I'm starting building a Youtube alternative

submitted by Justin from (self.whatever)

However, unlike Youtube it will be a subscription based model and completely without advertisements. In a nutshell, users can subscribe for say $8 a month and have full access to the entire site. Anyone can upload their own videos, and then apply to be part of the monetization program. Half of the subscription fee will go to funding the website and the other half will go into a site-wide pot. This pot will be evenly distributed among all of the videos that are part of the monetization program. So say the average user watches 200 videos that are monetized each month, so their $4 split 200 ways comes out to $0.02 per each video view, which gives a ecpm rate of $20 per thousand videos watched. Naturally it can fluctuate in either direction but that is a general outline of how it will run. Consider it a hybrid of Youtube, Netflix and Amazons KDP platform.

By removing advertiser influence altogether, I think this will allow content creators a bit more leeway in what content they will publish. There will be some content that isn't allowed, such as porn or overly violent videos but that will be finalized before it launches. If anyone has feedback or suggestions, I'm all ears.

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[–]mentallyilllooser 8 insightful - 8 fun8 insightful - 7 fun9 insightful - 8 fun -  (0 children)

damn dope

[–]eateetd 5 insightful - 7 fun5 insightful - 6 fun6 insightful - 7 fun -  (0 children)

Name it jewtoob

[–]solder0 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Why not just set up a peertube instance?

[–]Justin[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I want to keep the barrier to entry as low as possible. The average internet user is familiar with streaming sites but not as savvy when it comes to decentralized software and setting up their own platform. It's a great piece of software, but in my opinion it's oriented more towards the tech crowd.

[–]SteveTafe 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

Dont u need a ton of money to do this tho?

[–]Justin[S] 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (9 children)

I'm going to attempt to self fund it initially. Since there will be consistent income from subscribers each month, I won't have to deal with finding advertising partners, waiting on receiving money from them to split up, and so on. It's a bit more streamlined having a subscription model instead.

[–]SteveTafe 5 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

I love the idea, if I'd fund u if I could. Good luck man, post a link if u can.

[–]Justin[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Absolutely, will do. Thank you for the support as well

[–]magnora7 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

If you get it working maybe your site and saidit can partner up to help each other out. More video sites are desperately needed

[–]Justin[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

They're in criminally short supply. I figured vid.me was going to be a serious contender but they had to throw in the towel unfortunately.

[–]magnora7 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

It's just so expensive to have so many servers and so much bandwidth and so much storage space. Few can do it, especially few start-ups. But maybe as tech gets better over the years it'll become cheaper to start a new video website, so we've got that going for us at least.

[–]Justin[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

One of the CDNs I'm looking at is Cloudflare Stream, https://www.cloudflare.com/products/stream-delivery/. For example with bandwidth, they charge a flat rate of $1 per thousand minutes streamed. If that is 1080p content at 2MBps, that's 120GB of content With KeyCDN, that would be $1.20 in bandwidth costs at their best pricing tier. With Cloudfront, it's $2.40 for that same amount of bandwidth and at their best pricing tier once you're already pushing 5 petabytes a month. Another advantage to Cloudflare is that they also handle the storage and the encoding as well. Those three alone take a huge chunk of the infrastructure responsibilities off of my plate so I would be able to scale up considerably cheaper.

[–]Chipit 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Cloudflare can and will cut you off if they don't like your politics. That's one reason why this video hosting is so hard - you have to be as rugged and resistant to attack as possible. That means doing it yourself, or doing it in some other country.

[–]Justin[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

True, that's something that's crossed my mind. However I don't plan on going after content that could possibly fall under what they may terminate me for, so I think I will be pretty insulated from that.

[–]Chipit 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

So then it'll be content we can get from anywhere else? Why bother then? You cost money while Youtube is free.

[–]zyxzevn🐈‍⬛ 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

I am afraid that you'll be sued to the ground by "copyright holders".

[–]Justin[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Naturally the website will have to follow the law as far as copyright infringement goes. That being said, Youtube relies heavily on automation to detect and handle copyright claims. I want to have that handled by myself or human employees if it ever gets to that point. It will be a more expensive solution but having each claim reviewed by an actual person should cut the rate of false claims down considerably and with less impact to the users who aren't actually infringing.

[–]beermeem 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

That's awesome. Best of luck. How would it compare to Vimeo?

