Great points all around.
My two cents: donations are bullshit. If you want to buy something, buy it. If you want to sell something, sell it.
Anything less is just some simp shit. There is nothing wrong with producing free content, and then having premium pad content - that's great! Or just having free content in general, like a blog, just because you want to.
But begging for donations makes it seem like your content overall is kind of low quality. Or, rather, it makes you look like you have no business sense. If you are delivering value with a product or content, but not monetizing it with an explicit business strategy outside of donations - then you are failing as a business person.
You are also failing the Bitcoin community, by serving as a bad example to others. Show people it's possible to make money.
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Bitcoin is part of the open source ecosystem that encourages free products for all and donations to support the projects.
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Just curious, have you ever managed or been a maintainer for an open source project that has gotten more than 10 unique contributors?
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I have let blogs use my photos and other YouTube channels use my clips without asking for money . From my experience i knew video streamers go behind a paywall and fall in obscurity and those that were donation based thrived. Paywalls are a complete turnoff but I have donated more frequently over time to content makers I liked. Sometimes larger sums to pick up the perceived slack from others. Like if wikipedia went behind a paywall, people would look for other sites.
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That's nice of you. If everyone thought and behaved like you do, we wouldn't have a problem.
Tragically, most people don't give donations. To anything, ever.
Aaaaaand that's why open-source gets taken advantage of by traditional market driven organizations that buy and sell.
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Sometimes i dont know how good a podcast is until after i've heard it. If i have to pay ahead of time then i'm unlikely to ever hear it in the first place.
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That's what people have been doing throughout human history. Go to a bookshop, how do you know what's good? They don't let you read a book in a book store - you had to buy it. Buy a newspaper and read the book review section to make an informed decision.
Want free stuff? Go to the library, and beg the government for your handout you commie ๐Ÿ˜‚
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Podcasts are usually free though, so not the best example on my end.
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You're missing the point. I am not saying everybody should paywall everything. That is not my point at all.
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"Currently (and probably it has always been the case) in the Bitcoin community there is some push towards donations as some sort of business model, or in general just a general love for the idea of donations, and I think that is very misguided."
What i said goes directly to this. I can donate during or after i hear a podcast.
Value 4 value is not "unsound," it's just a set of tradeoffs. See my longer comment in another thread.
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Does that imply people should paywall everything? Giving stuff for free was always a business model. They even give you free physical things in brick-and-mortar shops with the hope that you will like and buy more.
Everything is a set of tradeoffs, that doesn't mean everything is as good as everything else.
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No Agenda podcast popularized the model and they make money. It's definitely not as economically efficient as normal transactions, but it works for them and it probably works for others.
One way i think about this is buyer surplus vs seller surplus. In normal exchange, both parties walk away happy - that's their surplus. In practice, value 4 value involves the creator capturing somewhat less surplus than in a normal exchange. But the consumers, in aggregate, get WAY more surplus because many of them get the thing for free, many others under- donate, and the few huge donors are probably getting huge benefit from the thing.
It's a tradeoff - one that may not work for most creators. But it will work for some.
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Sure, donations work for some people.
The problem is pushing that as the solution for everybody.
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One thing for sure: there are too many podcasts lately. Most of them just repeating over and over the same things and copying from others, just to have some "sponsors". We have an inflation of useless podcasts.
Only Steve, still don't have a podcast :)
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Donโ€™t forget the same recycled guests
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Everybody having a podcast or a stream or a blog or a Twitter account or whatever is the thing that makes the internet great.
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We can count even the model in which a donation is not just a blank donation, but gives the donor the right to write something on the screen or something like that โ€“ these are actually not just donations, but purchases of these rights.
That's a fine point, doesn't contradict the value4value idea though, imho.
The problem is that selling digital stuff on a per-item basis is rather nonsensical, because the cost of reproduction is zero. Value4value is pay-what-you-want, and thus resolves this conundrum.
There are many other problems, and I wrote about them at length here.
In regards to static codes: I'd love to see them for dissidents and activists alone. Very different kind of "donation" if your life depends on it.
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Since you posted a link to a very long thing I can't reply to this comment before reading it.
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Find additional comments on this article from a prior post, here on SN:
Buying versus donating in the Lightning ecosystem #36090 http://fiatjaf.com/8e10f738.html
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Find additional comments on this article from a prior post, here on SN:
Buying versus donating in the Lightning ecosystem #36090 http://fiatjaf.com/8e10f738.html
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