Rumble Rants RIP OFF Creators | Rumble Gaming Launches | Sputnik US CLOSES | Rokfin Pays SHORT & STILL Ghosting INN
Rumble is taking HALF the money contributed by viewers! US Sanctions force Sputnik US ownership to shut down, eliminating over 100 US media jobs, Rokfin is still ghosting INN
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Rumble Rants Ripoff?
I was today years old when I learned just how deeply Rumble had its hand in the pocket of the monetized creators on its platform.
After a quick audit, I learned that:
Rumble was pocketing HALF of the money - literally 50% - contributed by viewers during livestreams as “Rumble Rants!”
That’s BEFORE the creators have to deal with processing fees from Stripe or Paypal.
That’s on TOP of the ad monetization Rumble is making from the crappy ads they run on ALL videos for non-Premium subscribers (creators get a TINY share of that ad revenue - like pennies).
I tweeted at Rumble’s CEO, Chris Pavlovski, for a clarification on why he thinks - not much hope of getting a reply, but there is reason to believe he is paying attention, as you’ll see below. We’ll see if he addresses this.
UPDATE (10/16, 6PM ET):
Gaming on Rumble replied to our tweet that they only take 20% on Rants, but the App store for Apple & Google are taking an additional 30.%
Market Competitive?
YouTube takes 30% of SuperChats & channel memberships - Rokfin was taking 28% (but seems like higher lately).
Rumble is taking none of the monthly subscription revenue generated and only 20% of the Rants, whether on a mobile app or the web. Not awful, but they should be pulling in profit elsewhere between ads & cloud hosting to subsidize that cost, as YouTube does.
Twitch is an entire confusing ecosystem, but also seems to take 50% of monthly subscriptions, plus 29-50% of tips. Partners get a share of ad revenue but it’s miniscule. They seem to take a lot of the revenue generated for providing the platform.
Patreon falls in the 15% range, Substack works out to approx. 12.5% after the Stripe processing fee. The lowest-cost processors are direct-donate links, CashApp, Venmo and Ko-Fi.
For much more about creators retaining their user contributions, I highly recommend following
, who created to address this.
But it’s not ALL Bad News - Rumble Gaming Gets Some Love, and a CEO Listens to His Customers
This weekend, we saw Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski snap into action late on a Saturday night into Sunday morning in response to a video posted to Elon’s platform.
A gaming creator (SilverFox), who’s been devoted to streaming on Rumble for more than 2 years, made a passionate 22-minute video crying out for help from Rumble corporate about the lack of support for gamers, issues with the app and the streaming quality, and frustration at the focus on conservative-leaning politics.
Chris apparently saw it, and replied within 3 hours - unusual for the CEO of a multimillion dollar company to do after midnight on a Saturday. So, kudos for that - which I gave credit for below.
Within 12 hours - on Sunday the 13th, one of Silver Fox’s suggestions (creating a Twitter (X) account and posting about gaming on Rumble), was implemented RIGHT AWAY and https://x.com/@GamingOnRumble was officially launched, engaging with creators and making its presence felt starting Day 1 with a completely different vibe than their main account, more loose and fun.
The campaign launch was skillfully coordinated & seemed very professional and buttoned up. It got people engaged & excited that seemed desperate for some love.
Granted, that streamer had spent his own money to meet Chris in person in Miami at the Rumble house, so he may have had Chris’s attention already. I encourage everyone to watch Silver Fox’s video. It’s enlightening.
I felt terrible for him by the end of the video, when he said he didn’t earn enough monthly to even cover his Internet bill and he’d been doing this 6 to 7 days a week, 6 to 10 hours at a time. He also has a politics stream and is now doing a book reading stream. He’s putting in the WORK.
To look at the volume of streamers live at any one time, however, gaming is only about the 8th or 9th most popular category at any time during the day, drawing 5-20% of the total live viewership of the News, Trending News & Podcasts - 3 of the most popular categories. It was a little strange to see gaming leapfrog other categories (like conspiracies & 24/7 TV Channels) to get this much attention from the CEO over one smaller game streamer’s complaint.
I have to admit, I am still a little suspicious that there was probably already a marketing campaign in the works just about ready to be launched, and Chris seized this video as an opportunity to introduce the new campaign. Maybe I’m just a skeptical cynic, I don’t know. It could even have been coordinated, for all we know, however I doubt it.
The fact that the account was created in April 2024, but happened to launch this weekend, in October? Ok. There was also a video trailer that looked like it was not produced overnight. Likely, those creators would had to have been contacted, a trailer for each placed in the box & then post-production, my guess is the 18-second re-launch video took close to a week to produce.
HOWEVER, If Rumble is planning to take HALF the money that the viewers contribute to support their game streamers, then I am worried Rumble is setting itself up for failure in a genre already being served by YouTube, Twitch & Kick.
Keep an eye on this developing situation.
I’ve written about Rumble and their financial situation before, they’re losing $10M/mo and are quickly burning through a large cash reserve, but are working to get a valuation up and make the company more attractive to investors to likely open another round of funding soon.
I go in-depth on Rumble’s overlap with Rokfin here:
Sputnik US Closing Down - Everyone Let Go, All With No Notice
AMERICANS. People like
and - CIA whistleblower - - - what a blow to anti-imperialist, dissident media. Sputnik was one of the few outlets that let people say what was on their mind and, allegedly, never told its hosts what it could or could not say.This reminds me of one of the very first original articles I wrote here, about RT America shutting down due to the sanctions imposed after the launch of Russia’s SMO against Ukraine in defense of the Donbass at the end of February, 2022.
** Please Support these creators, as they have no choice but to go independent while they search for their next gig - if they can find one.
Rokfin Continues to Confuse
Another update about the ongoing Rokfin saga:
Latest word from creators I speak with regularly is that they got paid out this past Saturday or Sunday (no payout for any of my channels, though). The report is that people are confused about the conversion rate and what % fee Rokfin is taking, since no communication has been sent to them from Rokfin. There is ZERO transparency coming from Rokfin about it.
I challenged Rokfin’s President & Founder, Martin Floreani, publicly in a reply to one of his recent tweets, but that’s gone unresponded to (like all other correspondence sent to Martin).
Still no word from anyone at Rokfin about our INN channel working, they’ve done ZERO marketing for months, but then at 3:30pm ET today, I got this in my email inbox, promoting 4 NEW channels.
Interestingly, the new channels featured are all sports/wrestling focused, not targeted at all toward independent “Free Thinking Media” or “OpenMind”.
Wonder if I should contact the new arrivals and have a little chat sharing my experience?
Rokfin October Update: Not Looking Good
Intro This is another follow up/companion to Rokfin, Video Publishing Platform: Financial Trouble?, published September 16.
Rokfin, Video Publishing Platform: What Is Going On? Financial Trouble? A Sale?
UPDATE (Sept 17, 2pm ET): I’ve heard from multiple creators that they received RAE into their wallet beginning last night, with no further explanation from Rokfin beyond the one we received below. My channel has not been paid out yet.
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Wouldn't the fact Peter Thiel and J. D. Vance are major investors in Rumble give people a hint?