[–]Justin[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Vimeo has different tiers depending on how much space you need. I want to offer unlimited space at one price point. They start at $7 a month for the entry plan which is around what I plan on charging, but their higher levels are upwards of $20 a month and I think most users won't want to pay that much.

[–]beermeem 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Astute.

I'd pay $7 but I balked at their $20 offer.

[–]yetanotherone_sigh 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The reason we ended up with the model we have now (owned by a very big corporation and it's free, so you are the product)...

Youtube operated at a loss for a very long time. Might still be. Accounting tricks can hide this. Extremely large corporations can afford to operate parts of their company at a loss in order to drive out competition and corner the market.

As newspapers found out, people are unwilling to pay for what they can get for free. Many newspapers struggle to make ends meet even though they have an online presence. If there is a free alternative, people will flock to it and maybe 0.005% will pay for it. Since you have that happening, it automatically turns into a chicken-and-egg problem. With no paid subscribers, you are going to have trouble attracting good content. With no good content, you will have trouble attracting paying customers.

I'd have someone with some business experience in online startups take a hard look at the numbers in your business plan. Most online startups end up with some "angel investors" and fail anyway... the VAST majority. Because they can't make the numbers work long term.

My wife had a home business that folded up and nearly ruined us financially. Typically with startups, you work 18 hours a day and get paid peanuts, barely covering your costs. Almost all new businesses fail because the owner can't afford to operate it out of his pocket AND pay all his normal bills at the same time AND the interest on borrowed money. It often takes 5 years to show a profit or even break even. We were just getting to that point when we went bust. Almost sent us to bankruptcy. Just about lost the house. I picked up 4 jobs (2 full time and 2 part time) and basically worked all my waking hours for five years and brought us out of debt. I don't recommend this route AT ALL unless you have a solid written business plan. You will probably need an angel investor to get off the ground at any scale at all, or a large pile of money that will likely turn into a small one. Can you afford to operate this out of your pocket at a loss for several years? If the answer is no, go back and sharpen your pencil and work on your business plan some more.

Going up against Google and Alphabet is a very steep hill.

[–]Justin[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

One of the major steps I am going to take once I have a workable product and before it is released to the general public is to reach out to various creators on youtube, focusing on ones who are actively looking for alternative platforms. My plan is to invite them to a closed demo of the website for three reasons: A] get feedback on the functionality from people who run successful Youtube channels B] build up a content library ahead of release so that there will be enough channels to justify a subscription and C] help spread the word about it. I think Youtube operates at or near a loss due mainly because anyone can upload a video, and so many of their uploads don't run any advertisements. If it's on a subscription model, every member that uploads a video is directly paying anywhere from $3-5 per month towards the websites infrastructure. Netflix for example, turns a profit of around a billion dollars last year and they guzzle bandwidth like it's no tomorrow.

I'm aware it's a monumental undertaking, but I think it's a risk vs reward situation and the reward is absolutely there. I'm continuously researching what infrastructure setups will be best in terms of storage, CDN providers, and so on. I'm sure the margins overall are going to be tight, but I think it would be sustainable enough to be a serious contender to Google, and let's be honest, SOMEBODY needs to challenge them.

[–]yetanotherone_sigh 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Certainly I'm not saying "don't even think about doing it". But I am really cautious after our near disaster almost wrecked us. Just wanted to make sure you know what you are getting yourself into. Best of luck, and I mean that genuinely. As you say, someone needs to do it.

[–]HeyImSancho 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

aren't there a lot of youtube alternatives now?

[–]Justin[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

There are, but none have really caught on with mainstream users now that vid.me is gone.

[–]HeyImSancho 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I wish you well, and good fortune in your endeavor.

[–]Chipit 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Great idea, but it's just an idea. People won't come unless you have content. Which big names can I expect on your site?

How are you different from Bitchute?

How are you going to take payments? PayPal? They can and will cut you off if they don't like you.

[–]Justin[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I haven't reached out to any big Youtubers yet but I will be doing that once the project is far along enough to use. Just looking at bitchute now, it's a lot of politically divisive videos and conspiracy theories. Nothing against them per se but it can turn off the average user. I'd like to build a platform that offers Youtubers an alternative that doesn't have a lot of the hangups that Youtube does; the advertisements, the copyright algorithms from hell, and so on. Paypal is certainly one of the merchants I'm considering, but there are others such as Stripe I'm looking into.

