Tyler Knows Nothing

In the first part of this series I started last year, I spoke about the idea of Dollarnomics, describing it in some detail. If you want to get the basics of the concept, then you should go read that first. It’s not a long piece and I’ve linked it below. I do outline a few ideas there, but there needs to be some additional context so that you might fully understand the power that I believe resides both in the $1 bill and in the people who are tired of always being on the bottom of the economy, even if you only have a few million dollars in the bank, an amount that is nowhere near as comforting as it was a decade or two ago.

Saving the Internet for Humanity: Dollarnomics 101

Here in this second part, I will be outlining how certain groups and/or organizations would pay benefit from $1 a month per subscriber revenue, and attempt to show how that would be significantly transformative to said groups and/or organizations. Note here that by ‘groups and/or organizations’ I am referring to developers, services, brick & mortar stores, entertainment, and most anything else. There are some limitations that would manifest for certain organizations that need more substantial infusions of capital, for instance space programs, governments, and large multi-nationals, but this is a concept designed for regular, every day folk and groups which have organic communities. It will become clear through the following examples.

• A Twitter Clone - I think this particular case would be an easy choice for most people, aside from those who are giddy with joy that the service formerly known as Twitter is now a hot mess. Twitter, for all its faults, was a powerful resource for local, regional, state-wide, and national news. I would happily pay $1 a month for a Twitter clone that did not have advertising of any kind and did not collect and sell my personal data. To make it even more useful, I’d leave reactions, but remove interaction, which is a significant cause of conflict on most social media platforms. I’d also add UP/DOWN voting so the users democratically decide what gets floated to the top and what doesn’t get traffic. It may not be a perfect solution, but it would be a damn sight better than Elon Musk’s combination train wreck/dumpster fire. Based on Statista numbers of Twitter users worldwide in 2022 before Musk bought it that October, the service that popularized the term “tweet” had amassed nearly 397 million users. If only 10 million users pay $1 a month, that would be $10 million dollars in monthly revenue.
• The LA Times - I am a native Californian. I was born in Pasadena. Aside from the years I spent splitting time between parents, and thus to and from Pasadena and Knoxville, TN., I’ve lived the vast majority of my life here. I find local news to be critical, and while the LA Times is a local paper, it has global reach. I would, and I believe millions of my fellow Angelenos would happily pay $1 a month for the news. That doesn’t mean the LA Times needs to stop selling ad space, but the venerable newspaper wouldn’t need to lean on it as a crutch, and it also relieves the pressure from said advertisers. For instance, if LA Times investigative reporters were to produce a powerful article unveiling a dark side of some corporation that is harming citizens and they pull their advertising, the LA Times itself would likely not feel the effects of the loss of revenue. In fact, I believe it would increase the public’s trust in them as a news organization, and also increase $1 subscribers. According to the LA Times About Page, they have ₄₀ million website visitors, 1.6 million Sunday Edition readers, and a combined 4.4 million weekly readers. If all digital subscribers were switched to $1 a month plans that would likely draw a lot more paid subscribers. A current digital subscription is going for $98 a year, 53% off the normal $208 rate. How many people do you think are willing to pay that? With 14 million peeps in the LA Metropolitan Area, 10% of them would net them 1.4 million a month. I imagine the subscribership would be a lot larger.
• Far Too Many Musical Acts To List - Ok. I’ll list a few. Bruce Hornsby, Rush, Level 42, Toto, Progger, Big Wreck, Jason Falkner, Rob Fetters, MUTEMATH, Simple Minds, Echo & The Bunnymen, Simon Phillips… oh dear. I’m gushing, but I think my point is made. Who do you love listening to and would also love to contribute to their continuing ability to make more of what you love? That’s a lot of love, I think. While I don’t have any statistics on any of these bands, you likely know that Rush and Toto are huge North American acts, and the rest have sizable followings. Let’s say, for example, that the extraordinary Rob Fetters (The Raisins, The Bears, Psychodots, and five solo albums) that you seriously need to listen to, has 25,000 fans who are happy to pay $1 a month to help him put on his live shows on YouTube. That’s $25,000 a month of consistent, reliable revenue. I’m willing to bet he has far more fans. Rush and Toto alone could likely count on millions of fans each. Could you imagine what Taylor Swift could do if her fans contributed? She could likely set up her own tours, handle her own ticketing, and get out from under the yoke of Big Media. Without the so-called ‘middle-peeps’ involved, groups could define their own fate instead of relying on the “good will” of record labels, agents, ravenous ticketing monsters, and other blockades to their creative freedom.
