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Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

While the numbers might be a bit hit and miss, the comparison with individual creators is fascinating and definitely hits upon something that keeps me from subscribing to patreons/etc.

I don't have just one creator who I would consistently want to support the most, there are probably 10-20 who I would like to support, however I'm not going to pay 10x of them $5/h for content when YouTube is 1x $0.50/h (and has their content). To me, content creation is always going to need to be bundled at some level because I want diversity that no one creator is ever going to provide, and when bundling the price typically reduces because the bundling correctly recognises that consumption does not scale up.

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You can support one for a few months, switch to another, etc.. Or just roll a dice and pick one of your favorites to support and leave it to others to support the others you like. Something is better than nothing if you want to keep independent creators around.

Yeah all of this is just a lot of work and decisions, and rolling a dice just feels weird and unfair. I do pay for YT premium which distributes money across my views which is therefore somewhat fair, and I'm considering a Nebula subscription (if Curiosity Stream's sign up flow doesn't persuade me not to again).

I wish that Patreon had a support format where I could pay, say, $20 a month to Patreon and have that spread between whoever I'm supporting in a way that's cost efficient on payment fees and stuff like that.

It doesn't help though that individual creators price very highly relative to the amount of their content I consume. Fundamentally, a podcast is just not worth $10 a month to me because if I lost access I'd just listen to a different one.

> I'm considering a Nebula subscription (if Curiosity Stream's sign up flow doesn't persuade me not to again)

Nebula and Curiosity Stream are in a bit of a "breakup period". Curiosity Stream will no longer bundle Nebula at all starting next month (next year).

If you want Nebula, sign up directly with Nebula at this point. Or find a referral code from a channel that you like because they still get paid slightly more for direct referrals. I believe for a few more weeks they are still selling lifetime memberships, as an interesting way to amortize your spread for the next few years (and basically get a long term $/hr deal for a bigger short term investment), if that is something that interests you.

The dice strategy is only unfair if you look at it from the perspective that you’re the only one doing things that way. But lots of people are likely doing something similar to that so that on average across enough people it works out. I would wager that most people who support at least one creator probably still consume media from far more creators than they can afford to support, so they just pick one or two somehow and call it a day. It’s basically the way I do it.

Oh sure I realise rationally that it's fair, but given that my aim is somewhat to support creators and somewhat to feel good about supporting creators, it doesn't really help me on the latter because irrationally it feels unfair. I am not sure lots of people would be doing this though.

Seems like you are stuck not supporting creators til you can support all the creators you may reasonably choose to support.

I always think this is an intersting piece of human behavior. Either having to be perfectly "good" or not do anything at all. People do 0% instead of doing 5% because intellectually they understand what 100% looks like

> I wish that Patreon had a support format where I could pay, say, $20 a month to Patreon and have that spread between whoever I'm supporting in a way that's cost efficient on payment fees and stuff like that.

This is (effectively) how "user centric" revenue models that have been proposed in music would work. Your monthly subscription would be assigned to creators that you listen to. The challenge in music is that it doesn't necessarily benefit smaller musicians much because people still listen to the big hits from big artists and major labels.

In a platform like Patreon it could work quite well, because it's more of a walled garden. Pick a few creators, and then divvy up the revenue based on how much you engage with their content.

> I would like to support

This is the attitude that makes people fork over $70/hr to CGPGrey. I like these people's content, and want to support them too. But they don't need my financial support. They're all making way more money than me and probably you. If they wanted some sort of micropayment they could ask for it, but they're all pushing for the $10/month rate instead. Your $1/mo is so inconsequential to them that they don't actually want it. So don't worry about it.

Just support them by thumbs-up-ing their videos and don't worry too much about their finances. They're fine.

Micropayments on the internet don't work. Payment processors charge 30¢ per transaction, plus a percentage.

We are not in a system that allows for micropayments to work.

You list a very famous content creator. On the other hand, there are lots of content creators who actually are struggling, and not making half as much as a minimum wage worker despite working longer hours than full-time.

If you look at the Twitch leaks, the payment curve has a long tail; the vast majority of creators do not make very much at all, while the top creators tend to make out with multigenerational wealth in a year.

This is especially true with CS-sphere content creators, because computer scientists seem especially reluctant to spend money, ever, if it isn't required of them, as they are very good at justifying not doing so with "They'll be fine!" In many cases, a sentiment that's right. In other cases, not so much. There are lots of Twitch streamers, open source software developers, and YouTubers that can't seem to find ways to monetize their content that work well. Oftentimes, these are some of the people that have the most interesting content!

If a person likes someone's content, they should find a way to financially support that, if they're able.

