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@rbos @EverlastongOS that's the only thing I don't understand. If it's lifetime sub, how do they fund their costs from your usage after?
Host providers don't have a one-time payment lifetime subscription for bandwidth usage. Eventually you will surpass the bandwidth cost of your lifetime sub and they'd be losing money keeping you. Something doesn't feel right.
There are some ski lifts that give lifetime passes. Its used as a cash injection to fund investments rather than lending off an institution that will want their money back.
Sure you'll want your lifetime video data for free, but I bet there are a bunch of lifetime members that don't watch much over a lifetime and/or the risk of future video watching outweighs the loan interest they'd have to pay otherwise.
@b_n
For me, it boils down to this: relying solely on cash injections to scale up seems short-sighted. Bandwidth costs are often underestimated, especially for high-quality video streaming. If users' lifetime costs outweigh bandwidth expenses, the injection could turn into a liability. I'm concerned about the sustainability of their model. Unlike a ski-lift company that generates revenue from various sources (food, merch, rentals).
Maybe my hosting knowledge is just too old school.
That's just the case. Not everyone buys lifetime subscriptions. This is a short term cash injection for investment. I don't know their books, but I doubt the majority of their long term income will come from these lifetime subs.
The CEO of Nebula actually has two blog posts about the economics of their lifetime memberships.
https://blog.nebula.tv/lifetime-memberships-part-two/
It can work out financially - I don't know how they do it specifically, but suppose they put all the lifetime subs into one investment pool and used the interest on that to fund operations.
$300 can generate $20 per year for them. So I benefit by only having to pay once, and they benefit by getting a chunk up front instead of having it drip out over time.
Up front cash can also mean the ability to invest in larger things. They can put it into infra budget instead of ops budget.
@rbos yea, that sounds similar to what a lot of these monopolistic internet companies do. But eventually the bill is due.
If they can't scale up with what they got, then maybe it isn't profitable. But what I'm understanding is that they're using "Lifetime Users" as a gamble to grow.
hmmm.. maybe I just don't like private infrastructure, but I'm at odds with this model. But if the users understand that the bubble can burst, then I wish them luck.
I'm hoping that Nebula, being run as a coop, will avoid much of that 'growth at any cost' mindset.