@asklemmy How could users Monitise themselves on the Fediverse?
As people possibly move across to the Fediverse to find alternatives, we have to question how people are going to make a living on this amazing platform.
Can it be fully run by donations or is there a better way for people to be paid across the Fediverse?
Do people have to make a living of it?
Can’t we have a place online where out data isn’t being sold, aren’t being bombarded with ads, or begged for subscriptions?
Only when people can afford to have a hobby.
Or post revolution.
People make a living online everyday through TikTok, YouTube & even Instagram.
If the Fediverse wishes to make not only a space but a better place for those who use it for personal use but also those creating great content, then we need a way for them to earn money well not taking away the great benefits of no ads on the Fediverse.
Ok, but
Can’t we have a place online where out data isn’t being sold, aren’t being bombarded with ads, or begged for subscriptions?
So with things like @loops on the way, do you think people who will move across to the Fediverse for an alternative if TikTok gets banned should earn there living?
The Fediverse makes sense to me for mass eyes on areas, having your data not sold and stuff, but why can’t people earn a living on it like the other parts of the Internet?
Nothing wrong with people making money online with content. It’s just why not have a space where people can’t?
I was more asking of the things that may replace platforms like TikTok connected to the Fediverse in the future suck as @loops
I understand not earning money from Mastodon or Lemmy, Just like the Video side of the Fediverse needs a way to earn money without the normal ways.
Why do we need replace other platforms? Why not just compete with them, they get the users that want to make money and be internet famous with the mindless zombies that follow it. And we get to have our own sites with a different user base.
Because some of the big users on those sorts of platforms have really good content that can be helpful and annoying to login to a tracking monster platform like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or any other main stream social media.
If some dev wants to make a monetized platform that uses activitypub, they can, and they can do it literally however they want whenever they want. I’m sure threads is or will be monetized in some way.
Literally nothing is stopping anyone from doing that.
But most current users probably wouldn’t migrate to a monetized platform, or even really want to interact with one, and new ones who do want to monetize probably won’t even move until a critical mass of people moves from the old platform(s). So there’s no incentive to create that at this point. And when the critical mass who wants to make money moves, they can figure out how they want to monetize their own platform.
Do people have to make a living of it?
Can’t we have a place online where out data isn’t being sold, aren’t being bombarded with ads, or begged for subscriptions?
We can, and we do have some such spaces, thankfully. Another question to ask then is, could online workers have the sort of spaces where they’re not ceding their data to be sold by others, where they aren’t at the whims of corporate platforms wary of losing advertisers’ money, and being given scraps of the advertising money and pressed to split their subscription revenue with corporations making billions?
If people don’t want them in the fediverse, and people are sick of the corporate web (either in part or in whole because of online workers there), where are online workers to try to make their living?
I don’t know, but I do understand the exasperation at it all.
I don’t think anyone should be able to monetize themself on here. Donations are fine, but only for the select few actually keeping the servers on.
Bring money into it and most things go to shit.
So what’s the motivation of Creators coming to the Fediverse? How is the Fediverse going to grow for more people to want to donate to the servers and keep this amazing thing alive.
Lol…you say this as if people have been marketing it to Creators.
I’m here because Reddit is junk now. I don’t follow any “creators”, and I rarely leave Lemmy for external content unless I really need to open an article or something.
Creators often have Subreddits and places people want to interact with.
I was more talking about things like PeerTube and the upcoming @loops what is a TikTok Alternative for the Fediverse.
If I were to create content, my reasons to choose the Fediverse over other social platforms would remain the same. I believe in this project! I think it is important to have free spaces, people’s spaces.
I’d add a Patreon link (or an alternative to Patreon) for donations. That’s it. Some money to compensate for the effort is okay, I don’t need and I wouldn’t aspire to get super rich from my content.
Yeah, I think that’s the conclusion we have come to. Donations are what makes the Fediverse great, I guess it just might be nice to make it easier to display / click on in the future.
Self-promotion, same as most other platforms. There are already people on here doing so. If you post your e.g. comics for free, there’s nothing wrong with linking your website or merch.
However, ads or other forms of monetization within the fediverse will most likely ruin it.
I agree with the Ads side of things. That’s why I was asking if there was any other sort of model that people could use. I guess donations are probably the only thing that people could widely use.
So what’s the motivation of Creators coming to the Fediverse?
Why would we want them?
How is the Fediverse going to grow
Why does it need to?
The reason it would be good is it would bring those who aren’t creators come across. That would be good to have as it would allow for more people and content to come across. The reason this is good as it would stop people having to mix between social media and the fediverse
More content isn’t by definition good. If you want more content, just have some LLMs generate it and skip the whole monetising step.
I’d rather see less content of higher quality, and monetisation enshittifies everything.
