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Vine stars demanded monetization features, its owner Twitter refused, and many fled for YouTube. Platforms got scared. Twitch introduced tipping with Bits. By 2018, YouTube started testing Patreon-style Channel Memberships and Facebook offered Ad Breaks that paid video creators for mid-roll commercials. “It took 15 years of frustration and some ear... See more

Today, content creators monetize their social presence through advertising or sponsorships, but these limited methods are often unstainable. That’s why creators are turning to solutions like Superpeer, Patreon, and Gumroad to monetize their audiences. While these solutions help monetize creator time and content, they don’t always allow creators or ... See more

The first generation of these companies is already on the scene. Products like Patreon, Cameo and Substack have gained traction over the past several years by zeroing in on the monetization component of the problem, offering creators pathways to generating revenue directly from their audiences rather than relying solely on platform-controlled adver... See more

But though Patreon’s made significant progress toward its goal to “fund the creative class,” I think its business model is now under threat, specifically because most of the large social media platforms have realized that there’s real money to be made from taking a cut of subscriptions that are driven by their creators. Over the past few years, sev... See more

The recent history of the Internet, however, warns that we shouldn’t necessarily expect the endearingly homegrown nature of these 1,000 True Fans communities to persist. When viable new economic niches emerge online, venture-backed businesses, looking to extract their cut, are typically not far behind. Services such as Patreon and Kickstarter are j... See more