Full disclosure, with a member-funded app with a chronological feed, I’m curious where people land. Is a subscription the only honest way to fund social media, or is there a better model? What would make it worth paying for, and what would be a dealbreaker?
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I wouldn't pay, mostly because the ads stopped bothering me once I cleaned up what I follow. I went through my accounts and unfollowed everything I only watched out of habit, and muted most of the meme and outrage stuff. After a few weeks, the ads changed too, because the platform had a much clearer idea of what I care about. Now a lot of what I see is tools, courses and small brands in my niche, and I've found a couple of things I still use that way. So for me the problem was what I was following/wathing, not the ads.
id consider paying a small fee in the feed was genuinely chronological, ad-free, and didnt push engagement bait. the biggest dealbreaker would be paying and still having my experience controlled by an algorithm
A chronological feed sounds refreshing; algorithms aren't neceassary.
Honest problem: if you are a surgeon or an engineer posting real work content, the big platforms bury you under entertainment. The algorithm optimizes for watch time, not for craft. Niche professional communities are the only place that content performs.
i'd pay if the price was small and my people were already there. that's the hard part: a feed is only worth who's in it, so start with one tight group that already wants to leave
For a long time I let every client start month to month. It felt safer to offer. No commitment, cancel anytime, low pressure. What I actually got was panic. Week two, a client would message asking why sales had not moved yet. Week three, they wanted the whole plan changed. By the end of month one, the ones who were going to leave left anyway, usually right before the content had any chance to build on itself. I was spending the first month of every engagement calming people down instead of doing the work. Earlier this fall I changed one line in how I start. Three month minimum, then month to month after that. I explain it plainly: the first month is setup and testing, the second is where patterns show up, the third is the first month I can honestly judge. Nothing fancy, no lock in speech. One prospect walked away over it and I was braced for more. None of the clients who signed have mentioned it since. Approvals got calmer. I plan a full quarter now instead of hoping each month renews. And the week two panic messages basically stopped, because nobody is deciding whether to quit while the first posts are still going out. What I did not expect is that the minimum did not filter by budget. It filtered by patience. The clients who plan in quarters stay, and they are easier to do good work for. Do you require a minimum term, or do you still start month to month? If you use a minimum, how long is it and how do you explain it?
For three months I told myself a quiet client was a happy client. They were on a 20 hour a month retainer. When I finally added up what I had actually done, it came to about 9 hours in September and 8 in August. The posts went out, nothing broke, and I cashed the same check, so I did not look closer. Then their ops person asked on a call, almost as an aside, what the retainer covered again. That question is never really about the list. She could not feel the other 11 hours, so in her head the work had shrunk. I went back through the last quarter and wrote down what was scoped but unused: a monthly report nobody had opened since June, community replies I had quietly stopped doing when approvals slowed down, and a batch of story posts we planned and never shot. Some of that was on me. I had let the slow approval weeks turn into doing less instead of flagging it. So instead of defending the invoice, I brought the list to the next call. I showed the hours they were paying for, the hours they actually got, and three ways to fill the gap with work they had been asking about in passing: reply coverage on weekdays, one short video a week cut from footage they already had, and a simple monthly summary their owner would actually read. They picked two of the three and cut the unused report. Same fee, no discount, and the next month used 18 of the 20 hours. What I took from it: over delivering has a loud problem, you burn out. Under delivering has a quiet one, the client decides you are optional and you only find out at renewal. Now I check the burn rate on every retainer once a month, and if a client is under about two thirds of what they pay for, I raise it myself before they do. How do you catch this on your accounts? Do you track hours against scope, or do you go by deliverables only?
