On the Fireside Fedi interview with Jerry ( the admin of Infosec.Exchange Mastodon instance ) a scary truth was suddenly revealed ( on 34:11 ): Just to keep the instance up and running he needs to spend up to $5000 a month, pretty much out of his pocket. Donations to the instance barely cover any of that. And if he will ask people to pay to use it, they will, rightfully so, switch to a different instance.
The thing is that ads pay almost nothing. I’d be very happy to pay 4x what an ad would pay. But the problem is I can’t sent 0.12 to someone when I watch their video because 50% of that is gobbled up by transaction fees. So the only option is to bulk donate which either requires pooling money in a 3rd party or the user donating a bulk amount ($10). Users really dont like giving away $10 when it feels like they get nothing in return. Its all mental but its a very real problem. We will pay for $10 of dogshit food but not $10 for a software product we’ve used for 100s of hours.
You can actually do it using USDC (USD stablecoin) on Ethereum via Base for free:
https://www.coinbase.com/en-br/developer-platform/discover/launches/zero-fee-usdc
Most people think of crypto as a scam, but there are actual useful products being built on Ethereum, and this is a great illustration on where it is a useful tool
I think something like this is going to be a necessity to make a federates video platform work.
What are the transaction fees for USDC?
It has been around USD 0.001~0.008, but they are scaling aggressively so fluctuations aren’t as significant in the future regardless of usage. Details here: https://www.growthepie.com/fees
Are there options with lower fees? It’s not much but if people pay per view it adds up quickly.
Sorry, I mistakenly read your original comment, transaction fees for USDC are actually free (gasless) via Base on Ethereum, eg: https://xcancel.com/coinbasewallet/status/1800653787960406031
Costs mentioned on my previous post are for other assets
Neat, might have to try that sometime
Join the Communick Collective. Set up a fixed budget (let’s say $10/month) and then split that however you want between the people you want to help. This solves the micropayments issue and would show creators still addicted to Youtube revenue that valuable contributions will be rewarded.
I’m already paying my instance and lemmy and kinda loyal to it. I’d alsp like to properly support the software i use before trying to support content creators. One day in the future something like communick would be appealing.
The website says 20% of the profit is donated? Does that mean to charities?