[–]Zahn 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

If you have a lot of funding it could maybe work out. However you're competing with free vidz everywhere else. The content or service would benefit by adding an additional perceived value incentive to have the best chance. An otherwise unknown or currently under-served need or convenience are good places to start in figuring that part out. Eliminating advertisers always sounds good, but is a lot easier income than trying to pry 8$ out of people's hands every month.

[–]Justin[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That's true, I'm not expecting people to flock to it overnight. I need to build a rock solid website that has more than enough content right out of the gate to justify a monthly subscription. However, I think that reaching out to existing creators and bringing in as many as I can will really help. Just browsing reddit regularly, there is a huge demand for a new site and I think there are enough people that would pay a small fee each month to make it work.

[–]swordofdamocles42 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

heres an idea i came up with and you can have.....

if viewers like a video they leave a 10c tip (or more) via bitcoin. your site buys and sells bitcoin but takes a small comish to do so. the site would make mega bucks and only good content would be promoted. who evere runs with it will get too greedy.... so it needs someone unintrested in money to have a truly free platform.

[–]Justin[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I've thought of integrating crypto donations and fully plan to. It won't be something available right off the bat and I don't plan on taking much/if any of a cut of it, I'd rather all of it go to the channel instead. If the website is turning enough of a profit to sustain itself and grow at a steady rate, then I don't want to get greedy by nickel and diming users every opportunity I get.

[–]swordofdamocles42 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

how can you afford the server space tho? its imposible unless you are silicon valley....(imo)

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

If you said an 80-20 split you'd have my attention. 50% is even more than YouTube takes?

[–]Justin[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I think they're on a 45/55 split in favor of the user. Percentage wise it's a bit better than what I'm proposing, but I think the lack of advertising influence and more creative leeway are enough to justify it. Of course, it's something that can always be tweaked in the future depending on user feedback.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

A couple of thoughts that are hopefully constructive:

  • $8/mo is not a small fee, that's a steep barrier to entry. That's a spotify/Netflix level fee. $4 or less will probably generate more excitement.
  • if you will go after the politically censored crowd, their videos will get you kicked off of PayPal, Stripe, etc. and eventually maybe even cloudfront - you should estimate how many people that want alternatives are in this bucket
  • start an email list and placeholder site now so you can build followers and interest and get more feedback

Very ambitious project, good for you.

[–]AnarchySpeach 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Numbers have never been my strong suit, but I'm unsure if the math adds up long term.

$0.02 per each video view,

You're competing with services with big budget. Ease of access has to paramount. Netflix may cost money, but high quality TV Shows and Movies are worth more than the average Youtuber screaming into their microphone. Despite all the problems youtube has, one of it's best qualities is ease of access. You don't have to log on to view content. When voat.co made accounts mandatory they lost 60% of their users.

$0.02 may sound tiny, but one of the setbacks you're gonna have to deal with is paying your content creators less than youtube. You'll have to stay alive and you will need to ask an accountant or other professional about it. A youtuber going from $50 to $20 will choose your site if youtube has deleted their channel. If it's a choice between less more or no money, most people will continue what they're doing, but most people leaving youtube will also lost 50% of their audience by switching websites. That loss in money has to be accounted for. As it stands you will need a secondary method of generating revenue besides only views.

This all adds up to a nearly impossible task. I wish you the best of luck.

[–]Justin[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Are there niches on Youtube that pay in the $20+ range? I genuinely don't know. I've thought lately that this idea may serve better as a supplement to Youtube than a straight out competitor. Users who prefer an ad-free, non-Google experience and the ability to directly tip creators, and creators that prefer a more creatively free platform with the potential to pay a better rate, may see enough pros to justify using it. But with how early into building the website I am, this is the kind of feedback and questions I like getting because it can help me see angles I might otherwise not see.

[–]AnarchySpeach 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Are there niches on Youtube that pay in the $20+ range?

Not sure. I'm only concerned because it sounds like youtube red, but only youtube red. People paying money will expect higher quality content. Someone joining the site as a creator with little money won't be able to afford the flashy style expected. Your best bet is to reach out to youtubers with a decent following who are worried about the next banwave. I understand you're trying to do something similiar to thearmchairhistorian.com but for a large audience... but you need the backing of multiple youtubers who already have hundreds of thousands of subs to get off the ground.

Impossible? No. Just really difficult.