This will sound absurd, but it’s completely true. A few months ago, I started selling ad space on my toilet with the goal to make $1,000,000. It started off as a joke and quickly became not a joke, with 25 major companies spending over $125,000 to purchase ad space. The series has gone completely viral and even got me on the news. I think it’s a fun story so I want to break it down here - why it’s working, what it’s like working with these brands, and how you could do something like this yourself. \*\*How it happened\*\* \- I got the idea from the Red Paperclip story: split my toilet into sections, put a price on each one, better spots cost more, and projection map every logo on with its own animation \- I made a fake demo with Microsoft Teams to test it. It blew up and brands flooded the comments, but none of them were serious, they just wanted the impressions \- So I manufactured the first real deal. I showed MoonPay all the other brands commenting, they said yes, and I used that yes as leverage to close everyone else \- I posted once a day for the first two weeks. Every video told viewers to tag companies, and the more companies joined, the more wanted in \- Then I switched to a flat fee that keeps going up, plus a King of The Throne top spot. So far 25 companies have bought in, spots from $1,000 to $17,000, over $125,000 total, and 100M+ views on my projection mapping videos **Why it's working** \- It's a good story. "Unemployed guy tries to make $1,000,000 from his toilet" is a lot catchier than "experienced marketer makes ads," even though both are true \- I'm the underdog, so the audience sees themselves in it and feels like they could do it too \- It's never been done and it can't be copied. People sell ad space on other things now, but there's only one toilet guy \- People actually want to watch these ads and cheer for the next one. That almost never happens \- The Quality Paradox: the video I spend 5 minutes on beats the one I spend 5 months on. People want the guy figuring it out, not the polished final product **What I learned from working with 30 brands** \- Every brand is different. The hands off ones let me do whatever I want, the hands on ones had specific messaging. I had more fun with the hands off ones \- $10,000 sounds insane for one video until you realize I'm the entire studio: idea, script, design, animation, VFX, marketing. A studio charges $100,000 for that, and the brand gets my audience on top of it **How you can do this too** \- Cold outreach doesn't land brand deals. It works for freelance clients, but brands come to you when you prove yourself \- Views aren't proof. Brands need to see the exact concept they're buying \- Make your own series that involves brands: remake logos, design merch, make fake products, whatever fits you. It has to be yours and you have to actually enjoy it \- Be your own agent. Half of me makes the videos, the other half fights to get them seen \- Take the long shots. I sent dozens of DMs and emails to news stations and media, 99% got ignored. Worst case is a minute of embarrassment, the upside is unlimited \- None of it works if it isn't unapologetically you Hope you enjoyed! Lmk if you have any questions
For a long time I priced my retainers by counting posts. Twelve posts, a few stories, a report at the end of the month. It looked tidy on paper and it felt wrong every single week, because I was busy all day and the money still did not add up. So I tracked everything for two weeks on one client. Not roughly. Every block. The posts were the smallest part. Comments and DMs, building the calendar, chasing approvals, pulling numbers for the report, fixing captions, re exporting graphics, the quick calls that were never in the scope. That invisible pile came to over a third of my total hours. I had priced about two thirds of the job and donated the rest. What I changed was simple. I priced the next retainer from the tracked hours, not the post count. I wrote into the agreement what community time and admin time actually cover, so it is not a surprise later. And I started adding one plain line to the monthly note listing the work behind the posts, not as a defence, just so the client can see the full picture when they decide whether it is worth it. Nothing dramatic happened. The client signed. I stopped resenting Tuesdays. The fee finally matched the work. I am curious how other freelancers here count this. Do you track the invisible hours and price from them, or do you build in a flat buffer and hope it covers it?
I used to be fairly present online and had a pretty active Twitter account from 2022-2024, but from 2025 onwards I never posted anything there and just left it to rot For context I am a Vocaloid producer, and I want to use that same Twitter account again to promote my songs, but it seems that my reach on that account is basically non-existent, as in my posts don’t even reach a 100 people non existent Any way I can revive my Twitter account? Or is it just doomed to rot forever?
For context, I run three different TikTok accounts, all with over 100k followers. They are in completely different niches, but I use the exact same format and editing style across all of them. To test this properly, I manually posted on one account, and used scheduled posts on the other two—essentially sacrificing those two accounts for science. **The "It's just bad timing" debunk:** Whenever people complain about scheduling, everyone in the comments says *"you're just posting at the wrong time."* So, I spent a full month posting 2 videos daily on the scheduled accounts and constantly rotated the times. I tried 7 AM/PM, adjusted to 8 AM/PM, and so on, until I literally hit every time slot. **The Results after 1 month:** * **The 2 Scheduled Accounts:** Consistently trapped between 1,000 and 10,000 views. No matter what time I posted. * **The 1 Manual Account:** Never dropped below 100k views, with a few videos easily clearing millions. The built-in scheduler is powered by AI, and it's incredibly convenient. But they don't want you using it for free. By artificially throttling your organic reach when you use it, they force you into a corner where you have to buy their paid "Promote" feature to regain your normal viewership. What's wild is that TikTok will never actually admit this, and they won't even put out a straight official statement confirming whether scheduling affects reach or not. Instead, whenever creators complain, they completely dodge the question and give unrelated answers like "fix your posting time"—an excuse that my 1-month experiment completely debunked. They are gaslighting creators to cover up a pay-to-play system.