You are correct. Websites, the stack to supply video encoding, even scalability is a solved problem.
The hard work isn’t technical, it’s getting people onto your platform in the first place (marketing), getting people to continue using your platform (retention) and the perennial problems of SaaS evolving with other SaaS platforms (how many dev hours are you willing to eat trying to keep up with the Joneses?).
SaaS, and in this case, SaaS offering content, is a losing game. You will either lose your shirt, sell your business, or become entrenched in a position whose inertia is difficult to break. How much of any of those you are willing to take a firehose of is the question.
It’s not easy, but you’re not guaranteed to end up
either lose your shirt, sell your business, or become entrenched in a position whose inertia is difficult to break
It depends on the personalities involved and the business model they go with.
Nebula has done really well with consistent growth as a premium offering where people pay one subscription fee to get ad-free videos from exclusively high-quality creators across a quote broad range of niches, in addition to bonus extras and Nebula Originals.
Dropout seems to have a lot of success with a range of mostly unscripted comedy, centred around a core cast of trusted comedic actors with a larger range of guests.
Floatplane, on the other hand, seems much less successful, probably owing to its business model being basically Patreon’s, but only for video. Instead of the wide range of content you get for surprisingly reasonable amounts of Nebula and Dropout, Floatplane ends up looking very expensive if you want to support more than one or two creators. Plus the creators on it haven’t got the same degree of trust; it ends up reeking of the sort of techbro vibes that people are explicitly trying to get away from.
Websites work very well and are scalable af. A plugged in person with a track record like that could go Web 2.0 and probably net more.
You are correct. Websites, the stack to supply video encoding, even scalability is a solved problem.
The hard work isn’t technical, it’s getting people onto your platform in the first place (marketing), getting people to continue using your platform (retention) and the perennial problems of SaaS evolving with other SaaS platforms (how many dev hours are you willing to eat trying to keep up with the Joneses?).
SaaS, and in this case, SaaS offering content, is a losing game. You will either lose your shirt, sell your business, or become entrenched in a position whose inertia is difficult to break. How much of any of those you are willing to take a firehose of is the question.
It’s not easy, but you’re not guaranteed to end up
It depends on the personalities involved and the business model they go with.
Nebula has done really well with consistent growth as a premium offering where people pay one subscription fee to get ad-free videos from exclusively high-quality creators across a quote broad range of niches, in addition to bonus extras and Nebula Originals.
Dropout seems to have a lot of success with a range of mostly unscripted comedy, centred around a core cast of trusted comedic actors with a larger range of guests.
Floatplane, on the other hand, seems much less successful, probably owing to its business model being basically Patreon’s, but only for video. Instead of the wide range of content you get for surprisingly reasonable amounts of Nebula and Dropout, Floatplane ends up looking very expensive if you want to support more than one or two creators. Plus the creators on it haven’t got the same degree of trust; it ends up reeking of the sort of techbro vibes that people are explicitly trying to get away from.