@nixCraft

The disdain for anyone that makes money through content online, is palpable. I'm not trying to change your opinion on that. I'm just pointing it out.

Going viral doesn't mean gaming the system. Most content goes viral because it is novel, entertaining, and fun.

And as I've said on here many, many times, the most viewed content on social media by far isn't angry content. It's happy/funny content. Twitter and 4chan are miserable places. TikTok and Instagram are happier places.

@nixCraft

I see a lot of replies of the form:

"You can make money on Mastodon! You just have to do A, B, and C! It works!"

And:

"We don't want influencers on Mastodon."

The thing I find funny about the "You can make money on Mastodon!" claim, is that it's almost always proclaimed by Mastodon dudes that don't make any money through their social media content, talking about people that do make money on their social media content. 0% experience, 100% confidence.🙂🙃

2/N

@april @nixCraft

I've seen authors get roasted on here for promoting their own books.

I've seen server admins get insulted for suggesting moving to a subscription model rather than a donation model.

I haven't seen many (any?) examples of people being financially successful on Mastodon with a "here's how I did it!" tutorial with real numbers. I just see vague hand-wavings about "It's totally possible!" but when I ask for concrete examples, it gets real quiet. 🤷🏿‍♂️

https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/113175911162464927

@mekkaokereke @april @nixCraft I'm fairly financially successful with monetization on Mastodon, and do publish figures (but it's been a while since I've written an updated article)

YTD I've made €7,713.27 in gross revenue from the community, or between €500-1500 a month. That's across 3 channels, excluding GitHub Sponsors.

Last year was €8,497.03 from supporters, averaging €40 per transaction.

@thisismissem @mekkaokereke @april @nixCraft

I hope you do realize that this is less than minimum wage? How much was that per hour of work?

Can you honestly say that this is "financial success" and that it could be emulated by others if one could make more money delivering food and biking around the city?

@raphael @mekkaokereke @april @nixCraft

I've only been tracking open-source contributions in terms of hours since the Q2 of this year. This year so far I have done 184 hours of work on open-source, of which 21.50 hours were funded separately and 8 hours of admin work.

I fully agree that the community support I receive is currently well below minimum wage, which is why I'm trying to increase that income.

I've also done a lot of freelance work to make ends meet, which balanced things out.

@raphael @mekkaokereke @april @nixCraft

As for is this "financial success", well, it's my full time job, I have no other employment besides the community funding, grants, and freelance work.

I don't work for any for-profit company. I meet my needs.

Note: I'm excluding from those numbers the grants and freelance work, which is the lions share of my income.

@thisismissem @raphael @april @nixCraft

Hot take:
People think that the Fediverse isn't safe(yet) because of slight differences between how you see the world, and Eugen sees the world, and Ro sees the world, and Oliphant sees the world, and Jaz sees the world, and Sierdy sees the world, and Hrefna sees the world, etc.

But the real reason the Fediverse is not safe and secure (yet), is that none of you can earn a stable and secure living working on Fediverse safety full time.🤷🏿‍♂️

1/N

@thisismissem @raphael @april @nixCraft

I am profoundly uninterested in giving my hot take nitpicking ideas on how any of you should be thinking about safety. And I don't think we want or need consensus.

I am deeply interested in how we change state to where you all can earn a living working on this stuff full-time, in a way that avoids the usual "money with downsides and baggage" like VC money, or becoming dependent on wealthy benefactors who may change their minds (eg Big Tech grants).

2/2

@mekkaokereke @raphael @april @nixCraft for full disclosure, my total revenue year to date, excluding open/future invoices is €44,960 with €4,210.61 in expenses.

So I have made a decent income for a developer based in Germany, where a less-experienced developer would make €40-45k, and experienced developers would be €60-90k.

That's including freelance contracts, bug bounties, grants, etc.

@mekkaokereke @raphael @april @nixCraft

But yeah, the Fediverse as a whole is extremely underfunded, and that only changes with people wanting to say “I value this and I want to fund it's existence”

@thisismissem

I value the Fediverse and want to fund its existence. I don't want to simply set money on fire. What are my options?

My charity budget is completely allocated. My investment budget is not.

#asking_for_a_friend

I think that's a critical challenge, if someone solves that without breaking the ideals, it would be beyond awesome.

@mekkaokereke @raphael @april @nixCraft

@iwein @mekkaokereke @raphael @april @nixCraft

There isn't really ROI for stuff that is open-source, and that's where we really need the money, not in for-profit services.

@thisismissem @iwein @mekkaokereke @april @nixCraft

If you get for-profit services, they will be more than aligned with the sustainability of the open source part.

For example: I already pledged to give 20% of communick's profits to the underlying projects. The only "problem" is that communick will never be profitable for as long as it's competing with large instances (hachyderm/.world/universeodon) that have no intention/plan to become proper businesses.

@raphael @iwein @mekkaokereke @april @nixCraft

I'm pretty sure instances run not for profit aren't your enemy. Last I heard Masto.host was doing pretty okay. Their smallest plan is 3 times your smallest plan in cost.

It's easy as a business owner to blame others for the challenges you face in building & growing a business, it's a lot harder to raise to the challenges and reassess your decisions

@raphael @iwein @mekkaokereke @april @nixCraft

Also, fwiw, those larger instances have been funding development work. Nivenly (the organisation behind hachyderm) has funded several grants and has a security bug bounty program for the fediverse that's been quietly existing for most of the year.

They also give significant product feedback & test out new things.

@thisismissem @iwein @mekkaokereke @april @nixCraft

Organizations that provide funding for development provide a function that is orthogonal to bearing the operational costs of running an instance with many active users.

@raphael @iwein @mekkaokereke @april @nixCraft

And I'm saying that the instance you listed all help fund the development, not just operating their own instance.

e.g., earlier this year Nivenly paid me for fixing a security vulnerability in pixelfed which was CVE 9.9/10

Nivenly also provides me invaluable feedback on my work developing Mastodon. Not all beneficial relationships are financial, some are symbiotic where a developer can gain knowledge and feedback from people using tools everyday

@raphael @iwein @mekkaokereke @april @nixCraft

Nivenly has also filed several bugs raising things to our attention where moderator needs weren't being met; you've, as far as I can tell contributed exactly one issue to the project.