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Comment by payne92 | Hacker News Reader

I'm still wondering why Youtube isn't ALL OVER this model.

Given that many are getting paid for publishing videos of what they do, it would be a great feature.

Yeah, it's really bizarre that YouTube is content to constantly struggle with ad revenue, when most of their top users are making orders of magnitude more money through patreon.

There's precedent too since twitch has had this exact model for years now.

The answer is that Google is terrible at getting non-advertising revenue sources online.

YouTube is trying things like tips (superchat), but their cut is enormous, something like 30%, plus processing. I'm glad YouTube isn't the one solving this though, because it means that I get to support folks who YouTube is screwing over, when I watch their content on vid.me and bitchute.

A vast part of Youtube's audience are minors who don't have credit cards and couldn't pay for content. So they are shown ads.

Youtube would not replace the ad model with a patron model, they would ADD the patron model. Patreon has shown there is clear demand for that feature.

One of the reasons Youtubers are moving to Patreon is a lack of trust in Google to provide a platform that generates a stable income, due to their demonetizing of accounts,arbitrary tweaks in the algorithm, refusal to defend Fair Use, etc.

If I were a big successful Youtuber, which I'm not and will never be, I wouldn't go near a patron service provided by the same company whose practices were driving me away from them to begin with.

Or just because ads is not viable before reaching 5M views a month. While convincing 1000 fans to give you 5$/month is easier. Patreon allow people with small community of dedicated fans to make a living while YT allows people that make crap watched by millions of people to make money. So they are complementary.

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