been released yet. It seems he (and presumably his team) earn $40k/month: https://www.patreon.com/alexmasse https://www.patreon.com/alexmasse

cabaalis 6y ago

Very interesting.. You have a successful channel, sorry to see that COVID has set you back so.

xiaolingxiao 6y ago

Could you speak about why Patrons are more likely to pay on Pateron than elsewhere?

judge2020 6y ago
[Not op] There are a few reasons, but two big ones are being directly supporting the creator (YT requires you use memberships which are flat-rate and not user-adjustable) and getting perks for pledging (like Discord access, access to pre-release work, etc).
bkraz 6y ago
Probably the convenience of paying multiple creators with one credit card transaction, and one login. I guess you could call this a network effect. YT had/has various direct payment options, but they are confusing and never made as much sense as Patreon's model, which allows per-month or per-creation pledges. Strange since YT's existing infra would seem a big advantage in doing exactly what Pareon has.
rcthompson 6y ago
I think it varies a lot. Some Patreon creators use it as a sort of "tip jar", where the rewards for various tiers are relatively minimal compared to the main product that is given away for free. This is very common for web comics, and I'm guessing also common for Youtubers. In these cases, the main "reward" is helping to ensure that the creator can continue producing the content they're releasing for free. Other creators use Patreon as the medium by which to deliver their content, and only patrons hace access to it. So this is more like a traditional subscription model than a tip jar. And of course there are various gradations in between, and probably other models as well. So because Patreon is used in such a wide range of ways, It's hard to make generalizations about all of it. And by that same token it's also hard for Patreon to make changes in a way that doesn't interfere with the way someone is using it. (Not that this in any way excuses their numerous blunders.)
- Semaphor 6y ago
  Glynn Stewart (sci-fi author) uses it [0] to release his novels 2 weeks before they land on Amazon, which is when they get removed from Patreon as he is part of KU. So both to give people an alternative to Amazon despite technically being Amazon exclusive and to allow people to get them early. [0]: https://www.patreon.com/glynnstewart https://www.patreon.com/glynnstewart

slg 6y ago

You didn't include perhaps the most interesting part. You currently have 662k subscribers on Youtube while 1,221 subscribers on Patreon. Those numbers obviously aren't constant throughout the entire time frame of that graph, but it would generally indicate that less than 0.2% of people becoming patrons was enough to surpass the revenue from Youtube. I still have my doubts of how this scales for both consumers and Patreon as a company, but there is no question that this model is great for established content creators.

hkmurakami 6y ago
Those numbers look similar to Zynga’s whale user ratios.
- slg 6y ago
  The numbers might be similar, but I don't love the comparison due to the ethical differences between the two. There is a lot more shady psychology and manipulation going on with Zynga than there is when a creator of free content starts accepting donations through Patreon. This is especially true when the membership bonuses are setup like Ben's in which they are mostly just being thanked in slightly more elaborate ways as the donation level increases. https://www.patreon.com/AppliedScience https://www.patreon.com/AppliedScience
  - eru 6y ago
    Importantly, there's a limit to how much money you can spend on a single 'client' [0]. I don't think Zynga had meaningful limits on whale spend per game? [0] I assume client is the inverse of a patron? Just going by Roman usage.
    - hobofan 6y ago
      Is there? Apart from the preset tiers, you can usually specify a custom amount to donate monthly, so you could easily spend a few thousand per month on a single creator.

tedmcory77 6y ago

The question is, do you do different things for YouTube vs. Patreon. Potentially, YouTube is more akin to a short lived annuity vs. a Patreon job. Maybe not, depends on the accretion of your content.

crispyporkbites 6y ago

Will Patreon become the real YT killer? They already have the best content creators on their platform, what’s to stop them building out a similar video hosting setup with search and discovery? Google might want to nip this in the bud now with a cheeky 2bn $ acquisition...

Barrin92 6y ago
> what’s to stop them building out a similar video hosting setup with search and discovery? for starters the absolutely abysmal performance of their site. I think Patreon found a good idea but good lord scrolling through a patreon account with someone who has a lot of posts basically stress tests my laptop fan
- crispyporkbites 6y ago
  Right but that can fixed with a few million dollar and few months. I don’t think many (any?) companies fail because of web app performance
  - RL_Quine 6y ago
    Reddit is getting there.
    - tirpen 6y ago
      Definitely. You can still opt in to keep using their old interface thankfully, the difference in both performance and UX is staggering. When that option disappears from the site, so will I.
      - jandrese 6y ago
        The day they discontinue old.reddit.com is the day I stop visiting the site. The new version is like a case study in everything I hate about "new" web UX.
  - 6y ago

creddit 6y ago

Love your YT videos! I’m always impressed and learn something new.

ridaj 6y ago

YouTube is just monetizing a different part of your funnel. They both work together — you might not get many viewers interested in sending you money via Patreon either if your videos weren't getting an audience on YouTube via said algo...

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

>In other words, my Patrons mean more to me than the YT algo. Good, but isn't YouTube algo your primary discovery funnel? Does YouTube provide you metrics such as organic visits e.g. searching in YT, clicking on related videos, trending etc. vs direct visits e.g. clicking your video link from Reddit, HN, other websites etc.?

anchpop 6y ago
Youtube does provide those metrics

shankysingh 6y ago

Just a side-note: just discovered your channel, pretty interesting content.

CydeWeys 6y ago

Do you have paying subscribers through YouTube? I'm curious to know, when presented an equal choice of Patreon vs subscribing via YouTube, what % of paying subscribers choose each option.

timemct 6y ago

I sub to heaps of science infotainment channels and the YT algo hasn't ever recommended your channel. I think that anecdotally shows how broken the YT algo is. You just got one more YT sub and a potential new Patreon sub, too. Cheers!