Liberapay is my platform of choice! It lacks a lot of flashy features but it feels like the closest thing to an 'exchange between friends' instead of a commercial sort of relationship.
For the type of works I link my LiberaPay to, I don't have nor want tiers and rewards associated with them, as that forms a social contract where I am expected to perform more labour. I only want money from people who are thankful for what I've already provided, and I only want what they're willing to provide.
I suspect microscopic rewards like discord roles, a news letter, ect. do increase revenue, but then again you're managing a community.
I encountered issues with Stripe so that's been disabled, PayPal only, but PayPal doesn't auto renew. Again, I suspect I lost a considerable amount of money because of this. But again, taking money from people who wouldn't explicitly click 'renew' when they get the email doesn't feel right.
I also began offering Ko-fi as an option, however, because some people are uncomfortable with unfamiliar platforms.
Cont... To the best of my understanding and lived experiences, there is a strong correlation between 'ethical compromise' on the part of the content creator and how much they can expect to be compromised for their work
1. A donation link in the footer... people only see it if they're looking for it
2. More overt reminders (when KDE added a single yearly popup notification, donations dramatically increased)
3. Adding tiers to step up the donations (e.g. maybe you could convince most of the $3.99 folks to do $4.99)
4. Adding rewards to fuel the funder's egos (I try to send personal emails thanking them but this isn't an explicitly mentioned 'reward' unlike, say, positions in the credits)
5. In addition to rewards, supplementing income with sponsors. The sponsors frequently are exploiting both the creator and the consumer (e.g. Honey), but nevertheless compensation does increase. Also, affiliate programs. Hard to do without your own integrity being compromised when recommending products.
6. 'Dangerous' monetization that plays with emotions. Onlyfans creators creating pseudo-relationships. Entire sponsored videos for stuff like gambling.
Of course, it is hard to argue that the oft. underpaid content producers are really the ones making ethical concessions when they exist under a system that... underfunds them... but nevertheless it is undeniable that there are ethical concessions, and these concessions are made because they increase revenue.
The really really sad part is that you really only see big creators throwing doing this stuff despite already having more than enough, and they always get away with it, whereas if a small creator were to pull this their audience would eat them alive.
> Adding tiers to step up the donations (e.g. maybe you could convince most of the $3.99 folks to do $4.99)
.99 price points are explicitly designed to manipulate. If I ever went to donate and saw that as a tier, I’d close the window and reconsider my support of the creator. Don’t try to fool me, be honest and ask for the full amount.
Twitch, as well. I've stopped watching streamer after streamer when it became clear they were only responding to people throwing money at them constantly.
I've watched people spend $50-100 a night with a streamer. It's insane. Well over $10k a year.
The same people probably write a $100 check to the local food pantry.
Have you considered self-hosting a payment page? I'm asking because I've been building Open Payment Host[1] a self-hosted FOSS payments host supporting multiple payment gateways; still very much a WIP but I hope soon it will be viable enough for someone like you.
P.S. Please ignore the AI autocomplete feature, I included it as part of Google hackathon to raise funds for the project; I'll be removing it in the upcoming release.
Hi, I'm excited to see more FOSS options available. I don't think this is exactly what I need because I just want a very simple interface like what liberapay provides... not to sell anything... but I'm very happy more people are working on this
I follow a lot of very small youtube creators. I can often convince them to start a liberapay just for me to donate. They get 100% of the cut* (Patreon takes 12-16%) and I am supporting both the creator and Liberapay's popularity
The main downside is lack of integrations with the tiered perks Patreon offers. Most of the creators I follow don't really rely too heavily on the feature but I can see it becoming a larger hassle if a creator has to manage two platforms
Just out of interest because it sounds a little too good to be true, but it the content creators keep 100% of the donations, how are LibrePay funding the operation itself ?
Edit : My lazy self actually went and read up on it :
> Liberapay does not take a cut of payments, the service is funded by the donations to its own account. However there are payment processing fees.
I think a notable feature of patreon's cut is that they only take it on withdrawal. I don't know how that works for individual's tax exposure, but it does serve to inflate the cash amounts on the site from people using their patreon income to patronise others.
Ah that is interesting. I didn't realize that. Is Patreon then allowed to basically act like a bank? Where they can invest the cash that's currently sitting in a Patreon account? Essentially, everyone leaving money in Patreon is giving them a micro-loan
A somewhat related feature of Liberapay is there's a lot of flexibility in the frequency of your payments. You can enter in $5/week but it will suggest a payment frequency that minimizes fee. E.g. paying $21.43 every 30 days instead.
