4 ms·

Anyone who has tried to build a pay-by-work model for digital creators knows that it’s simply an awful business model. There just isn’t that much demand for cre

Anyone who has tried to build a pay-by-work model for digital creators knows that it’s simply an awful business model. There just isn’t that much demand for creator work. And there are no “whales” among these customers to compensate. No one’s buying 10 copies of a math explainer video.

chiefalchemist 3y ago
Yes and no. It's similar - exact? - to the music industry or Hollywood. *Lots* of frogs to kiss and an occasional unicorn. The platforms would be wise to have reoccurring revenue from the dreamers, and also backend points on the unicorns. In general, in 2023+ the biggest problem seems to be signal to noise ratio. There so much content being scattered about, it's increasing more difficult to find quality. More and more (personal) resources are lost to getting past the noise. There's less time and energy left for the quality.
ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
If you can find a niche it can work. My friend built his own website to sell his erotic art.
- mkmk 3y ago
  How do smaller creators manage payments in the adult space? I thought it was impossible.
  - ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
    PayPal. All the risque stuff is behind the paywall. Home page of the website gives no indication of what's within.
    - kevinmchugh 3y ago
      Given all the horror stories of locked PayPal accounts your friend would be well served too transfer money out of that account as frequently as possible.
    - qingcharles 3y ago
      When I was running $1m+ through PayPal a year for my TV torrent site they always wanted a working username and password for the site because competitors would email them claiming we were actually selling CSAM behind our login. They wanted to know exactly what was going on behind the wall. They also did not care in the least it was a torrent site (!).
lolinder 3y ago
We're working in software, overhead is extraordinarily low. It might be a bad model for a VC-funded startup, but there's almost certainly enough demand to support a tiny bootstrapped team.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  True, but I think parent still has a point. It would work if your tiny team could attract an incredibly huge number of creators who somewhat create a minimum volume of transactions every months. Otherwise you'd on the hook paying monthly fees for your platform's hosting costs, and you can't properly negociate processing fees as you have no idea of how much volume you'll be processing montb to month (it's not even based on some supply/demand cycle, you're stuck with when creators feel like creating) I've seen it from the otherside following a Youtube creator on a pay per video plan, and there would be months going by with no videos happening but messaging back and forth to keep the community alive.
- x0x0 3y ago
  5% margins are terrible if you're trying to bootstrap. 5% margins with tons of payments are worse. If you have one CS interaction with a patreon paying $1-$3 a month, you likely just ate a decade's profit. Businesses like these don't work without huge scale.
- exizt88 3y ago
  Yeah, but your customer acquisition cost becomes your overhead. And it can easily take up 30-50% of your unit economics. Anyone who's tried building SaaS for creators knows that it's a very tough crowd to sell to.

chiefalchemist 3y ago

Yes and no. It's similar - exact? - to the music industry or Hollywood. *Lots* of frogs to kiss and an occasional unicorn. The platforms would be wise to have reoccurring revenue from the dreamers, and also backend points on the unicorns. In general, in 2023+ the biggest problem seems to be signal to noise ratio. There so much content being scattered about, it's increasing more difficult to find quality. More and more (personal) resources are lost to getting past the noise. There's less time and energy left for the quality.

ThrowawayTestr 3y ago

If you can find a niche it can work. My friend built his own website to sell his erotic art.

mkmk 3y ago
How do smaller creators manage payments in the adult space? I thought it was impossible.
- ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
  PayPal. All the risque stuff is behind the paywall. Home page of the website gives no indication of what's within.
  - kevinmchugh 3y ago
    Given all the horror stories of locked PayPal accounts your friend would be well served too transfer money out of that account as frequently as possible.
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    When I was running $1m+ through PayPal a year for my TV torrent site they always wanted a working username and password for the site because competitors would email them claiming we were actually selling CSAM behind our login. They wanted to know exactly what was going on behind the wall. They also did not care in the least it was a torrent site (!).

lolinder 3y ago

We're working in software, overhead is extraordinarily low. It might be a bad model for a VC-funded startup, but there's almost certainly enough demand to support a tiny bootstrapped team.

makeitdouble 3y ago
True, but I think parent still has a point. It would work if your tiny team could attract an incredibly huge number of creators who somewhat create a minimum volume of transactions every months. Otherwise you'd on the hook paying monthly fees for your platform's hosting costs, and you can't properly negociate processing fees as you have no idea of how much volume you'll be processing montb to month (it's not even based on some supply/demand cycle, you're stuck with when creators feel like creating) I've seen it from the otherside following a Youtube creator on a pay per video plan, and there would be months going by with no videos happening but messaging back and forth to keep the community alive.
x0x0 3y ago
5% margins are terrible if you're trying to bootstrap. 5% margins with tons of payments are worse. If you have one CS interaction with a patreon paying $1-$3 a month, you likely just ate a decade's profit. Businesses like these don't work without huge scale.
exizt88 3y ago
Yeah, but your customer acquisition cost becomes your overhead. And it can easily take up 30-50% of your unit economics. Anyone who's tried building SaaS for creators knows that it's a very tough crowd to sell to.