> Micropayments on the internet don't work. Payment processors charge 30¢ per transaction, plus a percentage.

Paypal micropayments has it down to 5% + 9 cents.

https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees#micropay...

> Micropayments on the internet don't work. Payment processors charge 30¢ per transaction, plus a percentage.

Well yes, micropayments don't work if you don't use a micropayment platform. There are solutions that cater specifically to micropayments that have different fee structures so that it makes sense.

A platform with enough resources and interest could also accept deposits from traditional payment processors in bulk, and payout at some threshold to content creators.

> If you look at the Twitch leaks, the payment curve has a long tail; the vast majority of creators do not make very much at all, while the top creators tend to make out with multigenerational wealth in a year.

This isn't because of the payment system. This is because content quality and discovery both have a long tail. The average content is poor quality and has almost no views.

Right - GP puts up a strawman:

> Micropayments on the internet don't work. Payment processors charge 30¢ per transaction, plus a percentage.

Nobody ever said that you'd have to use payment processors directly for micropayments, and most schemes that I know of don't, because of those fees.

> Micropayments on the internet don't work. Payment processors charge 30¢ per transaction, plus a percentage.

From what I remember, Patreon solves this by bundling all micro-payments together on the same day.

So if you have twenty 50¢ pledges, first you pay 10$ to Patreon, then Patreon spreads that money between creators. The final overhead is only paid once per user and once per creator.

So tldr: "don't forget to like and subscribe"? /s

I wonder if there would be interest in a non-crypto version of the Brave program. In theory, that's exactly what they do: you set a total monthly donation and which creators you want to support, and the browser keeps track of how much each should get at the end of the month.

Unfortunately, what ended up happening is that the program is too complicated for people with disposable income who would be interested and it got stuck in a bad spot between "big enough to attract crypto 'investors' who only care about hodling" and "not big enough to be attractive to high-profile creators".

Not to mention, it's pretty much impossible to get paid with the program in a lot of (most?) countries. As in, you get paid in BAT in some custodial service, but you can't really get it off that service to trade it to your local currency and get it into your bank account. You can't get it onto a blockchain to swap on a DEX and convert to USDT or whatever. And if you can, you'd be eaten away by fees.

Add to that, tax on BAT payments would be a nightmare to figure out.

You can trade BAT on Coinbase, Binance and Kraken. Probably a lot of smaller exchanges as well, those just seemed like the most logical one's to check.

So much for a black hole.

So you pay $20-30 to send your BAT on Ethereum to your exchange, where you then pay additional trade and withdrawal fees. You must be making a lot of BAT for this to even be worth it. I haven't seen anyone on https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject report making more than ~$10/month, and the overwhelming majority just make anywhere from $0.20 - $5/month. So maybe in two years it's going to be worthwhile for them to go through the withdrawal steps.

In the meantime they technically have to report their BAT distributions as earnings against their income (so they pay taxes for them). Then track the average cost basis til the time of their eventual disposal.

In many countries, the network fees, trading fees, and withdrawal fees won't be deductible unless they're filing as a business. So they may even lose money throughout the process when you take additional taxes into account.

And either way it's a tax headache, and you risk opening yourself up to penalties if you file improperly, or paying an accountant extra to sort through everything for you.

Either people are making enough money to withdraw, or the amount is so low that is not required to be reported. No tax authority will come after you because you didn't declare the $100 bucks worth of crypto you got in one whole fiscal year.

There was a startup many years ago that I can't remember the name of this who did a similar micropayment tipping sort of thing. The problem was that they essentially collected money on behalf of creators who had no idea the platform existed and they would have to then go and sign up to retrieve funds. I don't want to support creators through something they don't consent to using like that.

There was https://flattr.com/ and, more recently, https://twitter.com/coil

But, yes, a complete chicken-and-egg problem.

It was Flattr, thanks edent! Very 2012, I actually shared an office with them but couldn't remember the name all this time later!

That might also have been Brave. Tom Scott was targeted by their crap[0] and I recall them fucking about with unsolicited donations for the archive.is operator as well.

It seems their business model has changed nowadays (unless they've lapsed again, which Brave has done a few times I think?) but that's definitely been the Brave model in the past.

[0]: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-br...

I always had a vague idea that this is something a blockchain would work well for. I never looked into enough to figure out the details though.

To be honest, I don't mind if the middleman is actually holding the funds and gives them out when the taker signs up. Creating a totally new market where you need to develop both sides of the transaction is not an easy task.

I don't tend to watch media in my browser at all, so at least for me, it would make no difference.

> To me, content creation is always going to need to be bundled at some level

W3C Web Monetization does micropayments with <$0.01 tx fee, but not KYC or AML.

