Lightning.video
Lightning.video is a site where you can publish any LEGAL content, including all the stuff that the credit card companies ban from other sites. In this case legal means legal BOTH in your country, because that’s where you live, AND legal in the US, because that’s where they live.
It runs on the Bitcoin Lightning Network.
My Lightning Network introductory article
Consider it an Alpha. (It’s better than that re functionality, but for commercial use, it’s an Alpha). Because :-
IMPORTANT : Until V2 is rolled out if you clear your browser cookies you will lose control of your content. For this reason you should treat as experimental / short term – e.g. uploading videos “available one week only” then deleting. So that IF, for example, in a couple of months your bank tells you “try clearing your cookies”, you don’t suddenly lose access to important content.
To PUBLISH, you simply upload your content, and pay a publishing fee of a few pence/cents. (You’ll need to have set up a Lightning enabled wallet with a Funded Channel. See article above).
You can set your price, in Satoshi, and then people buy it, (it is then downloadable, so, be aware re piracy). In fact because the site tracks what content your customers unlocked by using cookies in their browser, you should tell them to download. Because most people end up being told to “clear cookies” and when they do that (for another site), oops (see below)…
If you have more than 10 clips, you can have your own Channel with it’s own URL.
Because you are pricing in Satoshi, and Bitcoin is annoyingly volatile, you should review from time to time to make sure it matches what you want to be getting in real money.
You will need to do your own direct promotion to drive traffic. I think some regular “Got BTC, buy here…” tweets in the mix will be the way to go.
PRIVATE files : Can only be accessed by a link you provide. As there is no AV on the site, this is the only safe way to operate if you have to abide by 18+ rules, and you know the client is 18+.
90 Day Rule : Content ONLY stays up for 90 days, (unless it gets what they consider to be enough engagement). So, it’s not a place to build a library, but a great “NEW and only available on Lightning.video” option, esp if you want fans to use BTC.
UPDATE : 90 Rule is apparently more of a guideline, and if you tip your own content (this will make sense when you see the site), that pretty much counts as engagement and keeps it live.
Fees : So, expect to drop about 1% for LN network costs and routing. But I can’t see how they actually MAKE money. My guess is that it’s early stage/experimental and volumes are not hammering them on storage or bandwidth. I’d expect that to change and if it does become part of the wider adult industry infrastructure.
Buying and selling videos on Lightning.video (requires a funded Lightning Channel, see my other article, linked above)
At Lightning.video, burger menu top right, UPLOAD.
Fill in the form, remembering to choose a price (if any) and mark it NSFW. Note – you have to tick a Disable Paywall to make content free.
Press PUBLISH
Pay to Publish screen – mine was 615sats, i.e. 11p. Bargain
To pay, you copy the long string, go to your wallet, pick send, paste it in, agree that you are paying the LN invoice, and it sends. Lightning.video then immediately starts the upload process.
Getting Paid, is INSTANT!!
I used one device account to buy one of my videos. Instantly the money was in my account and 2 mins later, had been pulled down to my PC wallet. Perfect.
And you know how much it was for? About £1.80. None of your £50, £100 minimum payments silliness 🙂
Cookies Note and Possible Issue : If you clear your browsers cookies, the My Content is emptied. Well, when I cleared their cookies out of my browser my MY CONTENT was emptied. So I lost access to my own content. I’m not bothered, I was in testing mode and in 90 days they’ll probably be gone, but def an issue for serious use of the site as so many sites, when they are not working properly, say “clear your cookies” and people nuke ALL the cookies in their browser, which would include lightning.video’s….
UPDATE : Cookies thing is temp. It’s early days and later versions will not be affected like this. But, we all know you’re gonna clear cookies, so IMO, play with the site, but serious commercial use needs to wait until the cookie issue is fixed.
That’s it, with thanks to @BTCSexWorkers who introduced me to this site.