Monetization is key to growth? What bullshit is that?
It helps grow with creators and those who will be looking for an alternative to places like TikTok in projects like @loops
I can guarantee you that nobody that genuinely wanted to join the fediverse for what it is wants any TikTok users in here.
It wouldn’t be the same sort of thing, obviously. @loops is trying to be a 30 second video platform closer to what Vine was more than TikTok with their 3 minute videos.
No
Ok, why? Donations are easy on any platform, but if you want creators to move across and it makes sense for them, then wouldn’t it make sense to find a way they can earn money?
“No” doesn’t need an explanation. You should learn that.
While I agree with your sentiment, this is a terrible take.
There is always a reason for saying no, whether you want to share it or not. But that takes a backseat here because it’s an open-ended question.
You’ve answered in a very closed minded way and refused to elaborate on your position, therefore your opinion can easily be thrown away due to lack of evidence. At that point, why comment at all?
No.
If you pay me $1,000,000 I will consume an entire pineapple, skin and all. This is my final offer.
Not everything needs a profit motive attached. I’d argue nothing should, but I don’t think profit has made social media better overall.
I agree with you there; it hasn’t made social media great but lots of people make a living off it and shouldn’t lose out due to places like America banning an app they make money off.
It’s sad, but by that same logic we shouldn’t have swapped to electric lamps over oil-lanterns, because that put the lantern-lighters out of business.
Content creators have transferable skills that they can use in a variety of ways.
So how does the Fediverse make new jobs?
Why does it need to? Can people not just enjoy it?
You compared it to something that made new jobs with elections.
You may not need to work, but plenty of people do, and not everyone can work a normal 9-5 like everyone else due to disabilies, skills or other needs.
I compared it to antiquated methods. The Fediverse does not require jobs, nor profit, it exists in FOSS format and as such should allow donations, not direct monetization.
I need to work, and I do. Lemmy and the Fediverse will not be the death of all other social media, at least not in a time frame where people can no longer adapt to their changing material conditions.
I can just add a link to send me money through Cash app on every comment I make 🤷🏻♂️
CashApp is only really used in America, it’s basically unheard of over here in the UK
What’s big over there? Venmo?
We just use PayPal or a straight up bank transfer over here.
I think OP missed your sarcasm though.
I think that the fundamental issue that you’re going to run into as that as things stand, the Fediverse – and especially the Threadiverse, lemmy+kbin – is smaller than similar social networks. And it’s probably a good bet that any kind of income scales up with with audience size, and cost likely doesn’t.
So whatever you do, I suspect that one of two things are going to be true:
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It’s something that violates ToS on other social media and so can’t be done there.
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It’s something that is also being done on other social media, and you’re just also doing the same on the Fediverse to expand reach a bit.
Yeah, from what I have seen from everyone, donations are probably one of the few ways people can really get around all of this.
What is fair enough, even for creators as they normally take sponsors or shout out there Patreon, Ko-Fi or other way of donating to them.
Just unsure how that would with short-form content if TikTok goes away and @loops grows for those finding an alternative.
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Donations; things like Patreon or whatever. If you enjoy someone’s content and are financially stable you have a bit of a moral obligation to give them a bit of money for it. Likewise, you should give your instance admins a few bucks to cover their hosting costs.
Creators could use the Fediverse to show off their products in order to get people to support them on Patreon (or Subscribestar or Ko-Fi or your subscription platform of choice). Or maybe even get them to buy their products on Itch, Bandcamp, Etsy, Steam and so on. Twitter and Reddit never really were ways to make money, but instead a way of pulling people towards other revenue streams.
The traditional model where people get paid by ads (such as Youtube or Twitch) is honestly dying with the rise of adblockers. Although I could imagine people on the Fediverse running a “premium subscription” plan and sharing their revenue with creators like Youtube Premium though.
For a full fediverse alternative to Stripe/Patreon/Paypal that isn’t crypto based? Probably not going to happen. Besides the technical challenges, you need a good rapport with payment processors that you can only get if you are a big company and comply with their demands (which many fediverse instances would not be willing to sacrifice their morals to do).
Thank you, Yeah Donations seem like the only way people can really do anything massive, well not taking away from what the Fediverse is and needs to be. An ad-free, free speech place that doesn’t take your data.
I’m sure people who move from Video based platforms could also take sponsorships like they normally do across YouTube and Twitch.
It would be nice for the Subscription platforms like Ko-Fi to have some sort of way to integrate your posts into the Fediverse in the future.
Only seeing this a week or so after it was posted but feel the need to reply. One of the major motivations for myself and a significant portion of others who joined the Fediverse is the decay caused by commercialization of the WorldWide Web. I’d further argue that this decay is a mirror of the non-digital world and the impact of the hyper-comoditization championed by neoliberalism.
