Creators Should Move to Their Own Domains and Set Up Direct Monetization | Hacker News Reader

Creators Should Move to Their Own Domains and Set Up Direct Monetization

danielmiessler.com

40 pointsdanielrm2616 comments

content creators are busy creating content and that's their specialty--not IT support. As long as there are content creators there will be demand for platforms to support them; whether it takes the shape of fully managed / self managed SaaS, a self-hosted open source solution, or even a custom solution--isn't what content creators are spending their energy on.

not sure what the issue is. it's a great time to be a content creator. I guess haters are going to hate.

It's all great, until you get arbitrarily blocked and the platform cuts you off your audience. Then it's too late.

What makes you think you can't get erased from internet if you host your own? Unless you roll your own IPS you are always susceptible to some outside force. Your IPS can terminate your contract, your domain registar can do the same (of course you don't _need_ a domain you can just use an IP address) etc. Yes you cou can make it less but it's never out of question.

You can make it very difficult to be erased from the Internet if you set up your infrastructure in such a way that you can easily switch providers. Your cloud provider shuts you off? Host your stuff with another cloud provider! Your domain registrar charges you too much? Transfer your domain to another registrar! Your existing payment processor sucks? Switch to a different one! And so on and so forth.

In practice chance of being banned by the content platforms is many orders of magnitude higher than having any issues with infrastructure companies. To get your DNS banned ... I don't even know what is necessary. Court order maybe. Not something that one company can do on a whim.

Companies like Google have random algorithms banning people for no good reason (not even touching any questionable content), and then getting it straight is a pain.

I was just going to say something similar: having registered domains, set up hosts, set up email accounts, and so forth, it's a giant pain in the ass, and it's easy to get stuck or do things wrong at various steps—which is why Substack exists, and Wordpress, and many others.

I agree with the writer in theory, but, in practice, having done what he's advocating, it's a huge challenge the first time one does it.

There is a middle ground though isn’t there? Substack could support creators buying a domain through them and hosting content on that domain. If a creator decides to leave, they keep their brand, their audience, and their content.

The problem isn’t the infra, it’s that we need standards to support more portability. Remember when you couldn’t take your mobile number to a new provider?

It's actually really easy these days. Most platforms (but not Substack) do offer custom domains and if you go through Google Domains they'll forward your mail through a very easy to setup UI.

I'd say the domain is the brand you want to retain and then you don't self-host anything. Set up your domain to 302 to your substack and you've got one thing.

I wouldn’t touch google domains with a ten foot pole due to the high probably of them being killed.

It's just a domain. Shifting it over is a well-understood process. I think you're missing out by doing this because the product is fantastic, but you have your own evaluation of what's valuable I'm sure.

The elephant in the room is exposure. Medium mixes and matches articles to automatically expose the most interesting stories to the most interested readers. If you set up your own domain, you are on your own.

People are clearly able to set up Patreon etc without using medium.

Medium seems hellbent on profiting from free work by creators.

Again — it’s not about monetary compensation, it is about exposure and visibility.

you could also use something like https://coil.com to monetize your content and get paid in realtime based on views

The problem with many of these marketplaces is that they charge VAT to buyers, even if the creator is below the threshold for VAT registration.

Interesting take, but I'd use librapay/fosspay or the Open Collective over the platforms that he recommends.

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