Reddit migrator here (shocking, I know)
Just wondering because I found out about all this yesterday and just realized the ammount of independent servers, but no sign of any ads or sponsors. So… is it all based on donations?
Also don’t just lurk, if you know you should answer because lemmy only counts users who posted or commented as active users.
I think you might really be asking about sustainability, not profitability (profit is what you have after all the bills are paid). It’s generally donation-based. I’m sure different communities will have different ways of soliciting donations.
EDIT: I’m no longer partial to the below. I much more like PrimalAnimist’s suggestions.
For larger, expensive instances, I’m partial to determining the cost of running a single user over some period of time (say, 5 years), and posting that little datum on the community info. Then, each user that donates that amount gets a badge reward. Users that pay double the minimum get a different badge, and so on. Cycle the badges every n years. Some users will have fancier badges, displaying a kindness for the poor and badgeless. Cultivate a culture of gratitude for those who support, and you won’t have to worry so much about not having enough.deleted by creator
Honestly, I share your concerns. I’m only recommending it for very expensive instances that aren’t receiving enough funding, as an alternative to directly soliciting funds. The beauty of the Fediverse is that if an instance admin tried doing something like punishing the “poor and badgeless,” we could all just fuck off. It would alleviate their financial burden, to boot 😃
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These are fantastic ideas. I stand gladly corrected!
To add to this, let donators “allocate” their donation, whether it’s further feature dev, more moderation, better server performance.
Obviously money can be used where the host wants, but could give some direction to what the server needs
Well that sounds terrible