DTube vs. YouTube vs. Patreon
I was chatting with a member of @sndbox today about a video I saw from @furiouspete123 (a popular YouTuber), where he talked about how his income for December 2017 was 90% (!) less than his income for December 2016. This is a YouTuber with over 4.5 million subscribers that is now posting on DTube.
It got me thinking about the different value propositions of the different platforms and what they have to offer for both creators and consumers of content. I don’t want to just come off as a fanboy for Steem, so please post a comment arguing against any of the things I mention if you think I’m wrong. I love talking about this stuff and I’m always happy to have my faulty reasoning pointed out! 👍
YouTube
YouTube is able to offer something special to people looking for videos. They have pretty much every type of video available, and it’s in a reliable and easy to use package. Most of the videos are available for free, but you have to watch ads on a lot of them unless you’re a member of YouTube Red. So basically we can say that the value offered by YouTube is an absolutely huge library of videos, available for free, in a reliable and easy to use package. A major problem with this model is that getting paid per view means that creators are incentivized to make clickbait titles and thumbnails and not necessarily good content.
Creators on YouTube are able to upload videos to the site for free, and earn money based on the advertising model. Ads are shown before some of their videos, and both YouTube and the content creator gets a cut of the ad dollars. YouTube is also testing out a new option, where creators can have “Sponsors” — basically their fans can sign up to pay $5 directly to the creator each month. So we can say that the value YouTube offers creators is a gigantic platform with access to as many as1.5 billion users for both ad and sponsor revenue. A major problem for creators right now can be seen in something called the Adpocalypse.
This video is a great summary of what happened and why YouTube and advertisers might be in trouble because of this situation. Basically, a bunch of big advertisers realized that their ads were being shown before videos containing things like hate speech and extremist content. The advertisers pulled their ads from the platform and YouTube has been changing its algorithm, which now oftentimes demonetizes content that is completely innocuous. So creators are making significantly less money, and are left constantly battling this algorithm that is trying to deem their videos as “not suitable for advertisers.” It’s a big problem, and one of the main reasons that we’re starting to see some big YouTubers show up on DTube.
Patreon
An alternative service for earning money from content is Patreon, which lets creators take pledges from subscribers and offer exclusive content in different tiers. The subscribers are called patrons, and they sign up to give money from their pocket directly to the content creator (usually monthly, and oftentimes just $1 USD).
Patreon has a clearer model because people are supporting creators directly. There aren’t any overbearing advertisers to decide who should be able to earn money — if someone has created popular content (and isn’t doing anything to violate the Patreon terms of service) they can create an account and take pledges from their fans.
I mostly use Patreon to support my favorite YouTubers, and the majority of them offer their content for free, but people still become their patrons because they like the content and want to support them. This type of service lets people feel like they’re part of the fan club — they can support and interact with the creators they love, and have a place to connect with other fans.
A downside to this type of platform is its reliance on credit card payments and the processing fees that they require. There was some minor drama on Patreon a couple months ago when they announced that they were changing the fee structure for pledges, and then later rolled this back after everyone complained.
DTube
DTube is a new model in this space that lets content creators earn money without having to take it directly from either advertisers or sponsors/patrons. As everyone who is watching this probably knows, creators on DTube earn money from upvotes. Users of the site don’t have to spend any of their own money to to support their favorite creators — they’re simply using their voting power to direct some of the rewards pool to the creator of the video.
Steem can be delegated from one account to another, and DTube has over two million Steem power delegated to the @dtube account. This money can be used to give creators on the site pretty big payouts. I made a post where I found that DTube handed out over $7,000 USD in 12 hours with their upvote. It’s unfathomable to think about any other ad-free platform handing out $14,000 per day to its creators.
This is a huge benefit for both content creators and consumers. Users of the site don’t have to watch ads, and creators don’t have to depend on ad-based dollars to get paid for their content.
Who Will Win
I’m biased of course, but I think DTube has the potential become pretty big. The benefits that come from being on the Steem blockchain are already being utilized, but DTube is also in a unique position to capitalize on the model that Patreon has made popular. All users of DTube have a wallet full of some amount of money and access to free, three second transactions. It wouldn’t be too hard to let users “sponsor” content creators like on YouTube and pay a certain amount of Steem or SBD per month.
YouTube is an incredible achievement — they stream over 1 billion hours of video per day — and the fact that they can offer such a gigantic range of videos makes it hard to imagine any other platform taking over the top spot in this category anytime soon. But I think DTube is in a good place to make a decent dent in the market. We’re already seeing some big name YouTubers come to the platform, which is pretty impressive considering how new it still is. I’m hoping the platform continues to get better, and we see a ton of growth over the course of this year.
