Author Topic: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business  (Read 16085 times)

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Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« on: February 06, 2019, 02:49:53 am »
Patreon is an unsustainable business, in their own words.
They took the investment money and now they are paying the price.
It looks as they nothing Patreon can do that won't piss off their creators will bring in enough money to keep the investors happy.
In addition to the fallout from the Patreon Purge, the future is not looking bright for Patreon and Jack Conte.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/crowd-funding-platform-patreon-announces-it-will-pay-out-half-a-billion-dollars-to-content-creators-in-2019.html

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Offline johnlsenchak

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #1 on: February 06, 2019, 05:29:37 am »


In my  opinion, Youtube   content  creators (not all)  have become  solely   about  making  money,   verses  making  real good content
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Offline timelessbeing

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #2 on: February 06, 2019, 05:59:58 am »
Not solely, but definitely the main motivator.

Maybe Jack will sell Patreon to Microsoft or Google or something. Patreon employees should probably have a Plan B ready.

Where do you get a stainless toilet like that ... airplanes?
« Last Edit: February 06, 2019, 06:39:32 am by timelessbeing »
 

Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #3 on: February 06, 2019, 06:01:30 am »
What I would like to see is an app to simplify supporting your favorite creator(s) using cryptocurrency to the point where it's literally just selecting them in the app and letting the app run to mine crypto. Ideally, it would be some sort of energy efficient cryptocurrency although every one of those that I have dealt with have significant downsides that make them not very good as currencies.
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

Cryptocurrency lesson 0: Altcoins and Bitcoin are not the same thing.
 

Online Berni

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #4 on: February 06, 2019, 06:37:58 am »
The main point of cryptocurrency is that its the opposite energy efficient. If its easy to run on a phone then someone will put together a rack full of servers running a few 1000s of instances of a Android VM that's running the mining app.

The fact that you need immense amounts of processing power to do it is part of the design for cryptocurrency to avoid having someone just print money for free. The processing power is sort of the proof of effort that you worked hard for those cypto coins.
 

Online Bud

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #5 on: February 06, 2019, 06:53:10 am »
I fail to see how it is feasible to mine even a tiny fraction of a cryptocurrency on a mobile phone. Best way to kill the battery comes as a bonus.
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Offline TERRA Operative

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #6 on: February 06, 2019, 07:37:07 am »
In my opinion, Youtube content creators (not all) have become solely about making money, verses making real good content

IMO, there's no problem with using the platform to make money, but as you say, they also should be striving to make good content..

I deleted my patreon partly for this reason. I make youtube content, but I don't think it's nearly good enough to ask for money beyond a youtube ad here and there.
I think it'll be a looonnng time before I reach the critical mass of the more prominent channels (if ever).
Where does all this test equipment keep coming from?!?

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Offline Moshly

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #7 on: February 06, 2019, 07:48:40 am »
Subscribe Star is just as bad as Patreon, look what happened to Apostate Prophet ->
https://youtu.be/VRitNVGa2xA?t=300
 

Offline timelessbeing

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #8 on: February 06, 2019, 07:49:40 am »
I make youtube content, but I don't think it's nearly good enough to ask for money
That doesn't stop a lot of people.
 

Offline Synthtech

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #9 on: February 06, 2019, 08:11:31 am »
Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin left the sinking Patreon ship. Clean your room Patreon!
 

Offline Howardlong

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #10 on: February 06, 2019, 08:40:28 am »
300 employees!!!! WTF are they all doing?

For the non-tech roles, there is zero reason to be located in San Francisco. I'd even suggest that they should move the tech roles out. They can't be that great, Patreon hardly has a great reputation for its technology, whether it be data breaches or as a payment processor.

It sounds like Conte's had a boot up the butt from his investors.

Regarding the payment processing, that is their single core business proposition. The phrase "You had one job" springs to mind.



 

Offline OwO

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #11 on: February 06, 2019, 09:46:09 am »
"The company is also on track to pay out $500 million to content creators in 2019, pushing the company to surpass $1 billion in payouts since its inception in 2013.

Under the company's current business model, 90 percent of funds are paid directly to content creators. Patreon takes 5 percent, and the remaining 5 percent covers transaction fees."

$500 million * 0.05 is $25 million. How the fuck do you need $25 million a year to run a shitty website plus payment gateway? It's not even a real payment processor. The site is not youtube, it doesn't host videos or anything bandwidth heavy.  Inefficient corporations with a shitload of overhead deserve to die, so that leaner operations can take their place.
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Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #12 on: February 06, 2019, 10:12:34 am »
 

Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #13 on: February 06, 2019, 10:17:42 am »
$500 million * 0.05 is $25 million. How the fuck do you need $25 million a year to run a shitty website plus payment gateway? It's not even a real payment processor. The site is not youtube, it doesn't host videos or anything bandwidth heavy.  Inefficient corporations with a shitload of overhead deserve to die, so that leaner operations can take their place.

