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321 points Helloworldboy | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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guiomie ◴[] No.15722732[source]
"It then displays it in the Brave Payments list, enabling the user to donate back on a monthly" ... So this will block ads on Youtube, and the creators will be compensated on donations? Does someone have a case-study on content/Youtube creators potentially making a living of donations? This seems like a bad business model: make creative videos and expect people to donate so you can feed yourself.
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Raphmedia ◴[] No.15722815[source]
> Does someone have a case-study on content/Youtube creators potentially making a living of donations?

https://www.patreon.com/Kurzgesagt - 9,890 patrons - $36,214 per months in donations.

https://www.patreon.com/cgpgrey - 7,719 patrons - $19,439 per video in donations.

Edit: And there's https://www.patreon.com/DeFranco at 14,268 patrons. His revenue is hidden but that's at least around 60k/month if not more.

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1. bpicolo ◴[] No.15723002[source]
These are (currently) just the really exceptional cases though. Youtube is building far more monetary value on the whole through ads.
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2. jerf ◴[] No.15723622[source]
Here's a more complete view: https://graphtreon.com/

Median income in the US is ~$42,000/yr last I knew. Call it $4K to make up a bit for benefits and such. There isn't a hard-and-fast way to count because some people hide their total, but there are clearly plural hundreds of people above that line in the top 1000 [1]. There's several more hundred people making poverty-line in most of the US (which as a relative measure, I can't do a precise cut off), and before one starts moralizing about how horrible that is, remember that they are not necessarily doing this as their only job. What may not be enough to live on can still be a very very nicely paying hobby.

You are certainly correct that overall, more money flows through YouTube. I am much less convinced that that's a good thing in general, though. The incentives on YouTube fluctuate a lot, but in general tend to support quantity over quality. In fact as I think about it, I wonder if Patreon is helping prop up YouTube a bit by helping the quality producers resist that; if YouTube banned alternate monetization and tried to survive just on their own quantity-over-quality metrics I wouldn't be surprised they would eventually experience an eat-your-own-seed-corn collapse. I've listened to the YouTube videos of a couple of the people chasing the quantity-over-quality treadmill that YouTube ends up putting them on to stay on top, and it's not a life I'd want or wish on anyone.

[1]: https://graphtreon.com/patreon-creators

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3. bpicolo ◴[] No.15724059[source]
Many of them are businesses >> 1 person, and they're not all video. There's no doubt some successful video creators on patreon, but it's still a pretty small number.

Plenty of the video-based ones are in erotic media, too. It's definitely a new and interesting income medium for that genre.