I’ve been thinking a lot recently about PeerTube, Loops, Bandwagon, and other platforms in the Fediverse that are geared around artists. I might get flamed for this, and you’re welcome to disagree, but I think the network is in dire need of having support for commerce.
Not “Big Capitalism” commerce, but the ability for people to buy and sell things, support projects, and commission their favorite creators to keep making more stuff.
It‘s a two sided blade, but I get what you mean.
On one hand monetization is the thing that ruins platforms for me because it invites grifters and even decent people are becoming obsessed with numbers. Most people see content creation only as a career path and not something to do for fun anymore. I find that depressing at times.
On the other hand we currently live in a capitalist world and have to play by those rules to some extend. I learned most of the things I do for a living from Youtube because professionals do Blender tutorials as a side gig or even for a living. There probably wouldn‘t be nearly as much knowledge out there without this motivator. Or at least not in this form that is easy to understand for me. The official Blender documentation usually isn‘t the first place I‘m searching through when I have a problem.
So I see where you‘re coming from but it‘s a fine line between helpful and loathsome.
What if there was a federated platform for supporting the channels you like? Maybe something like Patreon? Or how about some sort of merch store for people who can sell the things they make?
Well we do have Liberapay. It’s not perfect in that it only addresses the payment angle (with the issue around processors noted by the other reply still present), and doesn’t allow for subscriber only content, but it’s something.
I think between something like this and a few other things (dunno much about PeerTube etc. or if ‘private’ posts are a thing where you could maintain a ‘mailing list’ of donor accounts and grant them access to exclusive stuff), it’s possible to cobble something together. Lot of management would be required in the backend compared to more mainstream approaches at this point, though.
Just thinking outloud, there’s probably stuff I’m not considering here. Re: an eStore…idk, only thing I can think of is a DIY webstore relying on emails and money transfer services if trying to avoid mainstream eCommerce stuff like Shopify or whatever (same way people used to sell pot on the clearweb back in the very early days, lol).