Dan LuuNov 21, 2022

One of the things that's made it easy to find communities whose discussion I want to see is the linear feed. This is a stark contrast to new social apps I've tried, e.g., Clubhouse, where my feed is dominated by high engagement stuff I don't want.

I understand why companies push that stuff; looking at Twitter's experiments, you get more growth/$ when you switch users who've chosen linear timeline back to ranked timeline.

Fundamentally, this is why most apps don't even offer linear timeline.

Show threadDan LuuNov 21, 2022

At a meta level, something I find mildly interesting is how many people are writing stuff on Mastodon about how it's impossible for Mastodon to scale up without using an ad supported model (b/c server costs), it's better to have ranked feeds because most people want them, etc.

The thing I think is interesting is that the people writing this stuff, implicitly, seemingly cannot conceive of a model where the organization is not growth and profit maximizing.

Show threadDan LuuNov 21, 2022

If I look at my own site, I make $30k/yr off donations and could easily do 10x that with big ads, but I don't currently need the money enough to put ads up.

Likewise, if you do the math on how much it costs to run a Masto server, even if the fediverse gets way bigger and hosting costs go up, you should be able to run a small instance on donations.

Donations aren't profit maximizing compared to have ranked feeds with ads, but it's ok for there to be things that aren't profit maximizing.

Show threadAlex McLeanNov 21, 2022
@danluu Fully agreed, just dropping by to point out how 'donations' can be twisted into extreme profit maximising. Patreon was all about how to maximise returns for your 'content', really explicitly encourage you to change your online persona in order to best fleece your friends for cash.
Show threadAlex McLean
@danluu Oops just realised you run a patreon :) Would be interested in how you find this aspect, it was too much for me
Nov 21, 2022 at 9:59pmWeb
Show threadDan LuuNov 22, 2022

@yaxu For me, I don't want to really do monetization oriented things, so I just don't do them.

If I wanted to make money, I think putting out 95% paywalled content with some teasers would be the way to go, and if I was good at video, then that would be the way to go, per the numbers in https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1589775358102212608.

Dan Luu on Twitter

“I'm surprised by how much money individuals make from video. At the bottom of the high end, there are examples like https://t.co/8FAJZZpNZe, where the #137th streamer on twitch has been offered $10M/yr multiple times. More surprising to me are numbers for "normal" streamers,”

Twitter
Show threadDan LuuNov 22, 2022
@yaxu I think the marginal revenue I'd get from tweaking things to monetize my free writing better are so small compared to doing things that really monetize well that I'm not really tempted to mess around with small changes when I could do one of the things that pulls an order of magnitude more revenue (or much more in the case of video) if I wanted to make a lot of money from "content creation" or whatever you want to call it.
Show threadAlex McLeanNov 22, 2022
@danluu Thanks, I might have another look at patreon then, if it's possible to use it without being pulled into maximising revenue rather than just accepting donations for the sake of sustainability
Show threadFionnáinNov 22, 2022
@yaxu @danluu maybe also worth looking at Patreon alternatives like liberapay if the emphasis is on having a way to receive donations but avoiding the intentionally scaling platforms. But then it would not be possible to have an income from liberapay yet as there aren't currently enough donors.
Show threadAlex McLeanNov 22, 2022
@ephemeral @danluu Yep Yep I've used liberapay, and have had a really good experience with ko-fi. Last time I did a poll people seemed to prefer to donate via patreon though, I guess because they're familiar with it. I think I'll stick with ko-fi though, the relationship with donators is much more direct (they pay straight into your paypal/stripe) and their business model is not extractive (free with flat subscription for added features rather than taking a high percentage cut)
Show threadFionnáinNov 22, 2022

@yaxu Ah, that's good to know. I hadn't used ko-fi and wasn't familiar with this – something I might also look into.

@danluu