4 ms·

I still don't understand the business models for sites like Floatplane. Microtransactions didn't work for media, but microsubscriptions will? Dropout's model s

I still don't understand the business models for sites like Floatplane. Microtransactions didn't work for media, but microsubscriptions will? Dropout's model seems to be the sanest for this kind of thing: $6/month, but for a variety of content from a cross-pollinated group of creators. It's independent and niche, but there's enough variety that something in there ends up both worth the subscription and unlikely to have existed entirely on its own. Paying $5/month for more content, but from _just one creator_, always feels at best like a worse deal in comparison to a more expensive but broader subscription service. At worst, it turns into a gateway to Twitch-like (or OnlyFans-like, depending on the content) parasocial entitlement from fans.

kevincox 2y ago
> Paying $5/month for more content, but from _just one creator_, always feels at best like a worse deal The problem is that only a tiny number of users are actually going to sign up anyways, so you need to extract more value from them. Say he makes $0.50/month from the average subscriber on YouTube. If he charged $0.50/month for his Floatplane channel he would actually loose money, because the people that sign up on Floatplane are going to be above average subscribers. So he needs to charge more to break even. But as he raises the price he is even more heavily filtering for the biggest fans, which were bringing them in top percentile revenue on YouTube, making the problem even worse. This means that these platforms are always going to be priced to profit off the whales, rather than the casual users who enjoy watching some videos from these channels. Maybe in some beautiful feature where publishing on separate platforms becomes normalized this will change, but it is very far in the future and a huge roadblock to getting to that future.

kevincox 2y ago

> Paying $5/month for more content, but from _just one creator_, always feels at best like a worse deal The problem is that only a tiny number of users are actually going to sign up anyways, so you need to extract more value from them. Say he makes $0.50/month from the average subscriber on YouTube. If he charged $0.50/month for his Floatplane channel he would actually loose money, because the people that sign up on Floatplane are going to be above average subscribers. So he needs to charge more to break even. But as he raises the price he is even more heavily filtering for the biggest fans, which were bringing them in top percentile revenue on YouTube, making the problem even worse. This means that these platforms are always going to be priced to profit off the whales, rather than the casual users who enjoy watching some videos from these channels. Maybe in some beautiful feature where publishing on separate platforms becomes normalized this will change, but it is very far in the future and a huge roadblock to getting to that future.