• Independent App/Game Developers - One of the first indie game developers that comes to mind is Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya who single-handedly created the legendary freeware game Cave Story over a period of five years. Another well-known solo developer is Robert “Toby” Fox, the creator of Undertale and Deltarune who, despite being a prolific creator, suffers from hand and wrist pain. Both of these creators and many, many more solo and small team developers who have fans around the world would benefit from some baseline stability in the form of $1/mo. support from those fans. On the software side, Gary Rosenzweig, the founder and principal contributor of MacMost.com and developer of the freeware ClipTools for macOS is able to do what he does without serving ads because of his Patreon supporters. He currently states he has ₁,500 subscribers, but if he were to switch to $1/mo. I believe he could multiply his subscriber count by several factors.
• Open Source Application Developers - The vast majority of open source apps are developed in the spare time of the developers and, as is standard practice for open source, available for free. Making an open source project successful is far more difficult than starting a rock band and getting a record contract. These developers often ask for donations, but very few people donate as the expectation is for more substantial sums. The reality is, however, that lots of people don’t have the ability to make larger donations off-hand, and even if they could said larger donations would only last so long. The goal needs to change from size of donation to consistency of a large number of small, predictable donations.
• Mozilla - Yes, the peeps who make Firefox. For years, the Mozilla Foundation has relied on revenues from its partnership with Google for being set as default search engine, a relationship many understand is designed to help Google avoid antitrust liability. The reasoning being that if there is at least one competitor, Google can’t be a monopoly. Of course, Google seriously overpays Mozilla to make sure that the open source organization is beholden to them for operations, but with a voluntary $1/mo. from each willing user, just ₄₀ million users paying in would make that arrangement unnecessary, or at least allow Mozilla to negotiate much better terms for itself. I realize that’s a lot of peeps to get that done, but it wouldn’t have to be quick to have a positive impact on Mozilla, their products, and their users.
• YouTube Creators - Don’t get me wrong. I think YouTube creators should be paid for their efforts. Unfortunately, YouTube itself seems to hate them. Watch this video from Second Thought, a verified YouTube creator, who covers much of what’s wrong with YouTube, and I think you’ll understand. These creators have to work themselves to the bone and hope that YouTube’s algorithm actually works for them and they earn some of that sweet ad sharing money. Seriously, watch the video. All will become clear. If, however, 10% of Second Thought’s subscribers gave him $1 a month, that would be approximately $170,000 a month in revenue. Consistent. Repeatable. These are things YouTube has trouble with, and it’s driving creators away.
• Writers Like Myself - I won’t hammer on this as I don’t think this needs additional exposition. Do, however, check out my Ko-Fi page linked on the homepage. Even if you are also a writer, check it out to see how simple the setup is and do your best to emulate it. Even a few hundred contributors would likely change the lives of most independent writers, and that only costs each subscriber $1 a month.
• Completely Free WordPress Themes & Plugins - The once promising universe of WordPress assets has turned to utter crap over the past decade. Just poke around their themes and plugins and you’ll find loads of downloads that are handicapped versions you can “unlock” with payments to “Go Pro”. For someone who just wants to blog or start a simple website, it’s a field of endless “Pro” landmines. And even if you go for the free version, most add persistent or frequently appearing promotional ads in an attempt to convince you to upgrade. Automattic, the company that created WordPress, is clearly unwilling to place any limits on theme or plugin developers or even bother to curate their own resources to make it easier to find completely free options. I would happily pay $1 a month to get curated access to verified resources that are completely free of any upgrades, passing along the bulk of the subscription income to the creators of the resources as an incentive to keep feeding the ecosystem.

Using a no-fee service like Ko-Fi or Liberapay you can get the most out of each donation without much overhead or the parasitic middle-man, aside from processor fees which no one can escape (whee).

I’m going to leave it at this for now. These exemplars should be more than enough to derive plans for other applications. Next will be a completely new spin on user security and the simplification of the user space of the internet. Don’t worry, despite sounding complex, it’s dirt simple.