Cosmetics.
Let’s offer paid cosmetics for users of your instance. Animated or custom banners, posts, new themes, etc.
It’s a model that works really well for Discord and League of Legends. Instances offering to sell aesthetic luxury to their user base could work for Mastodon too.
It’s non-invasive, it’s optional, it’s a great addition for some people, and it allows to raise funds to keep the hosted instances up and running.
Do you think it’s viable?
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Keep it simple: a special badge offered to people who sponsor the instance that means “I sponsor this instance”.
charging for cosmetics might devalue the essence of mastodon. it’s more about the community and less about flashy stuff. keeping the platform open and accessible is key. monetization shouldn’t compromise the core values of mastodon.
Donations is the way forward.
A dollar or two should be enough per month.
I run mine for free, self hosted, and I’m alone there. Server cost is absorbed by my hobby expenses. Maybe $20 per month.
Just curious, how many users do you currently host and what is your user amount capacity? Just trying to figure out math in terms of scalability
I thought the “I’m alone there” covered it.
Donations are usually volontary so if you run a very large instance, income isn’t guaranteed.
No need to be a dickhead…the “I’m alone there” was an ambiguous statement which I interpreted as you solely absorbed all the costs and effort of hosting.
English isn’t my first, or second, language. Maybe something got lost in translation.
I’m sorry if I sound like a dick head.
Ah completely understand. I apologize then for calling you that.
Donations is def not the way forward if you want to mainstream it.
It works because moderation on Mastodon is manual (by my understanding), so most good instances are closed, which means donations kind of work.
But donating to use a social media service is unheard of in India (and may I say most of Asia too). Most also consider this as a waste of time. There’s no way you can make Mastodon big in India without thinking of a way to monetise it.
I personally couldn’t give a crap about those kind of things, I definitely wouldn’t pay for it. Mona looks great and is already customisable enough for my liking. Some other apps have even more visual customisation.
If I wanted a custom theme in my web browser I’d run custom CSS, like how Bird UI works. Or just use a service like elk.zone and I wouldn’t have to faff around with custom themes/code/plugins.
But sure, I don’t see why you couldn’t do this. It’d be best done via plug-ins for Mastodon, not per-instance. Then people can off plug-ins in some kind of marketplace. You pay for the plug-in, it installs into Mastodon, and you can manage your current plugins from your Mastodon preferences.
Yeah, why not. If someone wants to build it then there’s no harm in it existing.
Is this a joke post?
Low effort comment. Would have loved to see your more elaborated answer. How does this look like a joke to you? Monetisation is important to maintain the basic functions of Mastodon instances. They don’t run on good intentions and the biggest ones most certainly wouldn’t run on donations alone to handle hundred of millions of users. Plus a proper monetisation model would be necessary for world wide adoption, especially by non-lucrative organisms. I don’t get the “joke” you see.
I honestly was not sure if it was a serious post or not. Opening with “cosmetics” is odd to me.
And the drive to “monetize” everything – stop it. Ask for money or sell things or do what you want on your instance – no one will care. (well not true, most of the fediverse will likely block you, but I could be wrong).
Your righteous indignation is tiresome.
The elaberate answer is: Microtransactions for an open source Free As In Freedom project is absolutely frakking insane. I must assume the OP is a troll from Twitter delibertely out to destroy the foundation of the Fediverse.
I seen module for running ads and you can pay for ad free mode. I think it’s for pleroma, not mastodon.
most users are using mobile apps and these will not show ads. you may want to post ad directly to user timeliness but any app can block posts.
I seen larger Japanese instances display ad, I have no numbers if this is more effective than donations.
While I can understand a desire to try to make money off of running a Mastodon instance – consider that you can host your own private Mastodon instance for about $5/month, which gives you effectively unlimited control and customization.
If you intend to charge $5/month or more for cosmetics, what additional incentive would users have to use your server instead of their own? If you charge less than that, are you sure you’d be making enough money to cover the extra maintenance and responsibility you’re taking on for it?
If someone develops a good plugin or other kind of extension for mastodon that makes this possible, maybe the people that want to use it, can.
I don´t personally think it´s a good idea, nor do i think it´'s non-invasive, but why not experiment.