It is an open spec: https://webmonetization.org/specification/

Micropayments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment

Upcoming, Subscribing, and Word of Mouth get creators more viewers and thus ad revenue.

Brave figured this out long ago with their BAT system IMO. Basically automated micropayments for content consumption (I mean, Basic Attention Token, what's in a name). You can either buy BAT directly or watch private-by-default ads, which takes away one of the biggest ethical qualms one can have with adblocking too.

I know that HN has a prety small but ultra-vocal minority that will hate on Brave any chance they get, so expect a lot of disparaging comments.

I do have a problem with the Brave/BAT system here, because it lacks consent from the creators. Brave show the user ads and grants them BAT, the user "gives" the BAT to the creator, and almost all creators won't know about this so it's in a black hole (controlled by Brave?). If I were a creator I'm not sure I'd like that, specifically not being able to opt-out at all(?) or at least not without signing up and giving my details.

The BAT only leaves the user wallet if the creators joins the program. There is no black hole.

Ah good, that's better than Flattr and previous attempts at this then. Does this mean that if none of the creators you support accept BAT then you aren't paying anything?

Does it mean that if just one of them accepts it then you're paying all of your BAT to them? What if you mostly watch YouTube channels of people who wouldn't be onboard with it, but get linked one video by someone you don't like but they do accept it, do they get all your BAT that month?

Perhaps there are good answers to all of this, but getting it right sounds tricky!

See my other comment, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38685162

It's impossible for many creators to actually benefit from the program (but this isn't straightforward when they sign up, which does in fact leave a black hole)

You can trade BAT on Coinbase, Binance and Kraken. Probably a lot of smaller exchanges as well, those just seemed like the most logical one's to check.

So much for a black hole.

So you pay $20-30 to send your BAT on Ethereum to your exchange, where you then pay additional trade and withdrawal fees.

You must be making a lot of BAT for this to even be worth it. I haven't seen anyone on https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject report making more than ~$10/month, and the overwhelming majority just make anywhere from $0.20 - $5/month. So maybe in two years it's going to be worthwhile for them to go through the withdrawal steps.

And either way it's a tax headache, and you risk opening yourself up to penalties if you file improperly, or paying an accountant extra to sort through everything for you.

> Does this mean that if none of the creators you support accept BAT then you aren't paying anything?

Creator's can't really opt out of BAT afaik, Brave will just hold the BAT in escrow until they make an account. Brave itself doesn't really benefit. Maybe from a value increase in BAT? I'm not entirely certain how much they seeded to themselves, but I can't imagine much if at all because of the optics.

Whilst it is not ideal, you have to remember that this is a three-step from a previous situation:

1. No one has adblock, security and privacy are deeply compromised

2. 'Everyone' has adblock, ads are blocked, creators make no money

3. Some users start to use BAT, those users now actually pay for content again

Not hating on Brave at all, but if it's related to cryptocurrency/blockchain, I'm not touching it.

I pay pretty much all of the people whose stuff I use on a regular basis, but I don't pay any of them automatically or monthly. I just drop each of them a one-time $20 payment every so often.

I had an idea for a pay-per-minute youtube, where your time watched gets credited to the creator. I would rather just pay per use than worry about whether I'm using my subscriptions enough to be worth it.

That's sort of how YouTube premium actually works; creators are paid an allocation based on time watched for premium users to replace ad revenue.

Yeah I guess in general I would just rather pay per use for streaming. Also it might feel more like directly supporting the creator.

Most people aren't like you FWIW; there's a lot of research that suggests consumers prefer higher fixed prices to lower variable prices. The trouble with PPV (even if it's much cheaper than something like YouTube Premium) is that now before I watch any video, I have to consider whether that particular video is worth watching. For lots of content on YouTube, that bar would be too high to clear. It's much more comfortable knowing I've already paid for the service and don't need to think twice.

> research that suggests consumers prefer higher fixed prices to lower variable prices.

I'm one of them. I value predictability pretty highly when it comes to expenses. The less mental energy I have to spend on money-related things, the happier I am.

Me too. I'd imagine anyone who values time more than money would prefer the fixed-cost option. (And I learned a long time back buying time is the best possible use of money!)

I’ve debated a solution to this, at least with respect to podcasts.

I agree. And for this reason I also think that people show hypocrisy when blocking ads on YouTube, saying that they support creators via other channels. Because everyone cares about price, and supporting creators individually gets expensive fast.

Someone can want to support an artist but disagree with the monetization strategy.

You can disagree with the economics of that strategy, but you can't call them hypocrits for put their money where their mouth is

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