Evan Prodromou
In the #Fediforum today, we've been talking about how to monetize Fediverse content. I have talked about a rough outline for how to do it before -- setting up a private account, enabling out-of-band payment, and approving followers based on payment.
As a proof of concept, I've set up a premium account on my personal server. @evanplus is a subscription only private account (separate from my friends-and-family account) where I will post content I think is worth paying for.
Evan Prodromou
@raphael it is not currently possible with Mastodon, but there are some servers that support it, like Mitra https://codeberg.org/silverpill/mitra
Raphael Lullis
@evan Would it be possible to have the payment request and payment receipt as part "in band"? Would it even make sense to do it?
In a not-so-distant past I was working on a project with cryptocurrency to remove onboarding UX problems and make payments easier between people. The project didn't go anywhere because no cares about crypto as actual currency, but it did teach me enough about payment networks that I thought about expanding to support for SEPA (in the EU), Pix (Brazil) and FedNow.
Tim Chambers
@evan @evanplus So you gate subscribers to the EvenPro account by keeping the account fully private, but then only approving paid followers one by one?
Evan Prodromou
@tchambers Yes. It's fully private. You can follow first and then send $5 by PayPal. You have to put your handle in the PayPal comments. When I get a follow request, I check PayPal, and if I see the payment, I approve.
Evan Prodromou
@tchambers and it's "evanplus" not "EvanPro". That's just my first name and first syllable of my last name!
Evan Prodromou
@thisismissem @tchambers I don't know. Try it and we'll see!
Emelia 👸🏻
@evan @tchambers what happens if I pay but then do a charge back?
(partly a joke ask, but totally something that is extremely common on adult platforms)
Emelia 👸🏻
@evan @tchambers fwiw, subscriber only accounts is another thing I'm going to be working on at https://unobvious.technology but after age & identity verification.
Evan Prodromou
Chatting about this format is exactly the kind of premium content that subscribers deserve. Follow @evanplus to ask me questions about chargebacks!
Samir Al-Battran
@evan @thisismissem @tchambers
It's painful, because charge back fees are ~$50, so make sure the subscription fees take into account the rate of charge backs
Generally speaking, charge backs are very low
Bret Carmichael
@evan @evanplus @mike This is a great experiment for monetizing content on the #fediverse. There’s an already-established business model for paid groups. You may also want to create a public account that acts as a lead magnet for the paid one, sharing snippets or occasional free private content. Otherwise, it might be a black box or hidden. Very broadly speaking, many people prefer to pay with attention (ads) over paying with real money, so I expect to see ad placements in content as well.
Dennis Nunes
@tchambers @evan @evanplus Would it be paid once or a sub? If a sub, how would you manage to check every month who paid?
I loved the EvanPro name, haha, Plus is also nice
Evan Prodromou
@nunesdennis sub. Manually, until it gets complicated enough that I need to write a script for it.
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