Asking mastodon´s main developer will probably not lead to anything, cause it would result in backlash from too many of it´s users. At least that would be my guess. But keeping it a third party thing, that integrates easily with the existing mastodon code base, will offer a good proof of concept.
Implementing anything involving payments is dangerous, doing it this way could offer a playground for server admins to mess around with. The ones who are willing to testdrive it could do so. In the meantime, bugs can be ironed out. Who knows, if it´'s a success, maybe then it would be a good idea to approach the developers and have something to pitch :)
Oh man, you just got people’s pitchforks out
I am going to say I agree… to some extent. Misskey saw this and they introduced measures to allow ad hosting and such.
I’m not necessarily saying ads should be it **(**I hate ads myself), but if they are, we can certainly foster communities where the ads are from community members only? (they can advertise products, services for their community. Not without mod approval of course)
This could give admins complete control on wether their servers have or do not have ads.
BUT,
I think perks are a much nicer way.
Last I checked, the roadmap mentioned a paid accounts feature being explored.
I think what you are advising will be the direction mastodon takes with that.
The intent I am sure is NOT a monetization only deal, I’m sure it is intended to be optional and to support instances.
My thing is if we are going to have such a feature, why not allow rewarding the end user with some perks?
I think misskey allows admins to define user storage limits, and supporters get more right? Im love the sound of that. It helps prevent any 1 user from hogging up tons of storage, rewards those who support you.
I agree that allowing paid accounts and rewarding these users is a good thing.
Now as far as if an admin is profiting or not, we need a system kind of like open collective, or a crypto wallet (hear me out).
I would be more than happy with my user’s paid funds going into some sort of holding that all users can check at any given time.
I have a BTC address listed on my instance. It doesn’t have much, but it has more than enough to cover about 4 months of payments should anything ever happen to me.All my end users can clearly see the address, have access to a website to check it, and for those familiar you know damn well you can see all transactions publicly on this wallet, so I can’t lie and pull money out without it being trackable.
I do need to see how opencollective works though because one downside for my current method is my other admin will need to pull funds whereas open collective I think allows people to pay in and they pay the host?
Something like this would be ideal imo
Are you serious? Mastodon doesn’t need to be monetized to begin with.
Any non-free service needs to monetize to scale. Hobbyists paying out of pocket can only take it so far. Though it seems half of fedi users don’t care to grow it to begin with
I see monetizing as something different from covering cost.
I agree that costs need to be covered somehow, but monetization is about making MORE money than is actually needed to run the platform and that is definitely the Achilles heel of existing social media that doesn’t need to be carried over to Mastodon.
It does though. Someone has to pay for the hosting costs. And the domain (yearly) cost.
As an instance runner, it isn’t a LOT of money, but still, it is money. It DOES cost to run an instance, and donations/sponsorships are nice to help defer the costs.
This is what donation drives are for.
On the instance I am on the admin currently have collected enough last donation drive to run the server for three years.
Mastodon is an open source Free-As-in-Freedom non profit project. That is the POINT of it.
I think a “selling” point, or rather, sponsorship point, is identity. You get a good social handle, and you are insuring that they will have a place to post their stuff. Like things like linktr.ee for example. People use that for their digital “identity”. Mastodon is like that.
Now it would be great to see tools to allow people to customize their own profile page more. I’d be in support of that.
Just move to Bluesky already.
You first?
Mastodon is a non-profit that provides a service. Typically for non-profits, everyone gets to enjoy the service equally. Microtransactions and cosmetics would go against this principle, however I think it would still be worth to try.
Nothing about profit goes against Mastodon, Fediverse, open source, etc.
It might go against most instances CoC or mission statements though.
> Nothing about profit goes against Mastodon, Fediverse, open source, etc.
I’m not sure from where you are reading this, but Mastodon is registered as a non-profit organization in Germany. That means the extra costs have to go toward providing a service to the community instead of making a profit.I don’t understand how locking features behind monetization gives a choice to users, in fact, it’s the opposite, right?
Mastodon as a protocol/software, not Mastodon gGmbH
I mean you could interpret their post that way, but it isn’t clear that they are suggesting branching off of mastodon to something else, kind of like how truth social did.