Relay and client devs and media hosts ought to be thinking of and approaching their services as businesses. They need to charge for access, or provide tiered levels of service at least so that those using more resources pay for them. A professional artist is already accustomed to paying for tools and services such as hosting, websites, etc.
No, that would be a failed business. There are only 10k DAU on nostr. If 1% paid $10 a month, that's still only $1000 to share among all the relays and all the businesses. It's not enough because some developer make $1000 in a few days. And that $1000 has to cover the whole of nostr. Nostr is too small to have businesses right now. Businesses require economies of scale, so nostr would need to be at least 10 times bigger. But that's OK. Nostr is still fun at its current size.
Agree. Economies of scale are at play here. Some day when the user base hits a magical number, all of the above will be sustainable.
We're treating it as a paid hobby or side project. Most people who don't have grants have some other source of income, we're just hoping that the income eventually scales up with the user base.
@phil and I have been running a paid relay at nostr.com.au since @Cameri first released payment gated relays at the start of 2023.
We focussed on a paid relay for #AUStriches to access #nostr and tried to make it a hub so new Aussie users could connect here.
We’re ~18 months in and just under breakeven. I set the fee at 6969 Sats from day dot and it hasn’t changed. ☯️ was my 69 Sat zap from when I joined so I just extrapolated that to the relay fee of ☯️☯️.
We fortunately targeted Aussies who are in the global scheme of things wealthy. They can pay a few dollarydoos to be on the main Aussie relay, get a @nostr.com.au NIP05 if they want, have a “local” relay and still connect to the world.
I operated relay.exchange for a while and gave up when the churn of relay operators became a burden. Most just spun up with no plan other than to chuck a fee on to their service and weeks later they saw costs blowout and shutdown and I couldn’t keep up with the changes.
is a hobby. A community service for #AUStriches. We’re not making money. I pay the gap out of pocket when needed to keep the lights on even for those who want to earn an income here.
Completely understand content creators want to be paid but Corn can’t explain why he’s shitting on people who zap “low” amounts as if guilting them to fund creators will solve anything. Guilt hasnt funded the Aussie relay! My wallet has.
This network is tiny but has massive potential. We’ll keep going and subsidising til it doesn’t make sense.
69 Sats might not be much today but I hand it out multiple times daily to do my part keeping this thing going.
Sure would be nice if creatooors stopped bitching about their income so we could just enjoy their content whilst the people providing infrastructure are in the red.
Nobody is going to join nostr because they’re eager to support their favorite developers or relay/server operator. They WILL come to Nostr if their favorite artists are using it to publish content. Your primary customer as a relay operator is the artist/creator seeking to monetize their content. Period. If you don’t understand that then you’re going to continue to offer your relay at a loss until you eventually shut it down.
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