Bringing the Creator Economy to the Fediverse with sub.club
sub.club, a new service developed by the makers of the Mastodon app Mammoth, aims to bring the creator economy to the fediverse, the decentralized open social web. The platform allows creators on Mastodon to offer paid subscriptions and premium content through premium feeds, providing a way for creators to monetize their work. In addition to supporting creators, sub.club also sees potential for premium feeds in other use cases, such as supporting helpful bots or generating funds to maintain Mastodon servers.
Mastodon, along with other services, forms the fediverse, which is made up of interconnected independent servers. These servers are usually community-supported, making it challenging to raise funds. However, bringing money into the fediverse could help it thrive. Bart Decrem, co-founder of Mammoth, believes that having a way to offer premium content is crucial for the ecosystem’s growth and sustainability.
Using sub.club is simple for Mastodon users. They can set up their own premium feed at any price they choose, and others can subscribe to it via the web. The service runs on the ActivityPub platform and can be consumed from any Mastodon client on the web. sub.club also offers an API, allowing Mastodon app developers to integrate these feeds into their own mobile and desktop apps.
Thomas Ricouard, a third-party developer who creates the Ice Cubes Mastodon app, will be the first to implement the subscription feeds. He believes that sub.club will help fund various creators and services in the fediverse, which is much needed.
In addition to being available on the web, sub.club will also be rolled out to Mammoth’s app. Users can simply click a button to subscribe to creators’ paid feeds. When users follow a subscription-based feed, they receive a direct message with a link to a payment page. Currently, payments are powered by Stripe, but sub.club may add support for other payment providers in the future. sub.club takes a 6% cut of the transactions, which is less than what Patreon charges. This makes sub.club an attractive option for creators looking for alternative monetization methods.
sub.club differentiates itself from Patreon by positioning itself as more of a back-end service rather than a content discovery platform. While Patreon is known for being a destination for finding and supporting creators, sub.club focuses on providing the infrastructure for creators to monetize their content.
The potential for sub.club’s success could grow alongside the open social web. When Meta’s Threads integrates with ActivityPub, it could bring a new class of creators to the fediverse. These creators may be looking for alternative means of monetization, especially as the fediverse typically avoids traditional advertising. This presents an opportunity for sub.club to thrive in a market looking for monetizable activities.
Mammoth and sub.club’s parent company, The Blvd. Inc., are already seeking to raise a seed round to support their growth. The company believes that as more people build apps and entrepreneurial activity increases within the fediverse, investors will find it an exciting prospect.
While platforms like X (formerly Twitter) have attempted to raise creator profiles and generate revenue from posts and videos, they have struggled to maintain advertisers due to controversial and toxic content. In contrast, Mastodon has largely avoided attempts to monetize its posts and instead relies on Patreon, grants, and merchandise for support.
Whether the fediverse will embrace paid content remains to be seen. However, sub.club is committed to the idea and has already attracted early adopters, including the premium bot “Pups Where They Don’t Belong” and developer Anuj Ahooja, who serves as an advisor to sub.club.
sub.club is currently available as a developer preview, with tools for Mastodon server owners to support their instances financially set to roll out later this fall. During this period, sub.club will waive its fees and Stripe fees for the first 90 days, encouraging server owners to try out the service and explore its potential benefits.
