internetter
internetter
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.
KennyBlanken
> Onlyfans creators creating pseudo-relationships.
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.
internetter
Yeah it’s hard for me to watch. I feel sorry for the people so attention deprived that they need to throw dozens of dollars at a streamer who makes 10000 a night for any sort of acknowledgment
Abishek_Muthian
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.
culi
What does your app do differently than something like coindrop[0] which is essentially a linktree page linking to all donation platforms for a creator
gaadd33
Open Payment Host seems to connect to credit card gateways (Stripe/Square) whereas coindrop seems to link to P2P style payment methods where you are sending funds to an "address".
culi
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
* less fees
bilekas
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.
This is a great example of dogfooding.
culi
Yup, liberapay is funded by donations on liberapay
https://liberapay.com/Liberapay/
They're the second largest recipient
extraduder_ire
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.
culi
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.
TZubiri
Not necessarily. Not every entity can do whatever they want with deposits from others, you need to be an actual bank and regulated as such to have the right to invest other people's money
patcon
I love Liberapay. I wish more people in the EU used it or contributed to it (it's FOSS) instead of using Patreon or GitHub Sponsors.
seltzered_
Related: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr flattr , which shutdown in 2023.
daghamm
I like librapay, I wish more people would use it.
I also hope they can reduce the ratio paid to paypal/stripe. More money should go to devs.
simjnd
> What are the payment processing fees?
> 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.
amryl
Can it be compared in any way with GNU Taler payment system ?
riffraff
No, it's something like Patreon, not a currency infrastructure.
bsnnkv
Does Liberapay provide the various tax forms a receiver needs to file their yearly returns in the US?
filmgirlcw
Last time I checked into this, the answer was no. This is very much a more EU-focused service, based on the stuff they offer. And even then, they don't pre-collect for VAT like Patreon does.
(I just checked and couldn't get a definitive answer but since it's been 5 years [1] since there was any update on a ticket requesting the ability to offer invoices in PDF form of your monthly receivables, my gut instinct says the answer is still, "no")
creer
The receiver does not need any tax forms in the US.
Payers are obligated to issue tax-related forms in certain circumstances. But the receivers don't even need those to file their own tax paperwork.
internetter
This is an oversimplification. More than likely, income from Liberapay can be categorized as a 'gift.' Often, gifts aren't taxed to the recipient, so long as its less than $18,000 (this is not tax advice), Liberapay does not provide tax forms or tax advice. Its up to you to accurately categorize the income you receive based on the LiberaPay ToS, the expectations of your donors and the IRS, and your specific campaign.
Your payment processors (PayPal and Stripe) absolutely do provide tax forms. Its your responsibility to make appropriate use of them. But Liberapay itself doesn't have forms it needs to provide (and by god you don't want to provide tax forms or tax advice you aren't required by law to give)
schlauerfox
Pretty sure that is misleading, i'm no tax lawyer but gift rules only apply to friends and family. Buskers have to report income from performing, waitstaff have to report voluntary tips given to them and while there's probably no caselaw yet, I would suspect the IRS would fight you on income you receive entertaining other people not being 'gifts'.
bullen
I wish they had ways to setup fixed price recurring payment items.
Right now I use gumroad but they take a very high fee.
KennyBlanken
> 745 new donations have been started in the past month, increasing total weekly funding by $899.10
> 14 new pledges have been made in the past month, adding $35.79 of weekly donations waiting to be claimed.
> 20,426.66 was transferred last week between 14,076 users.
Not really encouraging stats for a system that has been around for ten years, though maybe the PR from being mentioned on here will give it a boost.
(It took considerable effort to copy that text, because they are using text-selection blocking tricks. Nowhere else on the page is this the case...)
greenie_beans
ooo curious how hard it is to integrate this with Ghost. It's a perfect CMS for non-profits who are good at blogging and email marketing.
rpgbr
Ghost integrates directly with Stripe, no need to have an intermediary like Liberapay.
nickpsecurity
Has anyone done a review with the strengths and weaknesses of Liberapay vs common platforms?
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.