What do you think? Which of these platforms has the most to offer to content creators and consumers? Thanks for watching!
Music by Chillhop: http://youtube.com/chillhopdotcom
Joakim Karud - Canals: https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarud
▶️ DTube
▶️ IPFS
I also love Dtube I think it has a verry interesting future ahead of it :)
Yeah, I'm excited to see how it develops!
Thanks for watching! 🙂
I think patreon is the best. )) But, in reality, no one from this list is bad, because content creators are using them - three platfoms, you don't need to sign a contract that if you use this then you must not use others two.
Have you used Patreon? I've never given anyone money from Patreon but I do upvote a lot on the steemit platform.
No, I didn't )) But I saw some big successes there. Problem here, on steemit, that your upvote is not every day or month. You can forget about those who you upvoted.
Very true! It's awesome to have all of these options available.
Thanks for watching!
The reason I'm on Steemit is because I'm tired of ads. Same thing for Youtube, I'm sick of seeing ads every time I watch a popular video. It ruined the experience for me, hence I never used Youtube ever since. As for Patreon I'm not really a user of their platform so jo comment. As for rewarding authors, I don't think Youtube or Patreon will ever come close Dtube. Yeah I'm being bias here but seeing a lot of great authors moving from Youtube to Dtube will tell you how great of a platform Dtube is. That's just my two cent.
Yeah, I really hope we see a serious decline in ads over the coming years -- they just make the experience of using whatever site they're on worse. I'm curious to see how YouTube ends up responding to this "Adpocalypse" because everyone seems really frustrated by it and they're just going to continue looking for other sites like DTube. Thanks for watching!
I am already convincing some of my friends with channels on YouTube to replicate their success on DTube. I've never been a fan of YouTube and the emergence of DTube has given me the perfect excuse to dump YouTube altogether. DTube is the future and the future is now.
Yeah, I definitely think we'll see more and more YouTubers coming to DTube while there are monetization problems over there. Thanks for watching! 🙂
You contradicted yourself somewhat. You said that on Patreon nobody is dictating what kind of content can be monetized, but Patreon can also revoke your account if you don't follow their terms of service (which can be ambiguous, it gives them the power to revoke anyone). Patreon is indeed dictating the content that can be monetized, they have revoked accounts for several people whom they don't want to support due to their politics.
Yeah, very good point. I also forgot to bring up how one way to lose monetization on DTube is if a video gets a big downvote from a singe whale. Doesn't seem to be a problem for most people, but it is a possibility if someone gets swept up in some Steem drama. Thanks for watching!
This is true. For me the key difference is that when Patreon demonetizes you, that's it, that's the end of the story on their platform. You can't be monetized there. On Steem, when a whale downvotes, that is one whale of many. If another whale or a large enough group (once the stake is distributed widely enough) counters that, then it can be reversed in practice. It just requires a culture that values protecting speech from retaliation, even if it's highly offensive/controversial/etc.
Yeah, very true. Thanks for the thoughtful responses, this is exactly the type of discussion I was hoping to have when I made this video 🙂
Dtube is more easy way for you to start in Vlogg, why? because Dtube is decentralized, you can earn even a small number of upvotes. Youtube needs a lot number of views to start earning. The era of youtube is over now its the era of dtube :)
heard for the first time about paterion, honestly speaking.
Nice post,
upvoted you and followed you
Thanks for watching! That is definitely true about YouTube requiring a ton of views to make any money. And it's fun being a part of DTube so early :P
I will always say this whenever however wherever... :I strongly and firmly believe in decentralization and all power to the people and for the people. A society where anybody's opinion and voice matters and has value. That is what dtube stands for. No matter how long it will take, that number one spot is meant for dtube. Crypto is the future and dtube incoorperates and has a crypto reward system. People like reasonable rewards and that is why the number of users using dtube is likely to outgrow the number of Youtube users in the near future. Dtube is the new age and more advanced Youtube.
Yeah, I'm really curious to see how things play out. Thanks for watching!
hanks for posting this. I was actually thinking for a long time to do this professionally and try to sell my work but knew how hard it is and how it can be and I just got discouraged and put it off for a long time. Haven't had inspiration for a long time, until I crossed your channel and decided to try your sky one for the first time on an iPad Pro. My second I drew a white tiger. I really like drawing on it. Thank you for getting me inspired again. Was thinking of posting the videos of video file from procreate but not sure. Something to think about.
Awesome! Glad I could help 🙂
Thanks for watching!
Proud to call myself a DTuber.
Welcome 😀