Humans don’t exist purely to serve commerce and transactional financial systems. Those systems are invented by and intended to serve humans. We need, for our health, spaces and activities that are not transactional and financial in nature. The Fediverse, as it currently exists is such a place.
Artists and other creatives are a vital part of humanity. Unfortunately, we’ve been sick in a neoliberal hellscape that demands a commercial reason for anything to justify its existence. If one wants to entertain people on the Fediverse, there are a number of possible models that could help one to make a living, while still not falling into the hyper-commercialization that has infected the Web. Most of the ones that come to mind could work well elsewhere too. Here’s some examples that come to mind:
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Form a non-profit related to the desired artistic medium. Through donations and grants, one can both make a living with their art and help others that are interested in the medium.
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Form an artists’ cooperative, whether for a single medium or multiple media. If the coop becomes known for talented artists who make good work, they can then act like a union, supporting eachother in contract negotiations and other collective bargaining to ensure that members are fairly compensated for their efforts and are able to make a living.
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Markets. I know several working artists that make the vast majority of their income in-person at local markets (farmers’ markets, swap-meets, etc). For performing artists, it may be possible to get bookings with the market organizers. For those that make pieces of still or recorded art, it can be sold directly.
With any of these, places like the Fediverse become a place to engage with people who know the artist and show their work to those not familiar. I strongly suspect that the Content Creator/Influencer as a “job” will not have long-term stability as it is being subsidized heavily by the platforms themselves, who are making money selling ads and enduser data, both of which are seeing more pushback from both users and governments as they are leveraged by bad actors and unscrupulous businesses chasing infinite growth.
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Go on mastodon and click on public, it’s 80% spam and ads
It’s a Social network, not a social media. Most people don’t know the difference
This is just an idea I’m throwing:
Similar to old Reddit Gold system, a visible marker (or a tipbot that replaces it maybe?) that shows amount of donations a post gets in a digestible manner and also contributes to server hosters.
This could incentivise keeping up servers and communities for longer times and even encourage higher quality content.
That would be a very cool idea if it could be done across the Fediverse but annoyingly it might only be per-instance especially as most probably don’t want to deal with Transactions across ActivityPub as that could get shady real quick.
Good idea though as it would be amazing to spread the cost between the instance you and the receiver are using as well as the person you are donating to.
Crypto could be used as a way to track all incoming - outgoing donations without dealing with any centralised payment services; but it doesn’t have a good reputation and could disinterest a lot of people.
However having a centralised payment regulator could give them too much control over how the posts look to users.
I’ve wondered if “premium instances” will become a thing at some point. Not sure how that would work federation wise though. Maybe you’re just paying for an uptime SLA and improved moderation?
Any premium or restricted content kinda works against how the fediverse works.
Maybe certain communities could be instance only? Or only local, paying, users can post or comment.
That’s what Nostr is supposed to be for. Looking for ways to monetize decentralized social media. So far, they’ve only imagined cryptocurrency transactions.
That’s what Nostr is supposed to be for. Looking for ways to monetize decentralized social media.
I thought it was more interested in making a more censorship resistant form of online communication, with the crypto/monetization junk being tacked on as kind of an afterthought (but then amplified because cryptocurrency people are nothing if not vocal).
As far as I can tell, it was basically intended as a cryptocurrency pushing network from the beginning. Here’s some marketing babble right from their site:
Integrated with lightning [cryptocurrency], Nostr enables new value-for-value business models that have the potential to be more fair.
More PR speak about zaps (cryptocurrency exchanges), wallets, etc are all accessible from the official website.
Ah yeah, my bad, I also see this on another part of the site regarding “zaps”:
From the beginning of the Nostr protocol, it was common to see Lightning invoices in notes.
I think I remembered it otherwise by coming at it from the decentralized comms angle instead of the cryptobro angle.
Yeah, that doesn’t seem right. Correction 1: I guess, for instance, they may become pay monthly just to have upkeep and moderation covered themselves. That would be an ok thing in my eyes.
But for content creators and stuff, a pay-to-view system isn’t really a good idea. Guess it would have to be done through donations instead, as that’s the only thing that sort of makes sense.
Same way as anywhere else, but with fewer built-in middle men.
Ads can be served by instances or by individual creators. I expect if the Fediverse grows, many creators will be posting regular ads or sponsored content. The Fediverse has no built-in system for that, which makes it more difficult, but also so much more flexable as instances, platforms, and users can build, integrate, or negotiate whatever fits their needs.
Similarly, creators can take commisions or sell their work as rhey would elsewhere. If anything, this is easier as creators can easily link or promote whatever service fits their needs from a personal website (IE a store) to a Patreon.
