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people are paying for the content with patreon, bypassing YouTube entirely. Why cant YouTube figure out how to get that money people are clearly willing to part

people are paying for the content with patreon, bypassing YouTube entirely. Why cant YouTube figure out how to get that money people are clearly willing to part with? Why blame the users for YouTube failure?

paulryanrogers 3y ago
Patreon is also Pay-what-you-want, so whales can subsidize lower tiers, and folks can often pay less than $15 per month.
grogenaut 3y ago
Because people get real mad if YouTube tries to collect the patron money themselves and obviously takes a cut. Aka memberships.
- LukeShu 3y ago
  So? Patreon's taking a cut (but YouTube takes a bigger cut; a quick search indicates 30% vs 8%-12%). I'm fine with YouTube memberships in principle; if a creator that I support said "consider switching your support from Patreon to YouTube", I would. But there's no way I'm signing up for YouTube Premium.
  - grogenaut 3y ago
    The parent said youtube should be able to take money directly... and I pointed out they can. That's what's So. And I didn't say youtube premium, I said memberships. Tho if you have enough memberships premium makes more sense fiscally even tho it doesn't give the money to the creators as much.
    - LukeShu 3y ago
      I was responding to your assertion that people get mad because YouTube takes a cut. The alternative (Patreon) also takes a cut.
      - grogenaut 3y ago
        People are also mad at that but sometimes less so. It seems those indirections launder the grumpy since there's not one focused place to complain. YouTube takes more because they're doing more work. It's funny cause no one seems to think YouTube deserves any munny for their technological marve of long tail content sometimes.
mths 3y ago
Isn't YouTube already doing that with channel memberships? I think people can also pay to comment on live streams or something.. They're definitely already letting you support creators directly, while taking their cut of course.
- Jach 3y ago
  Yup. The livestream version is a "super chat" (or "super sticker" is an option), but even regular videos can turn on "super thanks" which let viewers donate and leave a comment. In any case, youtube takes 30%, so many streamers try to push to a third party option that takes a much lower fee. And the "and leave a comment" turns people off that option I'm sure, it'd be nice if they made it optional and just let you pseudo-anonymously support someone's video. Most people won't realize you can delete the comment right after making it and the channel still gets your money (not sure if the channel can still see the comment contents if any/account that did it). There's also "gifted memberships" which like memberships themselves is another feature lifted directly from Twitch. Given youtube's catch-up stance (Twitch also makes it difficult to use adblock) it's not hard to call them "failing" at monetizing; there are many interesting A/B experiments that could be done that they are not doing. (I think gifted memberships is no longer an A/B test feature but standard by now... so they do them sometimes, but not enough.) Part of it is also probably just Google culture; if something is "only" going to net them a few million in profit, it's not worth doing.
crop_rotation 3y ago
The amount of people paying with patreon is just so so tiny compared to people watching YouTube in any country or city that I am not even sure what your point is. > Why cant YouTube figure out how to get that money people are clearly willing to part with? What does this even mean? I hope you are not suggesting in good faith that YouTube should grab money from other companies somehow? Money that was given to that company by people with specific expectations in mind. What exactly is YouTube failure here? The patreon citation is just so irrelevant because of scale. Taking all of Patreon revenue would not cover YouTube hosting costs. People on HN love to talk about patreon as an alternative to youtube premium because it is an easy way out. But if it was representative of real world actions, Patreon would be processing a lot lot more money.
- justinclift 3y ago
  > The amount of people paying with patreon is just so so ... Interesting. What are your sources for that info? :)
  - daveoc64 3y ago
    Many Patreon creators allow you to see how many patrons they have. The most popular Patreon creators have something like ~50,000 patrons. Anyone able to pull in that many patrons is likely to have millions of viewers on YouTube. The proportion of viewers that pay is tiny.
    - justinclift 3y ago
      > Many Patreon creators allow you to see how many patrons they have. Ahhh. Yeah, I'm not a fan of that being optional either. Many Patreon creators don't though, so it's kind of hard to tell. :/ That being said, I kind of wonder if the % of people paying creators is much different to the average % of people who pay for online services. From (probably dodgy?) rough memory, that's something like 4% of users. No idea how that works out when compared to $ from Youtube viewers though. :)
bigthymer 3y ago
I think people are more willing to pay via Patreon because it directly funds the creators. The more YouTube takes, the less willing people are to pay.

paulryanrogers 3y ago

Patreon is also Pay-what-you-want, so whales can subsidize lower tiers, and folks can often pay less than $15 per month.

grogenaut 3y ago

Because people get real mad if YouTube tries to collect the patron money themselves and obviously takes a cut. Aka memberships.

