@dansup please don't :)

@dansup I think it's a good idea and I support it. It makes sense from the perspective of sustaining the developers (you), from the community utility angle, and as a value proposition for brands/influencers.

I would suggest, however, that you have a scaled tier so you can capture the expenses of the highest-traffic accounts. Getting API support into the social media management apps will take some strategy, mind you. (Without that, you're dead in the water.)

@dansup have you considered a crowdfund campaign? With the right PR, you could smash it out.

@dansup do it

@dansup I think that an instance that actually does verify said accounts and offers them basically unlimited #API access can work...

I would've started something like that ages ago if I had the €€€€€ to do so properly.

@dansup if you do, it will be blocked on sight by most of fedi. I'll block it for certain. Keep brands and influencers away from the rest of fedi. We don't need that mindset here. We get assaulted by ads and brands and all that shit daily. I don't need that in my social media.

@dansup I think it's a great idea. If we want adoption to keep growing, we need brands and (I hate to say this) influencers to move too.

I can't believe this wasn't already your full time job! 😅 The amount of changes you release on the weekly is incredible.

If pixelfed becomes your main source of income, things are going to get interesting. 😎

@dansup I think most of fedi will flip out. Instead of making it for brands and influencers, could a premium server have higher limits on certain things? Bigger files, longer videos, more... somethings. Personalized URLs?

I do think charging for accounts is perfectly reasonable. You'd just have to figure out what they'd be buying.

@dansup a small monthly fee would work great for most users, but for influencers whose content may consume way more bandwidth than we can anticipate, an itemised invoice may be the way to go? Introduces complexity to the system though.

@dansup as others have said it will likely be blocked by a lot of instances. "No brands" seems pretty ingrained in fedi culture at this point. Running a premium instance with some extra features might be a good idea though.

@dansup If you want a middle ground, consider a new Pixelfed instance which is welcoming to the cannabis crowd on Instagram, both regular users and influencers/brands. They are getting banned and deleted left and right on Instagram now, even in countries where it is completely legal (e.g., Canada).

@dansup yes to a paid instance but no need to limit it to brands and influencers. The benefit can be guaranteed uptime and quick fixes when things go down.

The really cool approach would be to integrate coil or some micropayment method so that users could support good content natively on instances that choose to turn such a feature on.

There was a recent discussion proposed about acceptable monetization approaches on the fedi by @Jeremiah
You guys should talk https://alpaca.gold/@Jeremiah/110106701044044527

@dansup Large brands or influencers might attract a big following resulting in higher hosting costs. That seems to be an issue on Mastodon, but not sure if that also applies to Pixelfed. If it does, a small monthly fee might not be enough to cover that and also pay for development.

I also wonder whether some might expect to be paid for "bringing in" their followers rather than paying to be on there.

@dansup I think since pixelfed is currently free, and instagram is currently free, it might be a hard sell to get those folks to pay for an account. I get not wanting to monetize users, but teaching them already that the cost of an account is $0 makes it hard to charge later.

I personally don't enjoy big brands or influencers on social media, but I do like following small local businesses. Unfortunately, I don't see those types of businesses having the budget to pay.

@dansup Maybe provide “sponsored stories” which remain a bit later?

@dansup I know firsthand this is not ideal as it does not give sustained funding, but there are some public funds for this sort of endeavour, mostly in 🇪🇺
See for example https://nlnet.nl/entrust/
I understand you're under 🇨🇦 jurisdiction, but with a 🇪🇺 twist to the proposal, or co-candidates I am confident this could get accepted 🙂
If that's something you'd like to explore, let me know if I can be of help.
And thanks for your work!