Comment by redis_mlc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by redis_mlc | Hacker News Reader

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I'm involved with some large youtube channels and wanted to comment on why Youtube works for content creators.

There's 3 reasons why they like Youtube:

1. easy-to-use (free, no administration)

2. discoverability, though large channels already have a built-in audience that is self-viral!

3. monetization, typically $1k - $5k/million views/month (eligible above 10,000 subscribers for acceptable content)

The downsides are:

1. "copyrights", which are mostly Youtube takedowns (seldom DMCA)

2. the sporadic nature of payments. You might get $0 next month, or $1000. Very mysterious, so creators rely on Patreon to pay their rent.

3. Occasionally your comments get disabled, related to "copyrights." Then you have to manually re-enable, which is a hassle for hundreds of videos.

Oh, and your account could be deactivated at any time. :)

Honestly though there's something to be said for an up and coming platform. I mean I just uploaded some stupid video of Bill Gates and it is on the way to 2k views on NodeTube right now, I think there is a first-adopters bonus to being the first to adopt a new platform. And I have some good plans for monetization as well, really the big issue is breaking the monopoly YouTube has. Maybe once that happens they'll actually not treat their creators like crap which would be a win in and of itself.

I just uploaded porn. How will it be handled?

Did you see the comment I left? Porn is actually against the TOS, and this instance itself is going to be SFW only by the end of the night, just a heads up.

I didn't.

Thanks for the reply.

I don't mind if someone forks NodeTube and has a more permissive TOS but for this main node I want it to be pretty family friendly yknow just because it's really a proof of concept for the devs of the world at the moment a bit more than a filesharing site. And hey no problem.

Monetization is a big deal, but I've got to believe it would be cheaper to cut out the ad middle men. If I could pay $0.5/mo to each of the ~20 channels I'm subscribed to on YT, I'd totally consider that (if adblock wasn't already doing the trick). Are ads still a better deal for the creators in a scenario like that?

Also "demonetization" on the downsides.

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