The Only Legitimate Creator Subscription Funding Platform
If you’re a Youtuber or creator with a funding base of support on Patreon or Paypal your income is dangling by a very thin cord.
You never know when you’re going to say the wrong thing and be kicked off these platforms.
As we’ve seen recently with political centrists Milo, Sargon, and a bunch of other cases, if someone finds you offensive you can be kicked off these platforms with no warning or recourse. You spend years of your life working your ass off creating great content or art that people appreciate and they are actually willing to pull out their wallet and pay you for it but that income stream can be cut off at any moment if someone out there decides that they don’t like you and is willing to spend just a few hours organizing a flagging campaign. Your income really does dangle from a very thin string if you have interesting opinions.
If you have a job and you get fired from your job and lose your income, you at least get to sit down with your boss who explains what you did wrong. But you’ll receive no such treatment from the internet’s mainstream financial platforms, you’ll send desperate and heartfelt emails pleading for an explanation and will disappointingly receive automated or generic copy/pasted responses from an apathetic “Trust and Safety” employee.
A lot of people are talking about Patreon alternatives like SubscribeStar.com and Podia but these platforms have the exact same vulnerability, they process payments through the legacy banking/finance/credit card system. It’s just a matter of time before soulless global finance corporations start demanding that these funding platforms politically censor creators like you! History is going to very predictably repeat itself on any funding platform that fundamentally relies on the legacy banking system.
The solution is of course cryptocurrency!
You probably have some fans that have already supported you by sending you crypto. There are thousands of altcoins and hundreds of crypto exchanges and wallets. One might be compromised but there’s no monopoly or political authority in the cryptocurrency space that can exclude you from the digital economy.
The issue up until now with cryptocurrency was of course that the options for subscription payments were lacking, counterintuitive, or just tricky for people to use.
The real Patreon alternative is Minds.com
This is a very popular pro-free speech social network with a proprietary cryptocurrency that runs on the Ethereum network. It has a feature for making reoccurring donations or “wires” to creators that you want to support. With just a few clicks you can sign up to make automatic monthly contributions to any channel on the site.
Here’s what to do…
1. Create a channel on Minds.com, start sharing your content there.
2. Add the creator support tiers that you have elsewhere on Minds.com. You’ll have to do a little math to figure out how much your support tiers are in the Minds token. $10 USD = 4 Minds Tokens (approximately). They have a tool that you can use to calculate this.
3. Urge your fans to follow you there. They don’t have a weird algorithm like Facebook or Youtube does that will hide your content from them.
4. Ask your fans that appreciate free speech to support you on Minds. Now, they will need to acquire some Minds currency themselves to do this of course. They’ll need to start by buying some Ethereum which can be done in any one of the cryptocurrency exchanges, I like LocalBitcoins.com or Mosiac Exchange. Although I think in the future they may be able to purchase the Minds token using their Paypal or credit cards.
Now, there’s a bit of a technical hurdle, you’ll need to connect your onchain Ethereum wallet to your offchain Minds token wallet, which honestly took me about 45 minutes to figure out following the very clear instructions on their site. Currently, it’s not exactly as easy as sending a Paypal payment. Once your Ethereum wallet is connected to your Minds wallet you can easily purchase the Minds token and transform Minds tokens into Ethereum which can be easily turned into cash that you can spend.
I realize it’s a bit of a technical hurdle over using Paypal or Patreon, but as we’re seeing there is a very high price for the convenience of these services.
If you’re not willing to spend 45 minutes setting up this cryptocurrency infrastructure for an uncensorable, antifragile stream of income you’re just not that serious about what you’re doing and protecting your freedom of speech!
A few other upsides to Minds.com
- They have a million users, they’ve been around for 7 years so they are not some brand new website that is going to disappear tomorrow.
- They have a video platform that’s pretty good. They won’t censor your videos if you’re not doing anything illegal. Some of my vlogs have actually gotten more views and interaction on Minds than they did on Youtube.
- They have zero fees. This probably won’t always be the case but unlike Patreon they don’t charge 5%.
- They have a proprietary altcoin. Right now it’s not worth very much compared to like Bitcoin or Ethereum BUT I’m imagining that in the future the coin will be traded in the cryptomarkets and this is the coin of the one legitimate Facebook competitor. I see it as quite possible that this coin might eventually go to $10 or $50. So I think this is a genuine opportunity to get in on a ground-floor opportunity that might really pay off!
Please go checkout Minds and let us know if this looks like a viable creator funding solution. I know it’s not perfect but it doesn’t rely on the very vulnerable legacy finance system and the Minds team is very responsive to feature requests and feedback.
I don’t work for Minds.com or have any formal association with them, I’m just someone passionate about free speech, I spend a lot of time on Minds and I see it as the best system for creators to be funded by their fans.
What to expect from me on Minds…
