I wrote about all that at length in the past, e.g. here:

"Copying something at zero marginal cost leads to a virtually infinite supply of that thing. It doesn't matter if that thing is a JPG, a blog post, or an mp3 file. If it can be copied by anyone quickly, perfectly, and for basically free, the supply of said thing quickly approaches infinity. We move from the analog world of scarcity into the digital world of abundance. Markets don't work in this world. In the words of Jaron Lanier: "Markets become absurd as supply approaches infinity.""

https://dergigi.com/2022/12/18/a-vision-for-a-value-enabled-web/

I'm mostly with you. I think the gaming example is a bit dubious. Probably the best game released in ages, amongst a whole garbage heap of both paid and free to play, is a paid game - Elden Ring. Free to play is mostly trash, disposable and will have not much of a fond legacy. There are some exceptions obviously.

Just a little aside. I appreciate the argument tho, I'm just not all that onboard with that analogy.

Where does the 4% stat come from?

You perfectly captured the essence of how the internet and the digital content market have evolved. The battle against the distribution of digital content without consent is a pointless fight, and the real opportunity lies in something more valuable and intangible: community and the connection between creator and audience.

The key to the future, as you pointed out, lies in abandoning the barriers to accessing the content itself and embracing people's willingness to support. Instead of limiting and protecting content, the idea is to open doors to communities where people can connect with the creators they love, feel part of something bigger, and at the same time have the chance to contribute voluntarily.

Taking this into account. Where is the best place to publish such a blog? I am looking at Ghost.org

I want to publish a chapter of science fiction and then place a sat target as a fundraiser on nostr. If the target gets hit I place the next chapter. I have only written four chapters and if I get recurring sponsors it will motivate me to continue and finish the tale in an epic. If the story is shit no one will pay. If it retains reader interest maybe they even want to participate in the creative process. Like an interactive story development.

I am still not certain if I want to use Ghost.org though.

💯

Access to Creators > Access to Creations

> Computers are copying machines. Information yearns to be free.

It always surprises me how persistent is the idea that you can base

a viable, long-term business on limiting access to information and data.

> People want to support the stuff they love, and they're willing to pay for it. Not all people, but ~4% of them. And that is enough.

May I ask where that 4% figure comes from?

Do you think that ecosystems like Nostr can help popularize the concept of value4value and make that number higher?

Free market will decide, but yes.

I think a lot of people on Nostr FUD on V4V because they are trying to monetize social media interactions. I use Zaps on here as a better version of a like but I’m not going to send you a large Zap for some social media post.

V4V is about removing all the barriers so people can enjoy your content as frictionless as possible.

yes

Nobody will ever make enough money from voluntary donations to have a proper career except for a handful of popular creators. In the real world, whenever donations are mission critical they are accompanied by fundraising, which is time spent procuring donations. Content creators don't have the time or resources as individuals to do that kind of marketing. Fundraising is a lot of work.

Relying on donations is an abysmal prospect for anyone trying to make a career from creating content. Many, many talented people on established platforms outside of nostr aren't making enough money to have a proper career. Doing it on nostr right now is even more difficult.

I think going all in on V4V is naively optimistic. The reality is that content creators need an array of tools to monetize their content and being dogmatic about V4V is not productive. It's frankly discouraging to anyone who hopes to monetize their craft, because it's totally unrealistic. It's silly to talk about how the theoretical price of digital content is zero because people today still buy shows on digital platforms instead of pirating them. Maybe answer why people still do that and you'll start to see that there are other factors you aren't considering.

Using your logic all books should be free?

Are books not behind paywalls?

An author should not be compensated for their work?

You just reminded me of Aaron Swartz. https://www.internethalloffame.org/inductee/aaron-swartz/

When you can pay 1K sats to read an article and pay for it painlessly over lightning, I will probably just pay it. I have before.

digital business models will be riskier than land-anchored businesses that bootstrap the tech to analogue use cases, which can never be as efficient and therefore defends its margins better.

Bitcoin businesses tend to be ran by or influenced by, autistic devs, who are poorly skilled to be a fiduciary or man manager. AI will help remove them as gatekeepers, and the business models will have to be excellent to survive.

Demo's and wireframes are worthless.

Apps with no income are worthless.

Built and beg is not a strategy.

Bester Post für heute. Kann man dich auch in einem Podcast oder so hören? Reposted 🧡💜

You know, everyone low-key hates product placement and other advertisements and people are now paying money to get the without-product-placement version. That's just arriving at a freemium model, but annoying the heck out of everyone, first, by trying to peddle face cream and vitamin tablets.

People willing to pay for things, prefer to cut the crap and just pay outright.

You say DRM strategies are stupid, ridiculous, and don't make sense. You demand no prisons, and no limits on the consumption of digital media.

However I haven't seen any explicit statement about whether DRM would still be bad if the strategies COULD work. You don't seem to say anything about whether the pervasiveness of piracy or the ease of creating unauthorized reproductions are good things.

You talk so much about the status quo for what is possible, but I don't see any explicit statement about rights. Why is that? Won't you say whether the original producers of a piece of digital media have any right to dictate who consumes it? Won't you say whether the consumers of a piece of digital media have every possible right to reproduce it and redistribute the reproductions? Are you even capable of giving a normative justification for a value-for-value paradigm?

So is building relationships and community on #nostr good enough to reach that 4% tipping point for proximity and access?

Or if someone was just starting out…is Patreon, Substack, Paragraph.xyz et cetera really needed?

Essentially what’s I’m trying to get at (albeit it may sound selfish, but that isn’t my heart):

Can someone (like me??) “make a living” (for lack of better phrase) simply by building relationships (#zaps ??) on Nostr instead of using a 3rd party platform such as those mentioned?

P.S.

I don’t mean to correlate or incenuate that receive zaps = relationships or that the goal of a relationship is to earn a #zap

I’m simply trying to communicate, albeit perhaps not clearly, the idea and potential paradigm shift we are in which is this #v4v movement.

Nice, thank you for sharing!

nostr:npub1l5sga6xg72phsz5422ykujprejwud075ggrr3z2hwyrfgr7eylqstegx9z do we have a proposal somewhere for non-discrete relationship declaration? I’m missing the numerics in nostr. It would be cool if we could do calculations with events instead of sticking to categories.

For example I’d like to think a bit more about npub “location” and “distance”. May something to be tried out with a spatial database such as postgis.

Facebook has graphs, but does anyone have a spatial database underlying its social network?