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Peertube creator business model

@peertube I just watched @thelinuxEXP 's video over on @tilvids regarding the dying of the ad supported internet. He said that #peertube will propably not be replacing #youtube because it has no business model for creators and I think this is sadly very true. However, I think there could be one. One like the YouTube premium model where the instance pays the creators by the watchtime share of a paying user. This could (propably) even be implemented today: an instance could pay a cut of their donations to all creators by their server wide watchtime. The instance could have a cut of, say 30% (random number) to pay for the servers. Its not the same, by any means, but it would be a start. THe difficult part is obviously, that the server needs the IBAN, paypal address, or any other way to pay each creator and the instance should be very transparent when it comes to money.
Another way would be a kind of channel membership where some videos are only displayed to paying members of the channel, and the money from such a subsription should go solely to the creator (after the payment processing fees). Another problem is of course that each instance has more to do. Handling money always comes with a lot of work and they'd need an account of some sort to handle that...

So obviously not an easy thing to do, but I think it is absolutely needed to get more creators on board. I'd like to see @peertube implementing something for this, because it would be huge for the platform.

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5 comments
  • I'd imagine hosting costs for a video sharing service would be much higher than other parts of the Fediverse and they'd need a surplus of donations to be able to start doing that.

    I think the channel membership idea is the better one as it would provide a steady amount of money but most big content creators will already have Patreon, so perhaps it is a little redundant.

    However, I don't know what the breakdown of income streams is for big YouTubers but I suspect the cut they get from YouTube from ads accounts for a large percentage of it.

    It may just be that we have to get used to the Fediverse being something we directly contribute to, rather than us providing the.money passively through viewing ads - we are no longer just passive consumers. So if you are happy with your Fediverse instance, throw them a buck a month, if you like a content creator of PeerTube then sign up to Patreon. It's a pretty small amount but if a high enough percentage of people do it then it should really help those building the Fediverse and populating it with content do so on a more professional basis.

  • YouTube's value to creators isn't just in hosting videos and sharing ad revenue. It's also in getting eyeballs onto the creator's content. Discovery is a huge part of YouTube's value proposition for creators, and that's not easily replicable on PeerTube. For a start, there are simply fewer eyeballs, but also as we all know, discovery on the fediverse is kind of hard. The YouTube algorithm serves a purpose for creators and is a huge part of the business model for creators that is very difficult to replicate.

    • I totally agree, however I think the ad revenue is one part that is keeping already established youtubers from also posting their videos on peertube

  • Unlikely