Imagine if you had 10 really smart and capable people, who would bet against them being able to do the same or better for say a $1M salary each?
Patreon is begging to be taken down by a much leaner startup.
 

Online Marco

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #14 on: February 06, 2019, 10:36:17 am »
They have a good business, but they don't want a business ... they want a multi-billion dollar buyout. Can't do that with a 25 Million revenue company with limited growth potential.
 

Offline ziggyfish

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #15 on: February 06, 2019, 10:37:53 am »
I would say, the investors have seen the response of the recent purge, and seen the down turn in revenue from it and said, to the CEO, how are you going to recover this lost revenue?

He would also have his own ambitions, so he's looking at other ways of making money.
 

Offline ziggyfish

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #16 on: February 06, 2019, 10:43:40 am »
$500 million * 0.05 is $25 million. How the fuck do you need $25 million a year to run a shitty website plus payment gateway? It's not even a real payment processor. The site is not youtube, it doesn't host videos or anything bandwidth heavy.  Inefficient corporations with a shitload of overhead deserve to die, so that leaner operations can take their place.

Imagine if you had 10 really smart and capable people, who would bet against them being able to do the same or better for say a $1M salary each?
Patreon is begging to be taken down by a much leaner startup.

Although I agree with you regarding company size. However the  Pareto Principe is at play here. Square root of the employees produce half the revenue. Sqrt(300) = 17
 

Offline NivagSwerdna

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #17 on: February 06, 2019, 10:46:30 am »
...with limited growth potential.
It is curious that it is not growing (if that is the case)... You would think it would scale rapidly iff it was a good idea...
 

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #18 on: February 06, 2019, 10:48:27 am »
Imagine if you had 10 really smart and capable people, who would bet against them being able to do the same or better for say a $1M salary each?
Patreon is begging to be taken down by a much leaner startup.

It depends on how willing PayPal is to work with another company and if they are willing to be as lenient for more questionable content for newcomers as they are with Patreon. There is really no alternative to PayPal other than starting your own payment processing company, which certainly is an option, but not an easy one.
 

Offline timelessbeing

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #19 on: February 06, 2019, 10:48:38 am »
I don't think this "purge" is as significant as people make it out to be.
 

Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #20 on: February 06, 2019, 02:10:44 pm »
The main point of cryptocurrency is that its the opposite energy efficient. If its easy to run on a phone then someone will put together a rack full of servers running a few 1000s of instances of a Android VM that's running the mining app.

The fact that you need immense amounts of processing power to do it is part of the design for cryptocurrency to avoid having someone just print money for free. The processing power is sort of the proof of effort that you worked hard for those cypto coins.
The energy efficient coins (e.g. Swagbucks) use all sorts of tricks to prevent that exact problem. The biggest one is IP limits, followed by actually using bandwidth so an IT manager that tries to deploy a few hundred instances at work would significantly slow down the network. Known VPN/VPS ranges are blacklisted.

There's also Curecoin and Foldingcoin that's efficient in a different way - do real work that is of benefit outside the cryptocurrency system.
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

Cryptocurrency lesson 0: Altcoins and Bitcoin are not the same thing.
 

Offline langwadt

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #21 on: February 06, 2019, 06:11:04 pm »
What I would like to see is an app to simplify supporting your favorite creator(s) using cryptocurrency to the point where it's literally just selecting them in the app and letting the app run to mine crypto. Ideally, it would be some sort of energy efficient cryptocurrency although every one of those that I have dealt with have significant downsides that make them not very good as currencies.

not matter how you twist it cryptocurrency is a stupid waste,  it is like flushing useful resources down the drain to get
internet points
 

Offline Dave

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #22 on: February 06, 2019, 06:16:37 pm »
not matter how you twist it cryptocurrency is a stupid waste,  it is like flushing useful resources down the drain to get internet points
Why bother actually looking into it, when you could just repeat the blanket statement that the banker told the news reporter, right? ::)
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Online Bicurico

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #23 on: February 06, 2019, 06:19:10 pm »
I don't know what Patreon is and at this time I'm afraid to ask...
 :palm:

Offline NivagSwerdna

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Re: eevBLAB #59 - Patreon Is An Unsustainable Business
« Reply #24 on: February 06, 2019, 06:46:10 pm »
It seems they acquired Memberful (a tiny 1-10 employee) company... so maybe their aspirations are membership generally not just their previous core business.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patreon

EEVBlog presumeably in the NSFW category  ;)
« Last Edit: February 06, 2019, 06:48:22 pm by NivagSwerdna »
 


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