@ernest, if Kbin starts making okay money, don't be afraid to give yourself a salary. It's important that you get to eat too.

As I’ve been lurking around the fediverse, running instances seems to be universally a hobby project, and it’s a little concerning. It kind of gives the impression of all being idealistic young kids embarrassed to ascribe value to their own time. I mean, you can do a lot with volunteer labor, especially if it’s a good ecosystem with appropriate recognition and gratitude, but the people are absolutely the most valuable parts of kbin.social, lemmy.world, etc, and they do have to eat, pay rent, go on vacation. It’s tough to respond to a 3am message about your instance being hacked if you have a job to be at four hours later, and leads to a whole different kind of burnout.

It’s early days yet, but I hope the bigger instance teams get some input from people who’ve managed growth spurts in non-profits, and especially the transition to their first paid staff members (even when that staff member is the owner).

The whole internet was basically hobby projects that worked fine before big tech ate everything.

It can totally work if the community's right.