It would be nice if you could add multiple (youtube) channels, as team members, and fund the collective from your (fixed) donation, each then takes their (partially auto) share from it.
> The fees vary by payment processor, payment method, countries and currencies. In the last year, the average fee percentages have been 3.1% for the payments processed by Stripe and 5% for the payments processed by PayPal.
Giving 97% of the money to devs is pretty amazing. They also don't take a cut from donations made.
I don't think that would be possible, as Liberapay is essentially just a UI for accepting donations directly into the developers' Stripe/PayPal accounts.
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For the type of works I link my LiberaPay to, I don't have nor want tiers and rewards associated with them, as that forms a social contract where I am expected to perform more labour. I only want money from people who are thankful for what I've already provided, and I only want what they're willing to provide.
I suspect microscopic rewards like discord roles, a news letter, ect. do increase revenue, but then again you're managing a community.
I encountered issues with Stripe so that's been disabled, PayPal only, but PayPal doesn't auto renew. Again, I suspect I lost a considerable amount of money because of this. But again, taking money from people who wouldn't explicitly click 'renew' when they get the email doesn't feel right.
I also began offering Ko-fi as an option, however, because some people are uncomfortable with unfamiliar platforms.
1. A donation link in the footer... people only see it if they're looking for it
2. More overt reminders (when KDE added a single yearly popup notification, donations dramatically increased)
3. Adding tiers to step up the donations (e.g. maybe you could convince most of the $3.99 folks to do $4.99)
4. Adding rewards to fuel the funder's egos (I try to send personal emails thanking them but this isn't an explicitly mentioned 'reward' unlike, say, positions in the credits)
5. In addition to rewards, supplementing income with sponsors. The sponsors frequently are exploiting both the creator and the consumer (e.g. Honey), but nevertheless compensation does increase. Also, affiliate programs. Hard to do without your own integrity being compromised when recommending products.
6. 'Dangerous' monetization that plays with emotions. Onlyfans creators creating pseudo-relationships. Entire sponsored videos for stuff like gambling.
Of course, it is hard to argue that the oft. underpaid content producers are really the ones making ethical concessions when they exist under a system that... underfunds them... but nevertheless it is undeniable that there are ethical concessions, and these concessions are made because they increase revenue.
The really really sad part is that you really only see big creators throwing doing this stuff despite already having more than enough, and they always get away with it, whereas if a small creator were to pull this their audience would eat them alive.
.99 price points are explicitly designed to manipulate. If I ever went to donate and saw that as a tier, I’d close the window and reconsider my support of the creator. Don’t try to fool me, be honest and ask for the full amount.
Twitch, as well. I've stopped watching streamer after streamer when it became clear they were only responding to people throwing money at them constantly.
I've watched people spend $50-100 a night with a streamer. It's insane. Well over $10k a year.
The same people probably write a $100 check to the local food pantry.
P.S. Please ignore the AI autocomplete feature, I included it as part of Google hackathon to raise funds for the project; I'll be removing it in the upcoming release.
[1] https://github.com/abishekmuthian/open-payment-host
[0] https://coindrop.to/
The main downside is lack of integrations with the tiered perks Patreon offers. Most of the creators I follow don't really rely too heavily on the feature but I can see it becoming a larger hassle if a creator has to manage two platforms
* less fees
Edit : My lazy self actually went and read up on it :
> Liberapay does not take a cut of payments, the service is funded by the donations to its own account. However there are payment processing fees.
This is a great example of dogfooding.
https://liberapay.com/Liberapay/
They're the second largest recipient
A somewhat related feature of Liberapay is there's a lot of flexibility in the frequency of your payments. You can enter in $5/week but it will suggest a payment frequency that minimizes fee. E.g. paying $21.43 every 30 days instead.
Deleted Comment
Org Mode: https://en.liberapay.com/org-mode/
- Ihor Radchenko (Org mode maintainer): https://en.liberapay.com/yantar92/
- Bastien "bzg" Guerry: https://en.liberapay.com/bzg/
- Timothy "Tec": https://en.liberapay.com/tec/
Magit: https://en.liberapay.com/magit/
- Tarsius (Magit, Transient maintainer): https://en.liberapay.com/tarsius/
Guile Emacs: https://en.liberapay.com/guile-emacs/
I also hope they can reduce the ratio paid to paypal/stripe. More money should go to devs.
> The fees vary by payment processor, payment method, countries and currencies. In the last year, the average fee percentages have been 3.1% for the payments processed by Stripe and 5% for the payments processed by PayPal.
Giving 97% of the money to devs is pretty amazing. They also don't take a cut from donations made.
Right now I use gumroad but they take a very high fee.