LukeShu 3y ago
So? Patreon's taking a cut (but YouTube takes a bigger cut; a quick search indicates 30% vs 8%-12%). I'm fine with YouTube memberships in principle; if a creator that I support said "consider switching your support from Patreon to YouTube", I would. But there's no way I'm signing up for YouTube Premium.
- grogenaut 3y ago
  The parent said youtube should be able to take money directly... and I pointed out they can. That's what's So. And I didn't say youtube premium, I said memberships. Tho if you have enough memberships premium makes more sense fiscally even tho it doesn't give the money to the creators as much.
  - LukeShu 3y ago
    I was responding to your assertion that people get mad because YouTube takes a cut. The alternative (Patreon) also takes a cut.
    - grogenaut 3y ago
      People are also mad at that but sometimes less so. It seems those indirections launder the grumpy since there's not one focused place to complain. YouTube takes more because they're doing more work. It's funny cause no one seems to think YouTube deserves any munny for their technological marve of long tail content sometimes.

mths 3y ago

Isn't YouTube already doing that with channel memberships? I think people can also pay to comment on live streams or something.. They're definitely already letting you support creators directly, while taking their cut of course.

Jach 3y ago
Yup. The livestream version is a "super chat" (or "super sticker" is an option), but even regular videos can turn on "super thanks" which let viewers donate and leave a comment. In any case, youtube takes 30%, so many streamers try to push to a third party option that takes a much lower fee. And the "and leave a comment" turns people off that option I'm sure, it'd be nice if they made it optional and just let you pseudo-anonymously support someone's video. Most people won't realize you can delete the comment right after making it and the channel still gets your money (not sure if the channel can still see the comment contents if any/account that did it). There's also "gifted memberships" which like memberships themselves is another feature lifted directly from Twitch. Given youtube's catch-up stance (Twitch also makes it difficult to use adblock) it's not hard to call them "failing" at monetizing; there are many interesting A/B experiments that could be done that they are not doing. (I think gifted memberships is no longer an A/B test feature but standard by now... so they do them sometimes, but not enough.) Part of it is also probably just Google culture; if something is "only" going to net them a few million in profit, it's not worth doing.

crop_rotation 3y ago

The amount of people paying with patreon is just so so tiny compared to people watching YouTube in any country or city that I am not even sure what your point is. > Why cant YouTube figure out how to get that money people are clearly willing to part with? What does this even mean? I hope you are not suggesting in good faith that YouTube should grab money from other companies somehow? Money that was given to that company by people with specific expectations in mind. What exactly is YouTube failure here? The patreon citation is just so irrelevant because of scale. Taking all of Patreon revenue would not cover YouTube hosting costs. People on HN love to talk about patreon as an alternative to youtube premium because it is an easy way out. But if it was representative of real world actions, Patreon would be processing a lot lot more money.

justinclift 3y ago
> The amount of people paying with patreon is just so so ... Interesting. What are your sources for that info? :)
- daveoc64 3y ago
  Many Patreon creators allow you to see how many patrons they have. The most popular Patreon creators have something like ~50,000 patrons. Anyone able to pull in that many patrons is likely to have millions of viewers on YouTube. The proportion of viewers that pay is tiny.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    > Many Patreon creators allow you to see how many patrons they have. Ahhh. Yeah, I'm not a fan of that being optional either. Many Patreon creators don't though, so it's kind of hard to tell. :/ That being said, I kind of wonder if the % of people paying creators is much different to the average % of people who pay for online services. From (probably dodgy?) rough memory, that's something like 4% of users. No idea how that works out when compared to $ from Youtube viewers though. :)

bigthymer 3y ago

I think people are more willing to pay via Patreon because it directly funds the creators. The more YouTube takes, the less willing people are to pay.