To my thinking, it’s time to get folks on a federated platform. Here is a graphic of the various fediverse platforms. I know off of the top of my head about PeerTube. I just learned about the others.
PeerTube would absolutely be the alternative here. It’s challenging though - if YouTube can’t make money hosting your content on a large scale, what makes you think you’ll make money hosting it on a smaller scale?
Some might manage to finance it through crowdfunding, and as the Fediverse grows hopefully it’ll manage to self-sustain content creators here so that discoverability of content on PeerTube will increase. The future is not necessarily all that bleak, but it’s still a long way to get there.
PeerTube and the fediverse at large do not lend themselves to earning a money. That is an appreciably difficult situation to be in. I suppose the most one could hope for is to gain some fame and having someone sponsor them through something like Patreon.
i think it’d be possible, but probably more about sponsor ads entirely rather than youtube ad revenue… i believe that’s the way most youtubers make the majority of their money anyway - ads from youtube are worth peanuts
@housepanther Yeah I think it will most likely be on a Tip based system unless people can work out something better for the Fediverse. It’s not that bad if it does become a Tip based system as long as people are willing to spend a little on the creators they enjoy sometimes.
There was an attempt to put together an open protocol for paywalled podcasts (could be generalized to basically anything rss based) by @[email protected] at RadioPublic called PodPass. Something like this could maybe be applied to fediverse content, too, as a way to do channel memberships. I keep hoping this can take off again.
Nebula is an alternative with a lot of content creators I subscribe to. It started off very lanky, but is getting better. I’m just hoping they can attach more talent to switch from Youtube.
The very successful and famous couple probably take their sponsors and fanbase along to PeerTube. In the future, those with sponsors might be able to go there, if content on PeerTube becomes mainstream somehow.
For the more average channels it’s probably more complicated. And then again, subscription models might be preferable for many viewers over sponsored content.
It will be interesting to see what takes over if YouTube allows itself to get bad enough that content creators start fleeing on a big scale. I’m not sure it’ll happen though - Google might be increasingly evil, but they don’t seem to be particularly erratic.
@sab It’s also about Quality, currently a lot of PeerTube Instances make you have a limit on how much space you have, if you self-host you can raise that limit to the amount of space you have. Most people who don’t create quality content might not last and possibly would just shut down their servers removing their content from the Fediverse.
But those who get donations and any other form of revenue would be able to keep going and even expand their storage if they need to allow their content to be a bigger part of the Fediverse.
Let’s take PewDiePie for instance, if he moved all his videos over to the Fediverse it would be only PewDiePie’s videos across the whole Fediverse but because of his money behind him, he can host them. Merch, Donations, and any other sponsorship could keep him running the server for another month, especially if someone already has or builds up a community of people that are willing to spend money on them.
I don’t think that professional content creators are going to like the Fediverse very much. The design inherently limits their reach and there’s significantly less money in it for them. I don’t think it works as a profession here in its current form.
To my thinking, it’s time to get folks on a federated platform. Here is a graphic of the various fediverse platforms. I know off of the top of my head about PeerTube. I just learned about the others.
PeerTube would absolutely be the alternative here. It’s challenging though - if YouTube can’t make money hosting your content on a large scale, what makes you think you’ll make money hosting it on a smaller scale?
Some might manage to finance it through crowdfunding, and as the Fediverse grows hopefully it’ll manage to self-sustain content creators here so that discoverability of content on PeerTube will increase. The future is not necessarily all that bleak, but it’s still a long way to get there.
PeerTube and the fediverse at large do not lend themselves to earning a money. That is an appreciably difficult situation to be in. I suppose the most one could hope for is to gain some fame and having someone sponsor them through something like Patreon.
i think it’d be possible, but probably more about sponsor ads entirely rather than youtube ad revenue… i believe that’s the way most youtubers make the majority of their money anyway - ads from youtube are worth peanuts
@housepanther Yeah I think it will most likely be on a Tip based system unless people can work out something better for the Fediverse. It’s not that bad if it does become a Tip based system as long as people are willing to spend a little on the creators they enjoy sometimes.
There was an attempt to put together an open protocol for paywalled podcasts (could be generalized to basically anything rss based) by @[email protected] at RadioPublic called PodPass. Something like this could maybe be applied to fediverse content, too, as a way to do channel memberships. I keep hoping this can take off again.
The original spec for PodPass
That’s interesting. I had no idea this was attempted once.
I’m adamant the only viable YouTube replacement is a subscription service.
Nebula is an alternative with a lot of content creators I subscribe to. It started off very lanky, but is getting better. I’m just hoping they can attach more talent to switch from Youtube.
The very successful and famous couple probably take their sponsors and fanbase along to PeerTube. In the future, those with sponsors might be able to go there, if content on PeerTube becomes mainstream somehow.
For the more average channels it’s probably more complicated. And then again, subscription models might be preferable for many viewers over sponsored content.
It will be interesting to see what takes over if YouTube allows itself to get bad enough that content creators start fleeing on a big scale. I’m not sure it’ll happen though - Google might be increasingly evil, but they don’t seem to be particularly erratic.
@sab It’s also about Quality, currently a lot of PeerTube Instances make you have a limit on how much space you have, if you self-host you can raise that limit to the amount of space you have. Most people who don’t create quality content might not last and possibly would just shut down their servers removing their content from the Fediverse.
But those who get donations and any other form of revenue would be able to keep going and even expand their storage if they need to allow their content to be a bigger part of the Fediverse.
Let’s take PewDiePie for instance, if he moved all his videos over to the Fediverse it would be only PewDiePie’s videos across the whole Fediverse but because of his money behind him, he can host them. Merch, Donations, and any other sponsorship could keep him running the server for another month, especially if someone already has or builds up a community of people that are willing to spend money on them.
I don’t think that professional content creators are going to like the Fediverse very much. The design inherently limits their reach and there’s significantly less money in it for them. I don’t think it works as a profession here in its current form.
Agreed. The Fediverse does not lend itself to earning a living, at least for now. Maybe one day it will be possible.