Comment by internetter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by internetter | Hacker News Reader

Liberapay is my platform of choice! It lacks a lot of flashy features but it feels like the closest thing to an 'exchange between friends' instead of a commercial sort of relationship.

For the type of works I link my LiberaPay to, I don't have nor want tiers and rewards associated with them, as that forms a social contract where I am expected to perform more labour. I only want money from people who are thankful for what I've already provided, and I only want what they're willing to provide.

I suspect microscopic rewards like discord roles, a news letter, ect. do increase revenue, but then again you're managing a community.

I encountered issues with Stripe so that's been disabled, PayPal only, but PayPal doesn't auto renew. Again, I suspect I lost a considerable amount of money because of this. But again, taking money from people who wouldn't explicitly click 'renew' when they get the email doesn't feel right.

I also began offering Ko-fi as an option, however, because some people are uncomfortable with unfamiliar platforms.

Cont... To the best of my understanding and lived experiences, there is a strong correlation between 'ethical compromise' on the part of the content creator and how much they can expect to be compromised for their work

1. A donation link in the footer... people only see it if they're looking for it

2. More overt reminders (when KDE added a single yearly popup notification, donations dramatically increased)

3. Adding tiers to step up the donations (e.g. maybe you could convince most of the $3.99 folks to do $4.99)

4. Adding rewards to fuel the funder's egos (I try to send personal emails thanking them but this isn't an explicitly mentioned 'reward' unlike, say, positions in the credits)

5. In addition to rewards, supplementing income with sponsors. The sponsors frequently are exploiting both the creator and the consumer (e.g. Honey), but nevertheless compensation does increase. Also, affiliate programs. Hard to do without your own integrity being compromised when recommending products.

6. 'Dangerous' monetization that plays with emotions. Onlyfans creators creating pseudo-relationships. Entire sponsored videos for stuff like gambling.

Of course, it is hard to argue that the oft. underpaid content producers are really the ones making ethical concessions when they exist under a system that... underfunds them... but nevertheless it is undeniable that there are ethical concessions, and these concessions are made because they increase revenue.

The really really sad part is that you really only see big creators throwing doing this stuff despite already having more than enough, and they always get away with it, whereas if a small creator were to pull this their audience would eat them alive.

> Onlyfans creators creating pseudo-relationships.

Twitch, as well. I've stopped watching streamer after streamer when it became clear they were only responding to people throwing money at them constantly.

I've watched people spend $50-100 a night with a streamer. It's insane. Well over $10k a year.

The same people probably write a $100 check to the local food pantry.

Yeah it’s hard for me to watch. I feel sorry for the people so attention deprived that they need to throw dozens of dollars at a streamer who makes 10000 a night for any sort of acknowledgment

That’s more or less most of the bigger Twitch streamers, because they can’t exactly keep up with the pace at which the chat scrolls by and also pay attention to whatever they’re doing.

That is why I don’t really watch those but prefer smaller streamers that might enjoy a particular type of game, or even watch the occasional programming stream. If I have a question, suddenly it’s not impossible to get an answer and most of them are also a bit more chill.

I might still occasionally throw some money their way, much like one would consider tipping a live performer, nothing too crazy though.

It's actually more-or-less the big Youtube streamers too. Because no one can keep up with the chat scroll, so ya know, they don't read everything.

> I've watched people spend $50-100 a night with a streamer. It's insane. Well over $10k a year.

$50-$100 in a night is not so special? You could spend that going clubbing. Doesn't mean they spend that every night.

Tbf if I'm spending that much I'd rather pay for in-person sexual services because that costs about the same and is obviously much nicer.

Or do you mean they spend that much every single night? That sounds obsessive even without considering the money spent.

I occasionally donate some money to Signal. But I do not want to feel like some part of "community". I want to help them fund the service. Not join a movement.

> Adding tiers to step up the donations (e.g. maybe you could convince most of the $3.99 folks to do $4.99)

.99 price points are explicitly designed to manipulate. If I ever went to donate and saw that as a tier, I’d close the window and reconsider my support of the creator. Don’t try to fool me, be honest and ask for the full amount.

Have you considered self-hosting a payment page? I'm asking because I've been building Open Payment Host[1] a self-hosted FOSS payments host supporting multiple payment gateways; still very much a WIP but I hope soon it will be viable enough for someone like you.

P.S. Please ignore the AI autocomplete feature, I included it as part of Google hackathon to raise funds for the project; I'll be removing it in the upcoming release.

[1] https://github.com/abishekmuthian/open-payment-host

What does your app do differently than something like coindrop[0] which is essentially a linktree page linking to all donation platforms for a creator

[0] https://coindrop.to/

Open Payment Host seems to connect to credit card gateways (Stripe/Square) whereas coindrop seems to link to P2P style payment methods where you are sending funds to an "address".

That’s correct, I’ll be adding all leading payment gateways.

Hi, I'm excited to see more FOSS options available. I don't think this is exactly what I need because I just want a very simple interface like what liberapay provides... not to sell anything... but I'm very happy more people are working on this

I absolutely get it, thank you. Librepay is simple and nice; my project is geared more towards indies who want to sell their products without paying double commissions and not having to deal with multiple payment gateway integrations.

Ko-fi is unfamiliar? Not to me. I prefer it over gofundme and patreon. And LiberaPay i'd never heard of.

No, the opposite. I’m saying I added a Kofi because Liberapay is unfamiliar

Ah sorry for my misunderstanding

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